Consultation is a key competency area for school psychologists, though much is unknown about how school psychologists develop the competency to consult. Deliberate practice (DP) is a promising approach to enhance use of communication skills, thereby supporting consultation competence. DP training included multiple opportunities for video-recorded consultation practice in response to a consultee’s request for assistance, self-reflection on skill application, and corrective supervisory feedback. In this randomized controlled trial, 109 school psychology graduate students across 45 training programs received either consultation training as usual delivered through their first consultation course (control group; n = 61) or a supplemental DP training intervention in addition to their first consultation course (treatment group; n = 48). Students who completed the DP training significantly increased their use of communication skills during a simulated practice opportunity, while the control group participants did not. Students in the DP condition also reported significantly greater self-efficacy than students in the control group, although students in both groups reported significantly greater self-efficacy over time. DP participants also reported high levels of training satisfaction. Implications of these findings for the design and delivery of consultation training and supervision are discussed.

Consultation is a pivotal competency area for psychologists, yet little is known about how graduate training supports psychologists in consultation competency development. This study reports on the application of a deliberate practice approach to consultation training for 13 school psychology trainees, with a focus on communication skill development and application. Over 4 weeks, trainees viewed a series of four brief videos of a teacher consultee describing actual school-based problems and applied explicitly defined communication skill responses (i.e., paraphrasing, clarifying, and reflecting feelings). Responses were recorded and uploaded by trainees weekly on the Flipgrid online platform, shared with the instructor, and supervisory feedback provided regarding the accuracy and quality of final responses. Pre and posttraining data indicated trainees’ increased communication self-efficacy and overall satisfaction with the training. Areas for training improvement were also noted, including the supervision feedback process. The promise of a deliberate practice approach in supporting psychological consultation competency development is discussed, as are the future directions for training and research.

Applying qualitative content analysis methods, this study focuses on how school psychology graduate student consultants responded to a simulated request for assistance by a teacher. Seventy‐three total students participated in the study before they had engaged in their first course on school consultation. Additionally, transcripts were analyzed for subsets of students following a course on consultation (n = 23), or a course on consultation plus a supplemental communication skills focused training (n = 22). Before their consultation course, student consultants exhibited variable responses including some basic listening skills, but also offering premature problem hypotheses and solutions. They also restated child deficit focused language, often without asking for clarification, and asked questions not directly related to information provided by the consultee, which sometimes included more than one question at a time (double‐barreled). Following a typical consultation course, student consultants responded in nearly identical ways. Student consultants that completed a consultation course plus a supplemental training including deliberate practice of communication skills increased their application of basic listening skills, reduced leading questions, eliminated double‐barreled questions, and applied a pattern of paraphrasing followed by clarifying to understand concerns in more observable and measurable ways. Data are presented with qualitative examples, and implications are drawn regarding school consultation training.

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