It is important, if not essential, to get the attention and initial willingness of parents, teachers, and students to consider talking about issues that are important to them. The focus of this chapter is how to keep that momentum going. Motivational interviewing (MI) provides the tools needed to help consultees resolve their ambivalence about change. Infusion of MI techniques into school-based intervention research is in its early stages but is continuing to be adopted by researchers. MI is used to increase the fidelity of evidence-based interventions that depend on changes in teacher or parent behavior, such as parenting skills or classroom-management practices. Although the evidence for MI's effective use by school personnel is still emerging, it is reasonable to expect that MI will expand within the context of school support services in the next decade.

This chapter describes the rationale for using structured Check-Ups and for delivering effective feedback in a motivational interviewing style. It focuses on the Family Check-Up (FCU) given that it involves all three groups targeted in prior chapters: parents, teachers, and students. Delivering feedback using FCU approach facilitates the sorts of interactions with parents that promote more collaborative, open, optimistic, and productive encounters. Check-Ups align with the stages of MI: engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. It involves two or three meetings ranging from 20 minutes to an hour each. The first meeting involves a structured interview and an ecological assessment involving self and other reports of strengths and areas of concern related to the target problem; and the second involves delivering personalized feedback that is used to develop goals and an action plan. MI is the foundation for each meeting—MI principles guide the structure of the interview and feedback meetings.

This chapter extends these motivational interviewing (MI) methods to teachers. It structures the discussion around the four processes of MI: engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. These processes should not be treated as static phases but rather as benchmarks for conceptualizing change conversations and the types of responses that may be most helpful depending on the process. The chapter concludes with a brief description of a structured consultation model for supporting teachers, called the Classroom Check-Up (CCU) that adheres to the four processes of MI. The skills and strategies used with MI can be applied in any consultation visit with a teacher, with or without the formal structure of the CCU. To highlight the use of MI during even brief visits with teachers, the chapter includes examples in the section called “Everyday Conversations About Change”.

Over the past two decades, Implementation Science has emerged as a discipline concerned with understanding the dissemination and implementation of new innovations across multiple service settings, including schools. Within education, a consultation approach referred to as coaching has received attention as a promising mechanism to improve the adoption and implementation of highly effective practices in education settings. There is a substantial need for coaching models that clear and comprehensive. A few researchers have turned to motivational interviewing (MI) as a tool for assisting with this process. The application of MI to support implementation of specific programs and practices is a reasonable extension of the approach. Here we focus on several school-based applications that have used MI to help support the delivery of classroom curriculum and behavior management programs at home and school.

This chapter describes the content, procedures, and resources needed to learn or teach motivational interviewing (MI) to school-based personnel. It suggests measurement tools to facilitate professional development efforts or assess MI quality or fidelity. The ability of school personnel to learn to use the MI approach competently is an area of research that is likely to receive a great deal of attention over the next decade. As a result, careful and systematic attention must be given to systems that can support school personnel in learning this approach. Efforts to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of systems to teach school personnel the technical and relational skills, as well as to avoid MI inconsistent behavior, are currently in process.

Motivational interviewing (MI) occurs in the context of conversation; thus, it requires that people be willing and able to engage in social interaction. Unfortunately, many of the less involved families, teachers, and students are inaccessible in some way, either unwilling or unable to attend school meetings or simply unwilling or unable to talk about change. This chapter presents a model for examining the common contextual barriers to change in schools and for overcoming these barriers. The personal qualities of the consultant or liaisons for the school are the foundation for successful invitations and discussions about change. The chapter describes some of these qualities. It also introduces literature that provides carefully documented methods for reaching even the most challenging families in order to get our foot in the door and to initiate meaningful conversations about change.

Most schools are composed of various problem-solving teams to support student learning. Common teams include behavior support teams, response-to-intervention teams, academic support teams, student-support teams, grade-level teams, and teams for individualized education programs. Often these teams bring together a range of professionals and caregivers whose task it is to work together to solve problems. The success of these teams often hinges on the competence of the individual members to solve problems and their willingness and ability to work together. Many of the engagement strategies and motivational interviewing (MI) techniques can be integrated into the work of school-based problem-solving teams. This chapter discusses the strategies that problem-solving teams can use to support students, particularly those facing significant academic and/or behavioral challenges. It focuses on this population because the challenges in supporting students with complex presentation are well known.

Addressing the motivational aspects of academic and behavior supports at home and school represent the next frontier of school-based practices. How to make these motivational interviewing (MI) practices more commonly available in schools? In other words, how to best disseminate this new best practice for intervening in academic and behavior problems? By making more school professionals aware of MI and by equipping them with the basic knowledge and expertise needed for MI practice, the authors hope to begin spreading the word. They hope to improve training methods for MI by capitalizing on online education and distance supervision. MI is intended to complement school-based initiatives and maximize their impact. Given the progress of extending MI applications throughout the world and in a wide variety of settings, the next generation of academic and behavior interventions in schools will surely attend to the motivational context of interventions.

As most educators are well aware, children benefit when their parents are involved in all aspects of their education. This is true for high-performing students as well as low-performing students, and for students with and without special needs. Unfortunately, not all parents are actively involved in school. This chapter explores ways of using the motivational interviewing (MI) strategies, to gain greater parent involvement in schools, as well as to provide assistance with positive parenting practices. It first provides a rationale and discusses common challenges in achieving this goal. Next, it presents strategies that can be used at each MI process—engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. The goal of the chapter is to describe the use of MI strategies in everyday interactions with families. In addition, it situates these strategies within a structured consultation model that can be applied in longer interactions and meetings with parents.