What's Race Got to Do with It? Relationships Between Racial Match and School Psychologists' Perceptions in School-Based Consultation

Multicultural consultee-centered consultation has the potential to improve outcomes for historically marginalized students given its intentional consideration of their unique backgrounds and strengths. However, more research is needed to determine how consultants themselves, as school psychologists, conceptualize student problems, especially when members of the consultation triad differ in their racial identities. The current study analyzed extant data from a larger study examining racial match in consultation (N = 83), in which participants were randomly assigned to view a teacher describing a student referral problem across four conditions: (a) White teacher describing a White student, (b) White teacher describing a Black student, (c) Black teacher describing a White student, and (d) Black teacher describing a Black student. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine the relationships between school psychologists' perceptions of various aspects of the consultation process, illustrating whether consultants' representations of the problem differed based on the racial diversity of the consultation triad. Results indicated moderate correlations (r = 0.36 to 0.57; p < .01) among consultants' perceptions of consultant-consultee collaboration, consultants' perceptions of teachers' expectations about students, and consultants' perceptions of the student-teacher relationship. Participants' self-reported cultural competence was not significantly correlated with participants' representation of the problem. Finally, racial match between a White teacher and White student was negatively associated with participants' perceptions of collaboration (B = - 0.56; p < .001) and positively associated with participants' perceptions of the student-teacher relationship (B = 0.88; p < .001). Implications for research and practice are provided.