A critical examination of school-based occupational therapy collaborative consultation

Abstract

Although collaborative consultation has been widely adopted in school-based occupational therapy practice, there is limited conceptual understanding of how collaboration contributes to educationally relevant outcomes for students with disabilities. Even without a clear understanding of the evidence related to school-based occupational therapy services, there continue to be decisions about funding and delivery of services. This paper synthesizes and critically appraises the research literature on collaborative consultation services in school-based occupational therapy in order to provide program administrators with direction for critically examining decision making for service delivery in their districts. Advancing occupational therapy practice in education settings requires a sound theoretical understanding of collaborative consultation. Distributed cognition offers a more robust understanding of the relationship between educator-therapist collaboration and outcomes of school-based occupational therapy services. This review concludes with two fundamental conditions necessary for collaboration between educators and occupational therapists to flourish.