ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION Educational and mental health support personnel typically use behavioral consultation (BC) to collaboratively work with a consultee (the classroom teacher), as a means to improve the functioning of individual students, who are the clients. Behavioral consultation is derived from the theory of behaviorism, in which psychological theorists such as Watson (1930) studied only what could be directly observed and measuredbehavior-and in doing so discounting constructs such as mental states and cognitions, since they can only be inferred. More recently, Bandura (1977b, 1978), a neobehaviorist, developed a social cognitive theory model that has also been used in the development of BC techniques. Because the contribution of social cognitive theory is so extensive, however, a separate chapter (chapter 4) is devoted to the discussion of this theory in reference to social cognitive theory consultation.