Appraising and Praising Systematic Work to Support Systems Change: Where We Might Be and Where We Might Go

Abstract

I appreciate the invitation to comment on the article by Reinke, Lewis-Palmer, and Merrell (2008) examining the Classroom Check-Up (CCU). Their work illustrates how far school psychology has come over the past decade in developing more sophisticated intervention practices. The opening section of this commentary will highlight the author's perceptions of the work's conceptual and empirical strengths. Reinke's and colleagues' contribution to the current issue also raises some interesting issues for the future of scholarship and practice in the areas of consultation and systemic intervention. The concluding sections of this commentary examine the issues that this study highlights for future work in this area. Conceptual Strengths The CCU research presented in this issue integrates promising concepts in the school-based consultation and intervention literatures. For example, their work draws from the broader psychosocial intervention literature integrating motivational interviewing into school-based intervention (Miller & Rollnick, 2002). It is important that school psychology become more seamlessly integrated into both the scholarship and practice of our closely related subspecialties (e.g., clinical psychology) and disciplines (e.g., public health; Merrell & Buchanan, 2006). As school psychology continues to develop increasingly diverse practices, we will find that tools we need have been developed in other contexts such as the considerable work on adult behavior change (e.g., Durantini, Albarracin, Mitchell, Earl, & Gillette, 2006). Similarly, as we develop new practices, our findings should be increasingly relevant to other specialties and disciplines. An additional conceptual strength of the CCU study is the authors' choice to focus on systemic intervention. The CCU procedures are congruent with current and increasing calls for school psychology to intervene at systemic levels (Shapiro, 2006). I would also note that it is congruent with this author's experience supervising randomized field trials of consultation in schools. Frequently, a classroom-level intervention is a much better fit for the presenting concerns than an individual intervention. Despite the apparent need for systemic intervention and the calls for school psychologists to become involved in systemic intervention (Shapiro, 2006; Sugai & Horner, 2006), systemic intervention research is not extensively represented in school psychology. Although the reasons for the limited systems-level research are likely more a function of the practical challenges than a lack of interest, Reinke and colleagues provide a well-thought-out model for intervening at the minimally systemic level in schools: classrooms. This target for study provides a system-level unit for analysis with the maximum number of potential systems in schools and the fewest practical barriers to studying systemic change. Although intervening in classrooms cannot address all of the systems-level changes about which we are concerned (e.g., school-wide discipline; Sugai & Horner, 2006), it does provide a more manageable focus for study that is within the domain of systemic change. Reinke and colleagues demonstrated an approach to change in schools that acknowledged that talk is a weak, frequently inert, behavior change strategy. They identified implementation of the intervention plan as the primary outcome for the study and recognized that this is an outcome that is distinct from child behavior change. It has been previously argued that one of the central weaknesses of systems change, consultation, and child behavior therapy research and practice is the minimally developed technologies we have for changing the behavior of adults (Foxx, 1996; Noell et al., 2005). To some degree, the process for changing educators' and parents' behaviors may be independent of what that behavior is. We certainly lack compelling evidence that recommending effective practices is sufficient to ensure their adoption or sustained implementation (e. …