Interdisciplinary Professional Partnerships

Abstract

With the growing diversity of professions working in schools, interdisciplinary partnership and collaboration are growing quickly the world over. Apart from traditional teaching and learning concerns, awareness of children and youth mental health issues and socio-emotional wellbeing, grew readily since the 2000s. Rising in tandem with this trend is the number of psychologists, social workers, and counselors joining educators to support children and young persons in schools. Challenges such as misconception of roles, differing perceptions as well as cross-disciplinary misunderstanding threaten to prevent concerned professionals in working collaborative to help children and young persons in need. Fortunately, this aspect of interdisciplinary partnership in schools gains the much-needed attention in research from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and the Americas. Models and frameworks suggesting best practices for interdisciplinary collaboration emerged in school psychology, counseling and social work literature. Also growing in tandem is research in methods of measurement and evaluation of such collaboration as well as studies on pre-service professional training on interdisciplinary collaborative skills in the related disciplines.

Student absenteeism and ecological agency

“…Absenteeism has a variety of different subcategories based on the characteristics the students display (Kearney 2008a; Low, 2019), and the ecological agency approach may be more useful for a specific type of absenteeism. The most relevant absenteeism to the ecological agency approach is absenteeism that is in the student’s control and will not correct itself (Heyne et al, 2019; Kearney, 2003).…”

The professional identity of school counsellors in East and Southeast Asia

“…This focus ought to be reflected in the titles given to school counsellors, since the way a role is labelled strongly influences perceptions of professional identity (Zyromski et al, 2019). The growth of interdisciplinary professional collaboration in schools also necessitates improved clarity and differentiation: without clear roles for different members, such collaborative teams are less effective (Low, 2019). The distinction between counsellors and teachers should also be clear, although, given the background many counsellors have in teaching and the traditional roles of teachers as counsellors in the region, it may be more appropriate for counsellors to adopt what DeKruyf et al (2013) describe as a 'conjoint professional identity' (p. 273), which captures the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of their role.…”