2025.01 72-3 Teacher Consultation from the Consultee Perspective
Teacher consultation is a common service in Taiwan’s campus counseling work. Professional support and assistance from counseling teachers promote teacher empowerment in solving student cases and related issues. Consultation services will also be a trend in the future development of school psychology. However, little research has been conducted on teacher consultations in Taiwan. In ensuring that consultation work plays an appropriate role, the views and experiences of the consultees (i.e., teachers) must also be considered to refine the existing working mode of teacher consultation for the promotion of consultation work in schools. This study is based on teachers’ perspectives and aims to clarify their views, participation experiences, needs, and expectations of consultees and consultation services. A total of 19 school teachers (seven men and 12 women; average age of 38.68 years and average teaching experience of 12.26 years) participated in the interviews. The results can be divided into three parts based on the grounded theory analysis. (1) Cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects mainly drive teachers’ entry into the consultation process. Regarding the cognitive dimension, teachers seek consultation primarily to expand their perspectives on their own difficulties or students’ problems and reconstruct their views. Regarding the emotional dimension, teachers seek consultation mainly to understand their emotions and obtain emotional support. In terms of the behavioral dimension, teachers seek consultation hoping to settle and improve their own mental and physical conditions affected by distress, receive professional support and advice from teacher-counselors, and thus solve their own difficulties or students’ problems. (2) Teacher consultation comprises steps, including establishing relationships, exploring core issues, deepening understanding, action, consolidation, and adjustment. More specifically, the consultation process begins with the construction of a supportive relationship provided by teacher-counselors, which encourages teachers to engage in a deeper exploration of their problems together with the teacher-counselors under circumstances where they feel supported. Teachers gain a better understanding and awareness of their problems through teacher-counselor assessment and feedback. Finally, through collaborative goal setting, appropriate responses or strategies are made to address these problems. Subsequent follow-ups are used to consolidate or adjust these strategies to ensure problems are adequately resolved. (3) Teachers generally acknowledge the benefits of consultation and base their conclusions on their experiences and reflections, identifying facilitative and inhibitory factors in the consultation progress. The factors that facilitate the consultation process mainly include the following: the teacher-counselors must acknowledge and establish a trusting relationship with teachers; both parties need to collaborate on the foundation of mutual professional respect; the teacher-counselors must assist teachers in gaining insight and recognition of their potential problems and help them positively focus on their abilities and performance; and the teacher-counselors must also base their advice and strategies on their own professional experience to provide teachers with concrete, context-specific guidance that helps them solve the problems. Conversely, inhibitory factors may include hierarchical consultation relationships, teacher-counselors’ advice and strategies not meeting teachers’ contexts and needs, and teachers’ lack of familiarity with the consultation context or teacher-counselors’ role positions, which may all affect the progress and effectiveness of the consultation. Therefore, catalysing facilitative factors and minimising inhibitory factors during the consultation process is essential. Overall, based on the analysis of teachers’ experiences participating in consultations, this study concludes with several practical implications that contribute to the positive development of teacher consultation in Taiwan’s campus counseling environment.
Keywords
consultation experience, consultation process, teacher, teacher consultation, needs
Download