Paradox 2: Prereferral Interventions In The Classroom

A paradox is defined as a statement that is seemingly absurd or contradictory yet is in fact true. The dynamic tension between schools as bureaucracies and teaching as an intensive technology often places the school consultant in situations that call for seemingly contradictory actions in their attempts to deliver services (Erchul & Martens, 2012).
Paradox 1 states that change occurs overtime at a slow pace because the innovations are usually developed by individuals outside of the school. The top-down model is first passed through the district administrators, downward to the principle and then disseminated to the teachers. The problem with this model is that attempts to implement a prereferral intervention model that have administrative backing
Teachers are generally held accountable for the achievement of groups of students as opposed to an individual student. School consultation usually requires teachers to provide more individualized instruction. The issue that arises in paradox 2 is when teachers try to apply the accommodations but are expected to do so in the absence of building-level supports. In an era of tiered service delivery models and evidence-based practices, tension may play out in many different ways. Teachers may be quick to support universal standard protocol interventions because (a) these are often implemented by support personnel and (b) require few if any changes in the teacher’s instructional practices. On the other hand, these same teachers may be resistant to implementing individualized, Tier 3 interventions because these do affect their day-to0day activities and if effective, will become the child’s baseline level of instruction for the future (Erchul & Martens
Advocates of the human relations movement believe that members of a group collaborate and join one another based on social psychological variables, and many times these patterns differ from those sanctioned by the formal bureaucratic structure. According to Sarason (1971, 1996), one way of assessing the group norms present in a school is to observe the behavioral regularities of teachers and students. Behavioral regularities also occur within classrooms, and these regularities can be related systematically to different instructional arrangements. According to Weinstein, children who are successful in classrooms are able to discriminate among various activity segments based on physical arrangement or subtle teachers cues and understand the types of behavior appropriate to