Micro-level advocacy toward socially just multi-tiered systems of support: Action steps

Advocacy is a critically important skill in applied psychological service delivery, however, little is yet understood about what it means to advocate effectively, especially within school and district settings (e.g., micro-level advocacy). By examining literature related to advocacy and systems change, with a focus on efforts to advance social justice and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in schools, we identified practices that can be used to create widespread, equitable deployment of effective services at the school and district level. Using conventional content analysis methods, we analyzed 81 articles from journals in school psychology and related professions related to social justice, advocacy, and/or MTSS. Findings yielded eight potential areas of micro-level advocacy practice that are important to advancing socially just MTSS: community consultation, data and assessment, family collaboration, graduate education, school/district policy change, mental health service delivery, working with school teams, and teacher consultation. Many of these areas reflect core school psychology work, whereas other actions cut across traditional practice areas. Overall, the results of this content analysis have broad implications for future research, graduate training, continuing education, and professional practice.