STRATEGIC INTERVENTION: “BEING STRATEGIC” IN EDUCATIONAL THERAPY

Abstract

In the field of special education, treatment is a broad term and it can be divided into three categories: intervention, rehabilitation, and management. In the educational therapy, the main focus is on intervention – originally a medical term – and can be briefly defined as an act of interfering with the outcome or course especially of an individual’s challenging condition so as to prevent harm or further deterioration to the individual’s condition, or in the hope to improve the individual’s overall functioning as normally as possible. In this paper, the authors began by making a quick and brief introduction of what the term treatment covers and then plunged into examining intervention. There are three forms of intervention: clinical, diagnostic, and strategic. The authors have chosen to narrow their focus on strategic intervention based on eight guiding principles adapted from Erika Andersen’s ‘Being Strategic’ principles for every day (Part 1) and with a group (Part 2) (Andersen, 2010) within the context of a trans-disciplinary team approach to manage the challenging issues of learning, behavioral and/or emotional disruptions. Three key frameworks are involved in the strategic intervention: (a) the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of cognitive and academic abilities (Carroll, 1993; Cattell, 1963; Horn, 1965); (b) the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) applied to human behaviors (Commons, 2007); and (c) the Feeling Wheel Classification (FWC) of feelings, emotions and moods (Willcox, 1982).

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