The Construct Validity of Stages and Activities in the Consultation Process

Although school consultation has become an increasingly popular practice and articles have proliferated in the professional journals, little is known about the consultation process. This study examined the process, by training consultants to use a self-monitoring system, that helped generate data on their consultation activities. More specifically, the purpose of our effort was to verify whether consultation stages and activities were orderly and sequential as implied by most models. Following an analysis of 10 individual cases in two schools, we found little orderliness to the process. We argue that reference to the importance of consultation stages, phases, and specific activities cannot be considered universal; rather, they are case specific.