Module 3: Partnering as Multidisciplinary Teams

Empathy in Family Partnerships - Preparing for Interviewing

Learning Objectives

Develop strategies for communicating with other professionals, teams, and strategic initiatives about culturally and linguistically responsive goals for children and families.
Learn to leverage strengths of other professionals to advance goals for children.
Recognize the benefits and strengths of meaningful multidisciplinary collaboration as a method for improving child and family outcomes.
Align communication among school professionals to effectively share data among MTSS team members.

Partnering as a multidisciplinary team is essential in education to support multi-faceted goals for children, understand the strengths of children in various areas, and improve students’ overall well-being. Each individual in a team including school professionals (e.g., teachers, special educators, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists, school nurses, school counselors), parents, and youth themselves have unique and important perspectives and areas of expertise. Critically, areas of child well-being are connected. Children who are struggling with academics are often also struggling with behavioral issues, and vice versa; evaluating and supporting the whole child by connecting with important adults in their life will improve their overall functioning.

Team members must have collaboration, trust, and respect for one another in order to communicate effectively. Some teaming strategies that enhance these traits include naming and defining team goals, defining individuals’ roles and responsibilities, and defining explicit expectations for communication. It may be helpful to use a guide to define roles and responsibilities. The IRIS Center offers information about including youth with exceptionalities as team members (pdf). Team members must also be flexible and open to adjust to the changing needs of youth and families as well as responsive to feedback from other professionals. See LDOnline for other strategies to improve teaming.

A critical strategy for teaming is the effective use of data. Various professionals need access to data; providing clear, easily accessible data will simplify MTSS decisions (for instance, a decision to move a child from tier II to tier III supports). Additionally, the use of an aligned and integrated system for collecting and making decisions from data will streamline support for students who struggle in multiple domains (see The Center for PBIS guide on aligning and integrating academic and behavior systems within MTSS). More tips for data include:

House data in a shared online database. Rather than keeping various sources of data in different places (such as attendance records, disciplinary data, etc.), keep all data in one database to optimize access. The National Center on Intensive Intervention offers a guide to select an MTSS data system.
Identify the purpose of each data source. Stop collecting data if there is no clear purpose.
Label data clearly and accurately. It may be helpful to create a shared data code book - a data codebook defines the data and helps guide a user while accessing the data.
Create a schedule for regularly updating your data.
Assign roles and responsibilities to individuals for data collection, updates, and organization. This will ensure that each person is aware of their tasks when it comes to managing the data.
Create a regular meeting schedule to discuss data. This ensures that your school is regularly incorporating information from collected data.
If necessary, implement professional development to improve school professionals’ understanding of the data.

Effective teaming has positive outcomes for families and professionals. For professionals, teaming may alleviate the pressure of independent decision-making. Teaming encourages decisions that support a child holistically, rather than in one particular domain; this increases the likelihood of culturally responsive and effective services for children. Further, collaboration among school professionals enhances a mutual understanding of interventions for a child, therefore promoting consistency in service delivery. Effective teaming will involve parents and youth as members of the team; this is particularly critical for families from historically marginalized backgrounds as it allows families to provide feedback related to the cultural relevance of assessments and interventions. School professionals should center the family strengths and goals as well and incorporate feedback from the family. Collaboration will increase trust from parents, and as such, encourage parents to be active partners.

Reflection Questions

What teaming strategies do you currently employ when working with other professionals?
What professionals are regularly invited to the team? Whose voices may be missing?
In what ways could you improve your collaboration within multidisciplinary teams?
How can you work with other professionals to encourage collaboration and active engagement from families from historically marginalized backgrounds?
What can you do to improve your school’s use of data, including adjustments to data collection, data housing, and data interpretation?

Other Resources

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