A contemporary story of school psychology

A review of recent school psychology publications was conducted to discover the espoused theory of contemporary school psychology, as distinct from school psychology practice. We considered that identification of the espoused theory of school psychology, the story of school psychology, would support professional reflection and the identification of factors that mediate theory and practice. To distinguish the espoused story of school psychology from practice we considered what school psychologists said about professional practice, rather than what they did or said they did. The findings suggested that contemporary school psychology endorses practices that are relevant to and effective in a rapidly changing world. The profession has built on strong foundations to construct models of practice that consider, value, and benefit from the multiplicity of an increasingly globally-connected community. Recurrent themes were identified that, together, formed an espoused story. This story of contemporary school psychology comprised recognition of the interactive context of child development, ecological analysis, multi-systemic approaches to practice, inclusion, and respect for diversity, positive psychology and evidence-based, theoretically driven practice.

Educational Psychology in New Zealand

The International School Psychology Survey (ISPS) was used to gather information about New Zealand educational psychologists’ characteristics, training, roles, activities, preferences, research interests and the challenges they experienced in their work. The results of this survey were considered in relation to the social and cultural context of educational psychology practice in New Zealand and were compared with the findings from ISPS surveys in other countries. The composition of the New Zealand educational psychology community resembled that found in previous surveys of school psychologists in other countries in terms of gender and level of qualifications. The educational psychologists indicated, as in most countries surveyed previously, that the greatest proportion of their work involved consultation with students, teachers and families. One point of difference between results of the New Zealand survey and previous ISPS studies was the predominance of contextual information over standardized measures in assessment.

Evaluating appreciation of measures attending to pupil diversity (EMAD)

Evaluating appreciation of measures attending to pupil diversity (EMAD) is a scale for evaluating the understanding of measures describing pupils' cultural and diversity needs among the staff responsible for such measures in Spanish primary schools. Its 9 Likert-scale items correspond to the various types of action in this area that are currently being promoted in Spain. The principal objective of this study was to assess the scale's factor structure and internal consistency, to which end the scale was completed by the heads of the Departments of Orientation of 140 Spanish primary schools. Corrected item-total correlations and Cronbach alpha (.91) indicated adequate scale homogeneity. Principal components analysis followed by varimax rotation indicated two factors jointly accounting for 71.4% of total variance, one associated with actions involving modification of syllabuses, and the other with actions not requiring such changes. Cronbach alphas were .89 and .79 for the two factors.