Generalization programming and behavioral consultation.

Generalization Programming and Behavioral Consultation Behavioral consultation is a frequently used method for providing services to special education children within the school system (Gutkin & Curtis, 1999). One of the justifications for using consultation as a service delivery model in schools is its potential to be preventative; consultation aids a teacher in effective problem-solving and teaches specific behavioral skills to solve classroom problems. Many researchers have suggested that one of the most promising elements of consultation is that these skills, once learned, can be applied by the teacher to other children (Kratochwill, Elliott & Rotto, 1995). Meyers (1985) highlighted this concept by stating, "... consultation is viewed as a technique with the potential for influencing the behavior of the target child, other children in the child's classroom, and similar children which the teacher may work with in the future" (p. 3). This potential benefit is directly in line with Caplan's original concept that consultation can multiply the effectiveness of highly trained service providers by increasing the skills of lesser trained service providers. Later Meyers (1985) stated, "... The potential value of consultation lies in its ability to have this sort of generalized effect since this allows the consultant to influence more children than would be possible with a model based on one-to-one delivery of service to the child (p. 3)." This goal of consultation suggests that teachers who have experienced consultation have the potential to independently use the problem-solving techniques and interventions modeled in consultation. In theory, these teachers will be more prepared to teach other children experiencing academic and behavioral difficulties. Teachers with consultation experience also have the potential to be a valuable resource in the school for other teachers. Teachers with increased problem-solving skills should be able to apply those skills when other teachers need assistance with a problem student. While these are important goals, there remains much work to be done toward achieving generalization of teacher consultee repertoires so as to reap schoolwide benefits. This paper applies generalization programming tactics from Stokes and Baer (1977) and Stokes and Osnes' (1989) articles to training teacher consultees so as to foster generalization of their intervention skills. Attention to generalization will support the realization of the full benefits of school consultation. Introduction to the Concept of Generalization Generalization is a term that describes the occurrence of a relevant behavior across time, setting and target in the absence of the conditions that promoted acquisition (Stokes & Baer, 1977). In the first systematic examination of generalization, Stokes and Baer reviewed the history of generalization and provided nine methods of programming generalization. Historically, researchers did not think of generalization as something that needed to be programmed. Rather, generalization was thought to emerge after several pairings of stimuli or treatments. In other words, generalization was viewed as simply something natural and far more effort was placed into understanding how individuals could be trained to discriminate between stimuli rather than generalize across stimuli. Stokes and Baer challenged this belief and provided the first organized list of generalization techniques. Stokes and Osnes (1989) revised this list further differentiating 12 specific methods fostering generalization. How does Consultation Currently Program Generalization? Popular school behavioral consultation models tend to incorporate the effective problem-solving model and empirical behavioral intervention of applied behavior analysis. School consultation models typically do not actively program for generalization of consultation-related behaviors to other students or situations (Noell & Witt, 1996). …