UNC School of Education

Associate Professor of School Psychology and Early Childhood Education

T 919.843.2049
F 919.962.1533
sknotek@email.unc.edu

114 Peabody Hall
CB 3500

Steve Knotek is a psychologist trained as a practitioner and as a researcher in prevention and early intervention. His research focuses on the use of consultation as a means to: (a) enhance the capacity of professionals, parents and caregivers to address their children's developmental challenges, and (b) to understand the use of consultation as a vehicle for innovation diffusion and utilization. His goal is to investigate how consultation may be utilized in service of early intervention programs that aim to support the competence and resiliency of students who are at-risk for school failure and/or who are in traditionally underserved populations.

Background

Knotek's research interests have been heavily influenced by his professional experience prior to his academic career. Prior to his university career, he worked as an educator in a children’s museum, as a child and family therapist for seriously emotionally disturbed children and adolescents in an inner-city community day treatment center, and then finally as a school psychologist working with minority students in poor rural counties. This work convinced him of the resilience and competence inherent in children, their families, and their caregivers. As a museum educator he was privileged to see children act in a creative and motivated fashion, and to be able to use education to support their sense of competence in their abilities to solve and master interesting problems. As a therapist he witnessed both the power and limitations of tertiary intervention. Treating children who had been exposed to extreme risk factors caused him to appreciate the capacity of abused and mentally ill clients to respond to treatment and exhibit resiliency. He was also keenly aware, however, of the lost opportunities to intervene with many of these children before they became symptomatic. He then moved to the field of school psychology in response to his desire to be able to work with the whole child, to practice early intervention, to reduce risk factors, and to promote resiliency and competence.

Finally, as a school psychologist Knotek was able to not only work individually with students, but to also collaborate with many professionals and parents who shared the same overarching goals for promoting the success of students of color at-risk for school failure. His professional practice in these three different yet complimentary environments imbued in him the importance of finding a means to effectively support children as well as their care providers. These experiences have led him to research in consultation, early intervention and innovation diffusion.

• Ph.D. 1996 - University of California at Berkeley. Educational Psychology and Human Development, emphasis in School Psychology
• M.A. 1987 - University of San Francisco, Counseling (School, and Marriage and Family)
• B.A. 1981 - San Francisco State University, Geography

• Consultation
• Early Intervention
• Literacy
• Organizational Culture, Climate and Problem-Solving
• Research Overview

• School Psychology - Consultation and Interventions
• Early Intervention and Literacy

• Researcher with the Instructional Consultation Team Laboratory, currently working with the Exceptional Children Divsion of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction in pilot program.

Knotek, S.E. (2003). Making sense of jargon during consultation:Understanding consulteessocial language to effect change in student study teams, Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

Knotek, S.E. (2003). Bias in problem solving and the social process of student study teams: A qualitative investigation of two ssts. Journal of Special Education.

Gravios, T.A, Knotek, S.E., & Babinski, L.M. (2003). Educating practitioners as consultants: The instructional consultation team consortium. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

Knotek, S.E., & Sandoval, J. (Eds.). (in press). Consultee centered consultation as a Constructivistic process: Directions in theory and research [Special issue]. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

Knotek, S.E. & Sandoval, J. (in press). Introduction to the special issue: Consultee centered consultation as a constructivistic process. Manuscript submitted for publication [Special issue].

Knotek, S.E., Gravios, T., & Babinski, L. (in press). The process of orderly reflection and conceptual change during instructional consultation. [Special issue]. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

Webster, L., Knotek, S.E., Babinski, L., & Rogers, D. (in press). Mediation of consultee's conceptual development of new teacher groups: Using questions to improve coherency. [Special issue]. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

Knotek, S.E. (in press). Development through discourse: Speech genres as pathways to conceptual change. In N. M. Lambert, I. Hylander, & J. Sandoval (Eds.), Consultee-centered consultation: Improving the quality of professional services in schools and community organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Babinski, L.M., Knotek, S.E., & Rodgers, D. (in press). New teacher groups as consultee- centered consultation. In N. M. Lambert, I. Hylander, & J. Sandoval (Eds.), Consultee-centered consultation: Improving the quality of professional services in schools and community organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Knotek, S.E., Babinski, L.M. & Rogers, D.L. (2002). Images of children and images of self: Supporting new teachers development. California School Psychologist. Knotek, S.E. (2001). Qualitative methods and the constructive practitioner: Integrating theory, research and practice. CASP Today, 50.