The communication competency model development for school consultant: Based on Schein’s Process Consultation perspective
Authors:   The Korea Association for Care Competency Education, Bae Hyunju 
Published: January 2024

The competency of school consultants’ is one of the major factors for successful school consulting. Specifically, the communication competency of school consultants is emphasized as a core competency because it is critical for the principle and process of consulting. This study aims to define the competency of school consultants, with a specific focus on elucidating the educational communication competency based on Schein’s Process Consultation perspective.
The competency of school consultants can be categorized into common competency and professional consulting competency as a consultant. The common competency of school consultants includes communication, interpersonal relationship, synthetic thinking, utilization of information resources and technology, and self-management competency. The consulting competency consists of field specialty on school field and school education, process specialty for consulting principles and methodologies, and consulting ethics meaning confidentiality, sincerity, and autonomy in consulting.
The communication competency of school consultant is classified as common competency, and consists of general communication and educational communication competency which has been derived from Schein’s consultation principles. The general communication competency includes writing, speaking, reading, and listening ability for effective delivery and understanding of messages, and discussion and moderation ability for narrowing the gap of opinions.
The educational communication competency is composed of sub-factors that identify the purpose and content of communication based on Schein's consulting principles: 1) awareness of the importance of forming mutually helpful relationships and communication, 2) presentness of communication based on consultee’s now-here, 3) accuracy of communication, 4) awareness of the intervention influence, 5) consultee's agency and learning, 6) giving the consultee time to understand the situation and context and to provide feedback, 7) timeliness that captures important opportunities to increase the effectiveness of the intervention, 8) confronting intervention that changes the perspective of the consultee facing a constrained situation, 9) recognizing negative reactions and errors consultant's intervention and using them as data for effective consulting, 10) acknowledging the consultant's own limitations and sharing problem situations with consultee.
This study is significant in developing a school consultants’ competency model and, in particular, deriving education communication competency, by identifying the educational meaning of communication in overall school consulting focusing on problem solving and consultant learning, which are the goals of Schein’s Process Consultation. However, this study could not deal with the whole competency of school consultant and has focused on the education communication competency, therefore, the relationships and complementary aspects with general communication competency, other common competency, and consulting competency, were not fully revealed.