Responsible Use of Motivational Interviewing in Schools (RUMIS)

The pur­pose of the Respon­si­ble Use of Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing in Schools (RUMIS) project is to pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port for prac­ti­tion­ers, researchers, and high­er edu­ca­tion per­son­nel using moti­va­tion­al inter­view­ing (MI) in school-based appli­ca­tions. Below, we pro­vide a brief descrip­tion of what MI involves and how it is being used by school-based providers. Next, we describe the Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing Train­ing and Assess­ment Sys­tem (MITAS), which pro­vides the foun­da­tion of our tech­ni­cal sup­port. We have also includ­ed tools for assess­ing MI com­pe­ten­cy of school-based prac­ti­tion­ers. Last­ly, we have includ­ed infor­ma­tion on our var­i­ous MI-focused projects and rel­e­vant publications.

Motivational Interviewing in the Schools

Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing is a clin­i­cal coun­sel­ing approach based on empir­i­cal evi­dence doc­u­ment­ing the rela­tion­ship between how peo­ple talk about change and their actions. MI helps to facil­i­tate the change process by devel­op­ing a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment and rela­tion­ship that evokes change talk, or the person’s own words about their per­son­al moti­va­tion to change. Research sug­gests pro­fi­cient use of MI is asso­ci­at­ed with high­er lev­els of engage­ment, longer time in treat­ment, and bet­ter out­comes than inter­ven­tions with­out MI. MI is increas­ing­ly being lever­aged by researchers and school-based men­tal health providers, as well as behav­ioral and instruc­tion­al coach­es and con­sul­tants, to improve child social and aca­d­e­m­ic func­tion­ing. It is a foun­da­tion­al skill for sev­er­al evi­dence-based prac­tices and can also be used as a coach­ing mod­el or to facil­i­tate every­day con­ver­sa­tions about change.

Motivational Interviewing Training and Assessment System

Research has found that learn­ing to use MI in a authen­tic prac­tice set­tings is dif­fi­cult to achieve with­out inten­sive, struc­tured, and con­text-spe­cif­ic train­ing. How­ev­er, over the last sev­er­al years our team has demon­strat­ed suc­cess in both train­ing and imple­men­ta­tion of MI skills in mul­ti­ple inter­ven­tion con­texts. We pre­pared our inter­ven­tion­ists for these inter­ven­tions uti­liz­ing the MITAS. It is mul­ti­day train­ing pro­ce­dure that intro­duces trainees to the tech­ni­cal and rela­tion­al skills of MI, as well as MI non-adher­ent prac­tices to avoid. The MITAS also includes sim­u­lat­ed prac­tice sce­nar­ios, as well as ongo­ing super­vi­sion or pro­fes­sion­al learn­ing communities.

Our research team has cre­at­ed vari­a­tions of the MITAS train­ing for use with ear­ly child­hood fam­i­ly ser­vice work­ers and resource teach­ers, school social work­ers, school-based men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, and behav­ior con­sul­tants. Thanks to an ongo­ing project, fund­ed by the US Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, Insti­tute for Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences, we have recent­ly revised and improved train­ing for Instruc­tion­al Coach­es. Below, we have pro­vid­ed a link where you can access infor­ma­tion about our team’s efforts, includ­ing train­ing mate­ri­als from the Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing Skills for Coach­es (MISC) project. We hope you find the resources useful.