This study was part of a teacher–counselor collaborative consultation project (MOST103-2410–H33-029) hosted by Dr. Tu and sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan. The project aimed to develop positive counseling strategies through collaborative consultation with teachers to solve teachers’ difficulties in managing students’ problematic behaviors in classrooms. Participants included six teachers and five school counselors. The six teachers included five women and one man aged between 26 and 51 years, with 1 to 21 years of teaching experience. The participants were required to take 10 weeks’ videotaping of their classes and participate in five sessions of face-to-face consultation. The corresponding author, who was a senior counseling psychologist with a 15-year experience of working with teenagers and their families, served as the consultant. In this study, a follow-up was conducted one month after the completion of the aforementioned project to collect the teachers’ consultation experiences. This study explored the teachers’ interpersonal experiences of participating in collaborative consultation with a counseling psychologist from the perspective of interpersonal process theory. A purposive sampling method was adopted such that all the teachers who completed the project were invited. All the teachers agreed to voluntarily participate in this study. A semi-structured interview was designed to collect in-depth data on the teachers’ interpersonal experiences of working with a consultant in a consultation room and their students in classroom settings. The participants were interviewed 1–3 times per person and 1.5 hours per time in average. With regard to data analysis, the researchers followed a four-step circulative procedure of phenomenological analysis developed by Lee & Lai (2009). The four steps were gaining the whole picture, breaking into parts, meaning transforming, and organizing.

The results summarized two major themes: teacher–consultant interpersonal process and teacher–student interpersonal process. In the teacher–consultant interpersonal process, the teachers’ experiences were categorized into four subthemes: (1) A safe, positive, and supportive consulting environment eliminated resistance and enhanced cooperation. The teachers felt a sense of security and trust when they perceived the consultant to be understanding, nonjudgmental, and hospitable. Thus, the teachers were more willing to explore their issues in teaching and disciplining the students when they received support from the consultant. (2) Interpersonal feedback from the consultant enhanced teachers’ awareness and reflections on their interactive patterns and internal conflicts with the students; furthermore, conflict resolution, belief transformation, and new actions became possible. The consultant’s interpersonal feedback and empathetic understanding helped the teachers realize the effects of their interpersonal patterns on their interactions with students. Thereafter, the teachers could stride across their internal conflicts through continuous self-reflections. (3) The consultant helped teachers understand the context of student problems, deepened their empathies toward students, and initiated more positive interactive strategies with students. Through reinterpretation of students’ inner world by the consultant, the teachers comprehensively understood students’ problems, thereby changing their feelings toward students. Moreover, the teachers developed different perspectives toward students and new guiding strategies for the students’ problem behaviors. (4) The teachers could “learn by doing”—trying out their new teaching and guidance strategies through multiple sessions of consultation. Through learning by doing, the teachers’ improvements were verified by the consultant and their own actions, further consolidating their changes. The teachers applied new positive behavior support strategies jointly developed with the consultant to their classrooms and refined the strategies according to the outcome. Next, in the teacher–student interpersonal process, the teachers reported three interpersonal subthemes experienced with their students: (1) the teachers reported positive changes between students and themselves, thereby creating effective teacher–student relationships. The teachers could listen and understand students’ needs better, acquired students’ trust, and experienced more sincere relationships with students. (2) The teachers used positive languages to create a positive teacher–student interaction cycle in the classroom. The teachers duplicated the positive experience in the consultation process with the consultant to the teaching practice site with students. They used more positive and supportive languages and gave more positive appraisals to their students, thereby increasing positive responses from the students; therefore, teacher–student interaction qualities were enhanced, and positive interaction cycles were created. (3) Teachers provided new possibilities of working with students and new ways of fulfilling their educational philosophies. When the teachers found new guiding strategies for students’ old problems through consultation, they transferred the learning experience to other life situations; in this manner, they met their own educational philosophies. Consistent with the literature, the study results indicated that the strong relationship between the consultant and teachers encouraged the teachers to join the consultation. The consultant helped the teachers learn student psychology as well as the teacher–student interaction.

Furthermore, the consultant expanded the teachers’ repertories of positive strategies in managing students’ problematic behaviors in classrooms. Moreover, the positive teacher–consultant relationship ensured positive teacher–student relationships in a classroom setting. Further, the author discussed the transformation experience of teachers from the perspective of interpersonal process theory. According to the theory, the teachers’ interpersonal experiences could be conceptualized into two stages: consultant–teacher interpersonal experience and teacher–student interpersonal experience.

First, a trusted working alliance was formed between the consultant and teacher. For the teachers, seeking help and showing their weakness were stressful. The consultant was perceived to be understanding and nonjudgmental. Moreover, the consultant provided emotional support and interpersonal appraisal, resulting in new and differential experiences that helped the teachers relieve from their own frustrations. Second, the consultant helped the teachers identify their rigid interactive patterns and core conflicts under the patterns, thereby helping the teachers self-introspect and creating awareness of their role in managing students’ problematic behaviors in classrooms. Third, empowerment feedback from the consultant through multiple sessions of consultation and students’ feedback enabled the teachers to effectively transfer their learning to classroom situations and to develop newer and positive interpersonal interaction styles with their students. Accordingly, this study concludes that collaborative consultation with teachers facilitates teachers’ professional development and positive teacher–student interactions. Thus, counselors can improve the effectiveness of their work through collaborative consultation with teachers. In addition, pre-service trainings in consultation should be included in the school counseling profession.

Finally, future studies should explore interpersonal processes and factors determining the transformation experiences of teachers from the perspectives of interpersonal processing theory.