Conversations about Consultation

Today we are so privileged to have with us Dr Lauren Kaiser, PhD, NCSP who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP). Currently, Dr. Kaiser is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the School Psychology Graduate Program in the Psychology Department at Millersville University, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

She received her Bachelors degree in Elementary Education, and earned her Masters and Doctoral degrees in School Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to her faculty assignment, Dr. Kaiser worked in a variety of professional capacities within urban, suburban, and rural schools across eight states in the U.S. She served as an elementary school teacher; school psychologist; and a trainer, consultant or coach of Instructional Consultation Teams and the Double Check and Bullying Classroom Check-Up programs. Her teaching and research interests are school consultation, teacher coaching, consultation training, and implementation science to help promote safe, supportive, equitable, and instructionally matched school environments for all students. Dr. Kaiser serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

She co-facilitates the NASP Consultee Centered Consultation Interest Group with Dr. Danny Newman. Dr. Kaiser and Dr. Newman were recently invited to co-author Best Practices in Instructional Consultation in the NASP Best Practices 7 series. They have worked together on several projects investigating the use and effects of deliberate practice training on the development of consultant communication micro-skills and consultation efficacy, which have resulted in peer-reviewed manuscripts and conference presentations. Dr. Kaiser’s initial consultation research focused upon the acceptability and effects of the Instructional Consultation and Instructional Consultation Teams model. Presently, Dr. Kaiser also serves as a consultant on large-scale training grants investigating the training and efficacy of the Double Check Classroom-Check-Up Model, a teacher coaching model which focuses upon enhancing culturally responsive teaching and student engagement. She has co-authored a chapter on innovations in coaching for the Handbook of School Mental Health: Issues in Clinical Child Psychology, as well as co-presented in invited national conference panels on the topic of school coaching to enhance equity in school discipline.

We spoke with Lauren about her research into teacher satisfaction, seeking feedback, training novice consultants and ongoing learning and supervision of consultation. We hope you enjoy listening and reflecting on this episode!

We are so lucky to have spoken with Dr Catherine Kelly and Dr Esther Kambe Kuria about their recent publication on social justice in Educational Psychology in Practice. Catherine is an Assistant Director for the Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology at the University of Manchester and an Educational Psychologist for Bury Metropolitan Borough Council. Esther graduated from the Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology at the University of Manchester and currently works in Cheshire East Local Authority. In this episode, we touch on a range of topics from attunement skills and group consultation to intersectionality and social justice principles in educational psychology services. We loved speaking with Esther and Catherine and have learnt so much from this conversation. We hope you enjoy listening!

Article Reference: Esther K Kuria & Catherine Kelly (2023): Exploring social justice principles within an educational psychology service, Educational Psychology in Practice, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2023.2226857

Dr. Collier-Meek is a licensed psychologist, Board Certified Behaviour Analyst and an Associate Professor of School Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. She also serves as an Associate Editor for School Psychology and provides reviews to several journals, for which she has been twice honoured as reviewer of the year. Mel’s research interests includes implementation science and she conducts applied school-based implementation research. She has specific expertise in intervention fidelity and teacher consultation. We loved speaking with Mel about her work on implementation science and reflecting on consultation using a DisCrit lens. We hope you enjoy this episode :)

In this episode with speak with three of the 4 co-founders of TEPICC, the trainee-led initiative for cultural change in Educational Psychology and beyond. We were very lucky to speak with Jason, Hannah and Yasmin and shout out to Mickel Johnson, who was sadly unavailable to record the episode. Jason, Hannah and Yasmin all completed their doctoral training at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Jason and Yasmin currently work as Educational Psychologists in the London Borough of Hackney and Hannah works as an Educational Psychologist in Barnet Educational Psychology Service. We thoroughly enjoyed speaking with TEPICC about their formation, hopes for the group and reflections on practice and consultation. We hope you enjoy the episode!

In this episode we speak with Cathy and Louise about their recent publication on a framework for developing consultation practice. Dr Cathy Atkinson is the curriculum director for the initial doctoral programme in educational psychology training at the University of Manchester and Dr Louise Jones is a Lead Specialist Educational and Child Psychologist at Lancashire County Council. Louise completed her thesis in consultation, including the application of Motivational Interviewing in consultation practice. We speak together about some of the elements of the National Association of School Psychology (NASP) framework which informed their approach and the integration of motivational interviewing techniques into practice. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it!

Dr Cyril Pickering is a school psychologist who lives and works in Washington, DC. He received his Masters and PhD from the School Psychology program at the University of Maryland. Cyril was a contributor to the book "Becoming a School Consultant", which reflects on the experiences of consultation trainees as they learn the craft. His chapter, "Relationship Building and Objectivity Loss", documents lessons he learned while building effective collaboration with teachers. Cyril currently works on two school programs which serve youth and young adults who are incarcerated. We really enjoyed speaking with Cyril in this episode about the importance of relationship building, truly hearing teacher concerns and believing in the process of consultation. We hope you enjoy the episode!

On this episode we were honoured to have with us Dr Daniel Newman, who is currently an Associate Professor on the School Psychology Program at the University of Cincinnati. Among several professional service roles, Dr. Newman is also the current editor of the Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation. We touch on his research on teaching, training and professional supervision for consultation. We really enjoyed speaking with Danny and hope that you enjoy listening!

Dr Ellie Sakata graduated from the Educational Psychology doctorate from Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in 2021 and is now working as a qualified Educational Psychologist at Hertfordshire County Council. In this episode, we explore Ellie's thesis which looks at Culturally Responsive Practice in EP work and the the self-reflective framework she created as part of her thesis. We talk about how we can incorporate and reflect on culturally responsive practice within our work with schools, parents and CYP.

Dr Grace Giles graduated from the ed psych doctorate at Nottingham University in 2020 and is now working as a qualified EP at Sandwell Educational and Child Psychology Service. Grace did her thesis looking at the intersection of Motivational Interviewing and Consultation and her thesis title is 'Using sequence analysis to explore the role of motivational talk in consultation' which we talk about in this episode alongside lots of other consultation things!