The work of school psychologists is evolving towards an indirect approach to intervention based on collaborative consultation between psychologists and teachers to improve teaching practice. To sustain this kind of collaboration, communication processes and psychologists’ discourse strategies are key. Although previous research has identified some of these discourse strategies, fewer studies have contextualized them in broader forms of conversation.
This study aims to explore the forms of conversation (“modes of discourse”) between psychologists and teachers considering their monologic/dialogic character, and the discourse strategies embedded in the most common modes of discourse. Seven consultation sessions in four Chilean schools were videotaped.
The modes of discourse that psychologists and teachers developed jointly and the psychologist’s discourse strategies within these modes were analysed. The modes of discourse identified ranged from mainly monological, focused on the provision of information by one of the participants, to mainly dialogical, entailing the joint elaboration of the conversation content. The presence of these modes across the observed situations seemed to relate to the way participants conceived the sessions. Embedded in the most common modes of discourse, we found specific patterns of psychologists’ discourse strategies. These results extend previous research by situating the psychologists’ discourse strategies in a broader discursive framework.
Soto, R., Minguela, M., & Onrubia, J. (2026). Modes of discourse and discourse strategies: Interaction between educational psychologists and teachers in consultation processes. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 58, Article 101004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2026.101004