Consultation Meeting Planner

{"tool":"checklist","version":1,"description":"<p>The Consultation Meeting Planner provides a listing of common 'cognitive shortcuts' that can short-circuit objective data-based problem-solving or systems-change meetings. Consultants can use this listing to avoid pitfalls when preparing for meetings at the classroom, school, or district level.</p>","directions":"<ul>\n<li>To browse 'cognitive shortcut' elements, select any of the categories from the 'Select Checklist' drop-down menu. Elements for the selected category will then load into the 'Selected Checklist' box. Click on the arrow next to particular 'short-cuts' that you would like to add to your checklist and those ideas will load into the 'Your Checklist' box. Items in this box will go into your meeting planning form.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li>You can edit or add your own notes to any cognitive shortcut element in the 'Your Checklist' box by clicking the 'edit' button that appears next to it. A window will open and you will be able to make your edits or&nbsp; type in your notes.<br /><br /></li>\n<li>When you are ready to download your selected 'cognitive shortcuts' list in a meeting planning format, you can do so by clicking on the tabs of the report choices below. You can download PDF or RTF (Microsoft-Word-ready) documents and can email these documents to others.&nbsp; You can also apply a unique name to any checklist that you create by typing that name into the 'Report Title' box that appears near the bottom of the page under 'Printing Options'.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li>If you have already created a free account on Intervention Central, you can save your customized list of 'cognitive shortcuts' to that account. Just click the 'Save' button at the top of the page.</li>\n</ul>","lists":[{"editable":true,"title":"'Cognitive Shortcuts' That Undermine Consultation","description":"<p>Here is a listing of intuitive 'cognitive shortcuts' that can interfere with--or even derail--consultation meetings at the classroom, school, or district level.</p>","items":[{"text":"REPRESENTATIVENESS: BASE RATE FALLACY. When an educator is making diagnostic or categorical judgments about a student, the availability of specific details about the individual case can cause the educator to ignore base-rate probabilities. EXAMPLE: A teacher is concerned that a child in her fourth-grade classroom with mild reading delays may have a reading disability based on direct observation of the student's reading performance. In fact, however, the prevalence of reading problems is far greater in non-identified than identified students: The base-rate nationally for children who are not yet proficient readers is about 62 percent (US Dept of Education, 2011), while the national base-rate for students with learning disabilities of all kinds is about 5 percent (Lyon, 1996).","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131.\n\nTversky, A. & Kahneman, D., \"Evidential impact of base rates\", in Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Tversky, editors (1985), pp. 153-160.\n"},{"text":"REPRESENTATIVENESS: INFLUENCE ON PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE . The educator is over-reliant on the snapshot of the student's current 'representativeness' to a diagnostic or other category when making predictions about that student's future standing or performance. EXAMPLE: A principal predicts that a first-grade general-education student with moderate academic delays and putative 'soft signs' of a learning disability (e.g., letter and number reversals) would fail if placed in next year's grade 2 curriculum and instead recommends that the child be retained in her current grade.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"REPRESENTATIVENESS: MISCONCEPTIONS OF REGRESSION. The educator assumes that isolated extreme negative examples of student performance are diagnostic--rather than as occasional expected outliers from an acceptable mean. EXAMPLE: A teacher is alarmed when a student with no history of learning problems does poorly on a math test and pushes to have that student provided with remedial academic support.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"REPRESENTATIVENESS: OVER-CORRELATED DATA SOURCES. The educator is overly confident of the validity of a diagnostic or categorical judgment about a student, based on several information sources that are highly correlated or redundant EXAMPLE: Early in a school year, a teacher notes that a student has some reading deficits and-- based on conversations with the child's teacher from the previous year and parent--initiates a special education evaluation. Last year's teacher expressed concern that the student may have a learning disability in reading, while the student's father also said that he believes that his child may have a disability. The three data sources (current teacher, previous teacher, parent) are likely to be highly correlated, all depending heavily on the previous teacher's impressions about the student's reading performance.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"AVAILABILITY: EASE OF RETRIEVING INSTANCES. The educator overestimates the likelihood that a student fits a diagnosis or category because examples of that diagnosis/category appear numerous and easy to recall. EXAMPLE: A teacher is more open to concluding that a struggling student may have a learning disability because he has 3 other LD students in his classroom that he can call to mind and note apparent similarities with the target student.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"AVAILABILITY: 'BIASES OFIMAGINABILITY'. The degree of motivation that an educator brings to a student academic or behavioral intervention can be influenced by the ease with which that educator is able to imagine positive or negative outcomes. EXAMPLE: A teacher is reluctant to put together an academic intervention plan because he focuses on the many ways that the plan could go wrong: e.g., extra work for the instructor, unmotivated student, poor outcomes resulting in negative judgment of the teacher's skills.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"ANCHORING: CONSTRAINT OF THE STARTING POINT. From an initial starting point, the educator fails to adequately adjust expectations of instruction, intervention, or data collection to address the student concern. EXAMPLE: A teacher is used to the past school norm of judging the effectiveness of a classroom academic intervention after 2 weeks. When a consultant tells her that, under RTI, academic interventions should typically be in place for at least 8 instructional weeks, the teacher refuses -- but agrees reluctantly to a 4-week duration.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"ANCHORING: OVER-OPTIMISM ABOUT SUCCESS IN CONJOINED EVENTS. When implementing a complex initiative in which success is reliant on a chain of inter-dependent steps, the educator over-estimates the probability for success. EXAMPLE: A district superintendent is overly optimistic about successfully accomplishing these four inter-dependent steps within the first 3 months of the school year to establish RTI Tier 2 services in 8 elementary schools: (1) select a school-wide literacy screening toolkit; (2) develop a range of Tier-2 evidence-based supplemental reading programs for struggling students; (3) establish clear data-based entrance and exit criteria for Tier 2 services; (4) implement a Tier 2 Data Analysis Team to review screening data to oversee Tier 2 program placements).","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":" ANCHORING: UNDERESTIMATE OF SYSTEM FAILURE IN DISJUNCTIVE EVENTS. When maintaining a complex system, the educator underestimates the probability that failure of one or more inter-dependent parts will contribute to a system-wide failure. EXAMPLE: A director of curriculum and instruction is successful oversees implementation of the RTI model in her school district. However, she makes no provisions to sustain the integrity of the model (e.g., by monitoring the number of students placed in RTI and special-education services; providing yearly refresher training to all interventionists; collecting integrity data for all interventions, etc.).","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.. Science, 185, 1124-1131."},{"text":"FRAMING: PERCEIVED POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE OUTCOMES: The educator is more or less disposed to commit to an action, depending on whether that educator perceives that the action will result in a better outcome than the current 'status quo'. EXAMPLE: Despite having only 65 percent of his 4th-grade class reach the mid-year DIBELS reading fluency benchmark, the teacher is reluctant to commit substantial effort to provide additional instructional support to struggling readers in his classroom. His unvoiced worry is that, by making substantial changes to his instructional practices, the teacher may actually see a decline in classwide reading performance.","notes":"Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1981) The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453-458."}]}],"reports":[{"id":1347492453507,"title":"Cognitive Shortcuts: Citations & Notes","description":"<p>This listing includes cognitive shortcuts that can interfere with good decision-making, along with research citations, and space for notes.</p>","columns":[{"header":"Cognitive Shortcuts","type":"item","width":20},{"header":"Citation","type":"notes","width":10},{"header":"NOTES","type":"blank","width":10}]},{"id":1347425499137,"title":"Cognitive Shortcuts & the 4-Step Problem-Solving Model","description":"<p>This planning form lists selected 'cognitive shortcuts' that can interfere with effective problem-solving in the first column. The remaining 4 columns include the stages of John Bergan's 4-part problem-solving model. Consultants can use this form to list cognitive shortcuts that most concern them and brainstorm ways to avoid them during the consultation process.</p>","columns":[{"header":"Cognitive Shortcut","type":"item","width":22},{"header":"1: Identify Problem","type":"blank","width":8},{"header":"2: Analyze Problem","type":"blank","width":8},{"header":"3: Implement Plan","type":"blank","width":8},{"header":"4: Evaluate Problem","type":"blank","width":8}]},{"id":1347426236599,"title":"Cognitive Shortcuts & a Generic Meeting Model","description":"<p>This planning form lists selected 'cognitive shortcuts' that can interfere with effective problem-solving in the first column. The remaining3 columns include a generic meeting planning outline: (1) pre-meeting; (2) meeting, (3) post-meeting. Consultants can use this form to list cognitive shortcuts that most concern them and brainstorm ways to avoid them during the pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting stages.</p>","columns":[{"header":"Cognitive Shortcut","type":"item","width":18},{"header":"1. Pre-Meeting Stage","type":"blank","width":10},{"header":"2. Meeting Stage","type":"blank","width":10},{"header":"3. Post-Meeting Stage","type":"blank","width":10}]}]}