ABSTRACT
With the increasing diversity of the educational system in the US, school-based consultants must consider cultural variables as a part of standard practice. In this chapter, we review the characteristics of effective consultants in multicultural contexts. Competencies and strategies, including tiered prevention for conducting bilingual consultation, are provided. Typical issues encountered in international consultation are also discussed. We offer comprehensive descriptions for three models of school-based consultation that emphasize multiculturalism and cultural-specificity, including the participatory cultural-specific intervention model (PCSIM; Nastasi, Varjas, Bernstein, & Jayasena, 2000), Ingraham and Meyer’s (2000) multicultural school consultation (MSC) model, and consultee-centered consultation (CCC; Hylander, 2012). Applications of the PCSIM, MSC, and CCC models are described in considerable depth in order to explicate the multiple processes and variables that must be considered in cross-cultural consultation. We review the use of MSC to implement a schoolwide program to reduce stereotype threat and describe a study involving the use of CCC to promote school-based clinicians’ multicultural competence. Furthermore, several studies involving the use of PCSIM to implement culturally-specific, social-emotional programming are presented.
