Facilitating Effective Communication in School-Based Meetings

Perspectives from School Psychologists

Jason R. Parkin, Ashli D. Tyre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000431568
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

This book offers guidance for school-based professionals participating in the special education process. It provides a foundation for effective oral communication and meeting facilitation in team meetings while highlighting methods to enhance collaboration between educators and families.

School psychologists across the United States share how they structure meetings, provide examples for how to communicate educational and psychological concepts, and describe personas they present to support the meeting process. Chapters present a sequential facilitation process for school psychologist-led meetings and apply that process to problem-solving, suspicion of disability, eligibility/feedback, IEP, and manifestation determination meetings. Within each chapter, featured practitioners describe ways to address common challenges that arise.

Aimed at graduate students and professionals, this text is a unique, example-based resource to enhance readers' ability to facilitate and participate in the special education process.

1 An Introduction to Oral Communication and Meeting Facilitation

DOI: 10.4324/9780367854522-1

Why a Book on Oral Communication, and Why Meetings?

We realize that school psychologists do not need an introduction to meetings. In our field, meetings are not occasional job requirements. For most of us they occur daily, a major part of indirect, consultative service delivery. In meetings, families and educators coordinate supports for students’ education and make decisions within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; also called the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act [IDEIA]). Ideally, the special education process, and the meetings within it, represent collaborative interactions among families and educators (Martin, 2005; Mueller & Carranza, 2011). Family participation reflects a major aspect of special education, and IDEA stresses that families should meaningfully engage in the process (Katsiyannis et al., 2001). Procedural safeguards and due process mechanisms highlight family rights. Frequently, meetings in special education meet and exceed the collaborative aspirations of the law. But most all school psychologists know that just as frequently they do not (Reiman et al., 2010).

“Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by … strengthening the role and responsibility of parents and ensuring that families of such children have meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children at school and at home.” (IDEA 20 U.S.C. § 1400(5)(B))

We set out to write a book about the meetings school psychologists engage in for a few key reasons. First, meetings represent a major professional work setting for school psychologists, and furthermore, a unique work setting. We find them unique because of their multidisciplinary nature. In the spirit of IDEA, decisions do not come from any one individual. Instead, decisions coalesce from discussions within a team of parents and educators. Frequently, the school psychologist has the most comprehensive understanding of the special education process within the team. As a result, school psychologists often lead or facilitate the meeting process. Second, we know school psychologists have accumulated a significant amount of craft knowledge, or a “wisdom of practice” (Leinhardt, 1990) related to the process of meeting facilitation. That knowledge deserves to be collected and shared, our major goal with this project. Other allied branches of professional psychology have demonstrated the value of practitioners’ wisdom (Postal & Armstrong, 2013). School psychologists share meeting facilitation as a professional art. We hope this text reflects that craft well and gives all readers exciting things to consider in their daily practice. Our conversations with school psychologists certainly did that for us.

Meeting Facilitation and Oral Communication: Two Skill Sets That Complement Each Other

In our experience, school psychologists receive significant, formal training during graduate school in skills that might relate to their performance in meetings, but not in meeting facilitation directly. On one hand, that seems appropriate. Meeting facilitation requires significant background knowledge in education, mental health, and child development, to name just a few areas. Facilitation might represent more of a higher-order skill that requires fluency in those other areas of professional practice. Moreover, facilitation of a meeting reflects only a small fraction of our professional role. For instance, in the psychoeducational evaluation process, we might spend 10 hours administering various tests, interviewing students and stakeholders, and conducting observations, another ten hours scoring and interpreting results, and synthesizing our data into a comprehensive report, and then 60 to 90 minutes facilitating a meeting with the student’s parents, teachers, and other group members. On the other hand, that small fraction of time, less than 10 percent of the time devoted to the whole process, will have a disproportionate impact on the effectiveness of that information. A practitioner could write the most elegant, comprehensive report, but in the feedback meeting, if they do not appear credible, if other group members do not feel engaged in discussion, and if ultimately the group does not generate a consensus understanding of that information when making decisions, the report’s impact will be diminished. Alternatively, if group members feel allied with the school psychologist and a part of a cohesive group, if they not only participate in the discussion, but feel valued for their contributions toward the meeting purpose, the utility of that information may be amplified.

While many school psychologists invest significant time into their reports, writing skills may not transfer directly to oral communication. There is a lot of similarity between the two modes, of course, but there are fundamental differences that make oral communication distinct. Both skill sets are interpersonal. When we speak and when we write, we consider our audience and the purpose of our communication. We use understandable language and make sound arguments. In contrast, writing is usually more formal and static than oral communication. Writers do not receive instant feedback from their audience, and there are no nonverbal communication channels that must be interpreted alongside written language. In a meeting, group members ask questions, provide feedback, and make their own interpretation of data. When facilitating a meeting, practitioners must manage these various interpersonal dynamics. The mindset and worldview of our audience influences the way we draft our reports, but the meeting facilitation process magnifies that influence because we communicate orally.

When meeting participants feel allied with the school psychologist and valued for their unique perspective, it can amplify the utility of report data.

As illustrated in Figure 1.1, meeting facilitation and oral communication reflect complementary skill sets. In our view, they inform each other, and share common goals. We use meeting facilitation skills to ensure a fluent group process. For a meeting to be effective, all members should understand its purpose and share in its goals. That clarity allows participants to determine how they might meaningfully contribute to the meeting’s outcomes. We use oral communication skills to ensure that everyone collectively understands the information each participant brings to the group, strengthen arguments, and highlight shared values and identity within the meeting. This requires us to understand the worldview, beliefs, and values of meeting participants. When group members identify with each other, share a common purpose, and feel valued for their contributions, collective outcomes of effective oral communication and meeting facilitation, it can lead to a cohesive group and strong, consensus-driven decisions.

Figure 1.1 Relationship Between Oral Communication and Meeting Facilitation.

What Creates an Effective Meeting?

We learned a great deal by speaking with school psychologists from across the United States and inquiring about their practice experiences. We had two general goals when constructing a sample of school psychologists with whom to speak. First, we aspired to capture examples of practical knowledge or wisdom school psychologists have learned about the meeting process and place those experiences within a context of general principles behind oral communication and meeting facilitation. Thus, we wanted to speak with relatively seasoned school psychologists known for strong interpersonal and facilitation skills. A few individuals in our sample are no longer school-based professionals. They may work as trainers or in private practice, but they previously engaged in school-based work, or currently work alongside schools. Second, because the job role varies from state to state, we strived to collect a geographically diverse group of participants. We began with individuals from our own training whom we admired for their meeting performance. We also asked colleagues and state association leaders for recommendations. After completing an interview, we invited participants to recommend their own colleagues, especially out-of-state colleagues, who they too admired for their facilitation performance. In this way our sample snowballed into what we present here.

Readers may not agree with all the examples practitioners provided to us. Laws, job roles, and practice expectations vary from district to district and state to state.

We queried practitioners’ experiences in two general ways. First, we asked for examples of strong communication and facilitation practices across multiple meeting types. We requested our interviewees to provide these details to us as if we were a fly on the wall during a meeting. What would we see them do or hear them say that might exemplify the concept or practice they describe? These examples may include a way of describing a concept, a practice that increases group participation, or even an attitude or perspective that practitioners find useful to support their performance directing the meeting process. Second, we asked them to provide us with common challenges that arise in various meetings, based on their experience, and to describe how they might address those challenges, or to share what they learned from them. We should point out that the practitioners we spoke with may not agree with everything we write in this text or with the perspectives of other contributors. Their voices are theirs, and ours is ours. There are also differences in state laws and school district practices that affect school psychologists’ daily practice. Of course, it should go without saying, this book is not intended to provide legal advice or guidance.

As we listened to examples of meeting practices, several “big” questions emerged for us. Firstly, we wondered, what constitutes an effective meeting, is there a link or theme connecting all these practices we are hearing about? Returning to our “fly-on-the-wall” visual, watching a meeting in progress, how would we know if participants were accomplishing the meeting’s purpose? The easy answer probably involves observations of group collaboration and consensus. After all, collaboration reflects a major aspiration of IDEA (Welch, 1998). We bet that most all educators think they collaborate well with families (we certainly think we do!), but if that is true, it leads us to our second question: why might so many families feel the opposite? Research literature on parent satisfaction in IEP meetings consistently reveals challenges with the special education process (Mueller & Vick, 2017). While many families express satisfaction with meetings (Fish, 2008), the sad reality may be that many others do not feel included in the process to the degree that we think we include them (Engle, 1993; Phillips, 2008). That discrepancy also occurs with other educators; teachers likewise can feel ignored or devalued in meetings (Slonski-Fowler & Truscott, 2004).

IDEA stresses the importance of parent participation, though many families may feel uninvolved.

While we maintain that collaboration between educators and families remains the aspiration of IDEA, we should acknowledge what many readers may be wondering: is true family-school collaboration possible in meetings? Engle (1993) describes a paradox within the special education process. IDEA highlights the necessity of parent participation, and yet many parents find the meetings intimidating to a degree that inhibits their participation (Dematteo, 2021). This paradox appears to arise from attempts to shoehorn collaborative aspirations into a medical model of educational service delivery (Gutkin, 2012). While the process views all meeting participants to be on equal footing, participants remain unequal in terms of expert knowledge and decision-making authority.

Collaboration may be impaired by imbalances in specialized knowledge and decision-making authority.

Perhaps the term collaboration may not seem entirely applicable and a quixotic goal. “Collaboration” implies a consistent, mutual partnership across decision-making. We think of collaboration as a process in which two (or...