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Abstract
School psychology is one of the four original specialty areas of professional psychology recognized by the American Psychological Association—specifically, organizational psychology, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, and school psychology. While there is a common science of psychology undergirding all four of these professional areas, school psychology focuses on the application of social and organizational, educational and learning, child and adolescent, normal and abnormal, and biological and ecological psychology to the school and schooling process. More specifically, school psychology works from a systems level to an individual level. At the systems level, it emphasizes the importance of creating safe and positive school environments that facilitate effective instructional processes that result in students’ academic, social, emotional, and behavioral progress and success. At the individual level, it emphasizes the importance of guiding, intervening with, and evaluating students’ health and mental health, and ways to help them develop and respond to protective factors such that they become independent learners, effective behavioral self-managers, and resilient in the face of life’s passages and crises.
Outline
- Qualifying School Psychology as a Profession
- The Elements of an Effective School
- What School Psychologists Do to Be Effective
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
Qualifying School Psychology as a Profession
School psychology is a profession. Guided by two national professional associations, the National Association of School Psychologists and the American Psychological Association’s School Psychology Division, school psychology has training standards, professional practice and ethical standards, credentialing and licensure standards, and continuing education expectations.
School psychology is a post-baccalaureate profession. In most states, school psychologists are certified by their state departments of education or psychological licensure boards for practice in the schools at the educational specialist (Ed.S.) level. Typically, this involves 60 graduate hours of defined coursework and a school-based or school-related internship. Some school psychologists earn the doctorate degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., or Psy.D.). Typically, this involves a minimum of three years of practice, a full year internship, a specialization area, and research culminating in a dissertation. Currently, about 75% of the profession practices at the Ed.S. level, and 25% practices at the doctoral level.
Relative to course work, school psychologists receive university training, clinical practice, and supervision in the following domains: (1) data-based decision making and accountability; (2) interpersonal communication, collaboration, and consultation; (3) effective instruction and development of cognitive/academic skills; (4) socialization and development of life competencies; (5) student diversity in development and learning; (6) school structure, organization, and climate; (7) prevention, wellness promotion, and crisis intervention; (8) home/ school/community collaboration; (9) research and program evaluation; and (10) legal, ethical practice, and professional development. Demonstrating their adherence to a published set of standards and criteria, university training programs are either approved (at the doctoral and Ed.S. levels by the National Association of School Psychologists) or accredited (at the doctoral level by the American Psychological Association), thus providing an independent and objective level of accountability and quality control.
The practice of school psychology in the field is guided by professional practice and ethical standards. Professional practice standards, largely generated by the two national professional associations and state certification and licensure entities, govern the professional practices and interactions of school psychologists as they provide assessment, consultation, intervention, and evaluation services to students and parents, staff and administrators, and schools and other organizations. These activities include professional practices in the 10 training and practice areas listed above, but they also involve the professional interactions of school psychologists with the clients, the consultees, and others that they serve, and how they carry out their various responsibilities. In a broader sense, professional practice standards also address how school psychology units or departments (often in larger school districts in which multiple psychologists are employed to provide a full continuum of comprehensive services) should function to ensure appropriate and responsible practice.
Critically, it should be noted that school psychologists practice in a number of different settings. As they largely focus on the academic and social, emotional, and behavioral development of children (starting generally at the preschool level) and adolescents (sometimes, for students with disabilities, through age 21), school psychologists are employed in schools; community mental health and other agencies; alternative education, juvenile justice, and prison settings; hospital and psychiatric treatment facilities; private practice; universities; and other specialized settings. In many of these settings, they interact not only with psychologists from other specialty areas, but also with teachers and administrators, social workers and counselors, speech and occupational/ physical therapists, physicians and psychiatrists, and other health and mental health professionals.
Ethical practice standards, also generated by national associations and state entities, govern the professional practices and interactions of school psychologists relative to protecting the rights and integrity of all individuals and parties who are directly or indirectly impacted by provided services. Involving morally and legally responsible behavior, ethical practice standards are the ‘‘internal’’ guidelines that define, for individual psychologists and individual practice, appropriate professional scope, boundaries, communications, representations, interactions, and services. While addressing personal behavior, ethical practice standards are reinforced, at the state and national levels, by colleagues appointed to boards of ethical practice. When allegations of ethical violations are forwarded to these boards, they objectively gather the data and information necessary to make a judgment on the behavior, either dismissing the allegations as unfounded or requiring restitution and/or sanctions when the allegations are validated.
In professional practice, the most important ethical practice standard involves the need for school (and other) psychologists to practice within the scope of their training and expertise. Acknowledging that no one professional can be expert in all possible areas of practice, this standard ensures that psychologists provide services only in areas in which they can provide appropriate and effective services—independently or under supervision. For school (and other) psychologists, this is the ultimate protection for the consumer, a protection that is essential given the sometimes tenuous nature and enormous responsibility for safeguarding the psychological health and development of children, adolescents, and their families.
Credentialing and licensure standards are typically state specific, and they are written and enforced by a state’s Department of Education Certification Board and Department of Professional Practice, respectively. Most often, these standards are codified in law and/or regulation, as both of these departments must submit them to their state legislatures for approval, and they require the psychologist to pass some type of written national or state exam.
The school psychology credential is the Department of Education’s official certification that an individual has received the appropriate university course work, training, experience, and supervision to practice in the schools as an independent practitioner. Often, school psychologists receive an initial or provisional credential, which is then upgraded to a full or independent practice credential after two or three years of full-time supervised practice in the field.
Licensure, meanwhile, is the Board of Psychology’s (or the equivalent) certification that an individual has received the appropriate university course work, training, experience, and supervision to practice in the community as a private, independent practitioner. Although licensure is most often conferred only at the doctoral level, there are currently more than 10 states in which a school psychologist can be licensed at the non-doctoral level. Whereas eligibility for school psychology credentialing generally requires university-based supervision, eligibility for licensure typically requires both university-based supervision and postgraduation supervision of practice in the field by a licensed psychologist. Licensure ultimately allows school psychologists to practice in virtually all settings—public and private—while credentialing generally limits the scope of practice to the schools. Some states, however, issue only a school psychology license, and some states require school psychologists to have a credential (even if they also have a license) to do school-based work.
If this were not confusing enough, the National Association of School Psychologists has issued national certification in school psychology (NCSP) to qualified school psychologists since 1988. Through their state credentialing regulations and procedures, approximately 30 states now recognize the NCSP for immediate credentialing. The NCSP has not only established a more uniform set of training standards for entry into the field, but it has also facilitated a level of reciprocity so that school psychologists can more easily move into new states and begin to practice professionally.
School psychology’s professional practice and ethical standards, and most state credentials or licenses, require school psychologists to maintain their clinical skills through continuing education. Typically, this involves taking a certain number of courses, spending a specific number of hours at workshops or in-service, and/or engaging in documented types of professional activities or experiences over a defined period of time. The goal is to ensure that practitioners continue to have the most up-to-date training, experience, and professional standing in a field that is constantly changing and upgrading. This is essential so that they have the knowledge, skill, and confidence to make effective and evidence-based professional decisions over time, and to implement effective interventions and efficient services.
The Elements of an Effective School
Over the past two decades, there have been increasing expectations that schools and school districts demonstrate that all students are successfully meeting specific academic standards and outcomes on an annual basis. These expectations have been federally legislated through such laws as the ‘‘No Child Left Behind’’ Act (NCLB), which is the current elementary and secondary education law for the country. The NCLB is reinforced by the federal IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) legislation. IDEA guides and monitors the delivery of services that are provided to students who are identified with one of 13 specific disabilities (e.g., specific learning disabilities, cognitive or intellectual disabilities, emotional or behavioral disturbances, deaf/hard of hearing or blind/visual impairment disabilities) in a number of specific outcome areas: the number of students with disabilities graduating from high school with a regular diploma versus dropping out with no diploma at all; the disproportionate representation of minorities identified in certain disability categories or recommended for school suspension or expulsion due to alleged disciplinary actions; the participation of students with disabilities in their districts’ high-stakes or state standards assessments and their demonstrated adequate yearly academic progress on those tests; and the percent of students with disabilities who are taught in general education classrooms for the majority of the school day. Beyond these focus areas, schools are now also mandated to provide a free and appropriate public education to all students; to demonstrate that they have positive, safe, and supportive school and classroom climates; to employ ‘‘qualified teachers’’ in all classrooms; to notify parents annually as to the data-based effectiveness of their children’s schools; and to track and maintain high standards for all students regardless of gender, socioeconomic background, race, culture, language of origin, or perceived potential.
To accomplish all of these requirements, schools must identify, organize, and implement evidence- and research-based procedures that facilitate school effectiveness, and then engage in a process of formative and summative evaluation that results in continuous improvement. Existing research can be merged into an ‘‘effective schools blueprint’’ that specifies the characteristics and variables that predict students’ academic success. In Arkansas, for example, this blueprint has been organized with the following 11 primary standards:
- Standard 1: Effective schools have committees and/ or teams that support their professional development, curriculum and instruction, and parent and community outreach activities and school goals. Effective schools also have committees and/or teams that support students’ successful attainment of specific academic and social, emotional, and behavioral goals.
- Standard 2: Effective schools have an accessible and public document that outlines the scope and sequence of all goals and objectives in all curricular areas taught in the school. This scope and sequence document is cross-referenced with state standards and benchmarks, and it is used as a formative evaluation tool to track student progress. In academic areas, the classroom-based use of curriculum-based assessment and/or measurement is used to track students’ progress along these scope and sequence goals and objectives.
- Standard 3: Effective schools have a plan and implement a school-wide positive behavioral support system that includes: (a) social skills instruction for all students, and (b) a developmentally successful, school-wide accountability system that includes behavioral expectations connected to incentives and positive responses, and levels of inappropriate behavior connected to negative responses, consequences, or strategic interventions. Included in this plan are prevention and intervention approaches that ensure positive student behavior and safety in common areas of the school (e.g., hallways, bathrooms, buses, cafeteria, playgrounds) and that address potential and actual incidents of teasing, taunting, bullying, harassment, and physical aggression. Also included in this plan are periodic evaluations of school climate and student, staff, and parent satisfaction with the school-wide system.
- Standard 4: Staff in effective schools receive ongoing training, evaluation, feedback, and supervision (when needed) in the development and implementation of (a) effective instructional lessons, (b) approaches that effectively link students’ acquisition of skills to curricula and instruction, (c) early academic interventions for students when needed, and (d) more intensive classroom-based interventions that are recommended through data-based problem solving and consultation processes. All of these processes result in demonstrated student progress and success.
- Standard 5: Staff in effective schools receive ongoing training, guided discussions, supervision (when needed), and follow-up in effective classroom organization and behavior management approaches, and in other approaches that maximize students’ time on task, their academic engagement, and their effective use of allocated academic learning time. Staff also use effective and flexible grouping patterns for their students to maximize learning outcomes, and they create and maintain positive, safe, and cooperative learning environments.
- Standard 6: Staff in effective schools receive ongoing training, evaluation, feedback, and supervision (when needed) in data-based problem solving and the functional assessment of students’ academic and behavioral skill and progress. This training includes the analysis of student records and cumulative folder information, and a linking process between problem analysis and intervention. This training also is especially focused on students who need strategic and/or intensive interventions due to their difficulties in acquiring or demonstrating such skills taught through more routine instruction.
- Standard 7: After completing functional assessments, staff in effective schools have the skills (or have access to consultation that can provide the skills) to implement more intensive behavioral and academic/instructional interventions. These intensive interventions are specified for all staff, and they receive ongoing training, evaluation, feedback, and supervision in their implementation.
- Standard 8: Effective schools have a written, systematic problem-solving and functional assessment process that involves grade, department, and building-level teams that provide pre-referral interventions for students who are not making sufficient academic and/or social, emotional, or behavioral progress. Related service and other professionals (e.g., school psychologists, speech pathologists, social workers) are represented on these teams, and they provide consultation and intervention support to general education teachers as a first step in the pre-referral process.
- Standard 9: Effective schools have an organized, formal, and ongoing process to articulate (or transition) students, academically and behaviorally, from grade to grade and teacher to teacher at the end of the year and during other school year transitions. This articulation process includes strategic and intensive needs interventions that have been developed and implemented for students who are not making sufficient academic and/ or social, emotional, or behavioral progress. It also includes students’ receiving special education, vocational, and other services. Finally, it includes students’ transitioning into the workplace or into alternative (or similar) settings.
- Standard 10: Effective schools have a written and systematically implemented parent and community outreach program. The parent outreach program includes activities that encourage parent participation in school activities and help parents to understand the school’s goals, objectives, programs, and desired student outcomes. The community outreach program includes collaboration with social service, mental health, law enforcement, and other relevant agencies such that there is direct and indirect support for all school and schooling goals and objectives.
- Standard 11: Effective schools have a data-management system and evaluation process, which is supported by computer technology whenever possible, to formatively and summatively track the school’s progress toward its stated school, staff, parent, and student goals. For students receiving strategic or intensive services, this data base should be able to track the implementation of student academic and/or behavioral intervention plans as written.
Clearly, the 10 domains that form the foundation of school psychology are well represented within these standards, as are many of the applied areas of psychology (i.e., social and organizational, educational and learning, child and adolescent, normal and abnormal, and biological and ecological psychology) that contribute to the effectiveness of a school. Cross-referencing the 10 domains and the 11 standards defining effective schools, however, suggests a prototype representing a ‘‘scope and sequence’’ of school psychological service delivery. Specifically, the scope of school psychological services involves all school-aged students—typical students, students who need strategic interventions, and students who need intensive services. The sequence of these services involves data-based problem solving that includes functional assessment, consultation, and interventions.
While there often appears to be a dichotomy between general and special education services, school psychology views students along a continuum, from (1) those who benefit from effective instruction without the need for additional support services to (2) those who need strategic interventions in order to make appropriate academic, social, emotional, and behavioral progress, to (3) those who need intensive or crisis management services in order to be successful. For the first group, there is an assumption that effective instruction is occurring in the classroom, and that students are acquiring new skills on the way toward becoming independent learners (academically) and effective self-managers (behaviorally). School psychologists focus predominantly on primary prevention—helping schools to develop and maintain positive behavioral support systems, helping teachers to match effective instructional approaches delivered using evidence-based curricula to individual students and student group learning styles, and helping students to adopt and use healthy behavioral styles and patterns.
The strategic interventions group of students does not acquire skills as quickly or as easily as those in the first group, but with the right assistance and interventions, they can be successful. In order to know how to strategically intervene on behalf of these students, it is critical that school psychologists and other educators determine why they are having difficulty. This involves data-based functional assessment, because there can be a number of different explanations for a student’s lack of progress and, thus, a number of different interventions. In brief, school psychologists, working here at the secondary prevention level, often organize their functional assessments by considering six important domains: the student, the teacher or instruction, the curriculum, the classroom (which includes the peer group), the school and district, and the home and community. The first three of these domains generally explain students’ difficulties in causally related ways, while the latter three domains provide explanations that are correlationally related. Causally related factors (e.g., poor student motivation, ineffective instruction, inappropriate student–curriculum match) directly explain what has caused an existing skill deficit and exactly what interventions need to be implemented. Correlationally related factors (e.g., a peer group that ridicules academic achievement, large class sizes, poverty at home) relate to the target problems, but do not directly cause them. For example, while poverty may contribute to a student’s lack of reading experience and working vocabulary, it is these two latter factors that actually cause the problem.
Functional assessments, to the greatest degree possible, occur in the settings in which the desired or problematic behaviors are occurring. While focused on either increasing or establishing appropriate behavior or decreasing or eliminating inappropriate behavior, functional assessments look at both student strengths and assets along with student weaknesses and deficits. In addition, they also involve ‘‘authentic’’ or curriculum-based assessments that directly evaluate the skill sets or domains of interest (e.g., improved performance in the area of mathematical computations are assessed using math problems that are sampled from the textbook being used in the classroom or the standards being assessed on a state standards test). Finally, functional assessments must provide results that are ‘‘psychometrically sound’’—that is, that are both reliable and valid so that appropriate interventions can follow. Ultimately, functional assessment results need to link directly to strategic interventions. In this way, interventions with a high probability of success that address the root or source of the problem will hopefully be implemented with successful outcomes.
Finally, intensive needs or crisis management students are not successful in typical school settings and environments without significant levels of support and intervention. Although the same six functional assessment domains should be investigated to determine their contributions to the existing challenges, specific students’ characteristics often are the most directly relevant. Indeed, many of these most-challenging students have disabilities that impair their academic and/ or social, emotional, or behavioral progress. Others have mental illnesses that similarly contribute. For these students, school psychologists typically work at the tertiary prevention level as part of a school-based multidisciplinary team or community-based interdisciplinary team, completing ongoing functional assessments that lead to comprehensive, multidimensional ‘‘wrap-around’’ or multisetting, 24-hour interventions. Ultimately, these interventions serve to support the student’s progress in the least restrictive environment possible and in the least intrusive way, while also helping the student to avoid future crisis situations or, at least, to minimize their impact and frequency over time. Intensive needs students require a great deal of time, effort, coordination, and resources when they are present in schools. Often, schools must accommodate for or help these students to compensate for their challenges—sometimes in different settings or alternative programs. At other times, schools must recognize that these students will make progress only at their own pace and in their own way. They can learn, but in ways that are more idiosyncratic than their typical peers.
As noted, school psychological services involve data-based problem solving that includes functional assessment, consultation, and interventions. This approach contrasts with the more traditional ‘‘refer, test, diagnose, and place’’ mode of operation. In this more traditional approach, school psychologists worked primarily at the secondary and tertiary prevention levels, intervening with students with pre-existing or emerging difficulties. While doing this, their assessments focused predominantly on the students, working to diagnose and label their deficits or pathologies so that they could be placed in appropriate special or therapeutic settings. Some of the limitations of this approach included (1) the absence of multisetting, multisource, and multi-instrument ecological assessments; (2) the assumption that a diagnosis or label leads to functional, appropriate intervention strategies and plans; and (3) the belief that where an intervention occurred was more important than what actually occurred.
Functional assessment, as described earlier, exists within the data-based problem-solving context involving problem identification, problem analysis, intervention, and evaluation. Completed to determine why a problem situation exists, functional assessment links directly to interventions that have the highest probability of increasing or decreasing specific behaviors or interactional patterns. In the more contemporary approach to school psychological services, what needs to be implemented (i.e., the interventions) is determined first. Where the services need to delivered (i.e., the setting) is identified next, representing the best setting both for effective service delivery and to obtain the fastest results with the greatest degree of change. This more contemporary approach also focuses its attention on student outcomes and not student diagnosis or placement; its interventions focus on behaviors and not labels.
The completion of a functional assessment, with its associated intervention recommendations, however, does not ensure effective intervention. This is where consultation comes in. Consultation is a collaborative process whereby school psychologists work directly with ‘‘consultees’’—teachers, parents, counselors, and others who have the primary responsibility for implementing recommended interventions. Through the consultation process, school psychologists ensure that interventions are acceptable to consultees before they are attempted, that they have a high probability of effecting meaningful change or outcomes, that they are implemented with integrity, and that they can be successfully generalized to different people, settings, times, and situations. In working with school-based consultees, school psychologists have two goals: (1) to help to ‘‘solve’’ or remediate the referred problem situations, and (2) to enhance the skills of the consultees such that they are able to implement the interventions developed more independently over time— both with the original students of concern, and, ideally, for other students with similar concerns in the future.
Critically, consultation is not limited to students with academic or behavioral challenges. Paralleling the foundational areas of psychology, there are at least seven different areas of psychological consultation: organizational consultation, (group) process consultation, instructional consultation, behavioral consultation, mental health consultation, advocacy consultation, and community-based strategic consultation. Recognizing that school psychologists deliver services at the home and community, district and systems, team and grade, and peer group and individual student levels, it is possible that any of these consultation areas might be practiced.
Finally, as previously noted, successful school psychological services should be defined by successfully implemented interventions that result in appropriate student progress and outcomes. At the same time, as with the different areas of consultation, some interventions may focus on the home and community, the school district and its schools, the staff and the curriculum, as well as the peer group and its individual students. Thus, interventions that result in effective schools are as important as, and related to, effective interventions for and with individual students.
What School Psychologists Do to Be Effective
While an understanding of successful school psychological services is important, these services require the training, supervision, and practice of effective school psychologists. Within the context of consultation, argued here to be school psychologists’ primary role in the schools, the characteristics of effective school psychological consultants have been empirically derived. In short, effective consultants possess four distinct sets (or factors) of related characteristics and/or skills: they have effective interpersonal skills, sound problem-solving skills, and good consultation process skills, and they practice in ethically and professionally appropriate ways. While the importance of the latter three areas have been discussed, it is significant that the interpersonal skill area represent the strongest of these four factors, accounting for the greatest amount of the variance. This is not surprising from a psychological perspective—whether organizational, social psychological, or even therapeutic. Indeed, without people who develop relationships in which they communicate productively, work collaboratively, demonstrate care and empathy consistently, and show a commitment to desired outcomes, problem solving will not be successful, consultation will not be acceptable, interventions will not be implemented with integrity, and schools will not be effective. This means that school psychologists recognize and attend to the fact that effectiveness involves both process and content. The process involves, interpersonally, positive interactions with others; the content involves, professionally, appropriate information, strategies, and interventions that are collectively discussed and carefully implemented.
But school psychologists need more than consultation skills to be effective. They also need to consider their attitudes and attributions, and numerous other skill and competency areas. Thus, expanding beyond the 10 domains of school psychological practice discussed earlier, effective school psychologists also demonstrate many of the following attitudes and attributions:
- Accept responsibility for all children and adolescents in their schools
- Focus on the ‘‘whole’’ or entire student, looking at both strengths and weaknesses
- Deliver services based on student need and outcome, not on student label, disability, or diagnosis
- Identify the progress and successes accomplished in all initiatives, while seeking to expand and strengthen those successes
- Are committed to continuing education, professional development, and skill expansion
- Look at all challenges as learning and continued professional development opportunities
Effective school psychologists also demonstrate the following skills and competencies:
- Focus on comprehensive services at the systems, team, small group, and individual levels
- Recognize the psychological and education impact of gender, race, culture, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation
- Recognize the psychological and educational impact of poverty, divorce, abuse and neglect, and other life crises
- Understand the characteristics of effective instructional environments and consult with staff to ensure that all students consistently experience such environments during their school careers
- Have good problem-solving skills with which they link functional assessment to strategic intervention
- Use acceptable assessment and evaluation procedures
- Can develop, implement, and evaluate effective behavioral and curricular interventions and programs
- Are guided by and effectively use data
- Are dedicated to using evidence- and research-based procedures and strategies
In summary, effective schools, effective school psychological services, and effective school psychologists are crucial in order to successfully impact all students. Guided by theory, research, application, and practice, psychology has and will continue to have a major impact on schools at the organizational, small group, and individual student and staff levels. This research paper reviews some of the most important and relevant areas of applied psychology as practiced by school psychologists. Critically, many of these areas are not unique to school psychology; they are similarly important to other specialties in applied psychology. This demonstrates the breadth and depth of psychology as a whole. As the science of human behavior, its many applications present myriad opportunities to positively affect people’s lives.
Conclusion
School psychology dates back to the early 1920s relative to training and practice, and to the mid-1950s at a professional organizational level. While integrating research and clinical practice from a number of other psychology specialty areas, as well as from education, school psychology has its own research base that it can distinctly call its own. Similarly, while other psychology specialty areas do indeed contribute to the application of psychology in the schools, school psychologists have a primary professional responsibility to understand the culture, norms, and contexts of education so that the best interventions and services are used. School psychologists can best serve their schools, staffs, and students when they are problem solvers, consultants, and intervention specialists. In the end, even in the face of so many needs and so many challenges, school psychologists contribute both to the science and practice of effective schools and successful students.
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