Teacher “resistance” to school -based consultation: A social exchange theory perspective

Applying survey methods, the purpose of the present study was to investigate teacher “resistance” to school-based consultation services delivered by school psychologists using Social Exchange Theory as a theoretical framework. Examined were the predictive power of consultant, teacher, organizational, and situational variables on teacher reported use of consultation over the course of the 1998–1999 school year. Demographic data were also collected. One thousand five hundred surveys were mailed out to a random sampling of elementary teachers in Iowa yielding a response rate of 27%. In the primary findings, factor analyses of survey items yielded eight factors labeled School Psychologist Characteristics, Principal Support for Consultation, Personal Teaching Efficacy, Teacher-School Psychologist Similarity, Classroom/Discipline Efficacy, Adequacy of Time Availability for Consulting, Opportunity to Reciprocate, and Teacher Consultation Insight. After the removal of influential and outlying cases none of the factors were, however, found to significantly enter into a step-wise regression predicting number of teacher reported consultations over the 1998–99 school year. In an alternative analysis, a one factor solution was also extracted and found to possess a small, albeit significant correlation with number of reported consultations. Secondary analyses of the present study included a pilot study revealing that teacher\u27s understanding of consultation was congruent with the definition prepared for purposes of the present study. The secondary analyses also revealed that there were no differences in number of reported consultations as a function of community type, degree, or gender. Finally, after the removal of outlying and influential cases, a step-wise regression of the remaining demographic data revealed that the number of hours the school psychologist was in the building possessed the only significant, albeit small, predictive relationship with number of reported consultations. Several important methodological and conceptual differences between the present study and the literature preceding it may have accounted for the findings. Implications were presented along with limitations and future research directions