A Day in the Life of a School Psychologist
Here at Educate Psychology we will tell you all you need to know about what School Psychology is, what School Psychologists do, and how to become a School Psychologist?
Perhaps you have children at school, and you have been told that they are going to see a School Psychologist, or a School Psychologist will be engaging in some work with your child’s class. Who are these people? Don’t they just get involved when things go wrong? Not necessarily!
School Psychology is a practitioner-based field, meaning that it is about professionals actually doing stuff, out in the real world. For college-based, research-oriented psychology, please see Educational Psychology. Broadly speaking, School Psychologists work to promote optimal learning for school pupils, although can also work into community mental health or college settings. They work through a range of means, generally involving some combination of assessment, intervention, consultation, training and capacity building.
Approaches are based on research evidence, ideally underpinned by ethical considerations and a strong sense of values, as well as an understanding of the context and different factors playing into each unique situation.
Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
“There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.”
The popular conception of School Psychology is that of making pupils do IQ tests, but in reality the work can be focused in a number of different areas. Indeed, many contemporary School Psychologists are very reluctant to use IQ tests, or any standardized cognitive test! With this in mind, many consider the role to be part science and part art, where practitioners need to use a mix of hard and soft skills. The role is as much about inspiring than it is about intervening, as much about acceptance and empathy than it is about assessment. School Psychology involves working with a variety of different stakeholders (i.e. child, parent, teacher, management) who can often have conflicting perspectives and different goals they wish you to help them achieve. A day in the life of a School Psychologist is rich with value judgments and ethical decision-making, as you decide whose goals (if any) align with your own!
School Psychologists can be expected to engage in the following types of work (many of the course of a single day):
- Individual case work – You may be asked to assess a pupil who is struggling with certain aspects of the curriculum. This can be to identify particular needs, and work with the pupil, staff, and family to address how to support the needs or resolve difficulties. Traditionally, this usually involved cognitive assessment and resulting ‘scores’. However, many School Psychologists these days use different approaches, based on exploring the environmental and systemic influences impacting on the child’s learning and engagement. This can involve talking with the pupil, the staff who work with them, and the pupil’s family to get a range of views and perspectives. You may also conduct a class observation or engage in a dynamic assessment.
- Group work – There are times when the most appropriate intervention may be working with a group of pupils, or indeed a whole class. This approach can be useful for exploring larger topic areas such as resilience, relationships, social and emotional skills. Smaller group interventions can be used to target social interaction skills with approaches such as Lego Therapy, or to explore ideas of friendship or bullying, for example.
- Working with school staff – Central to school-based work is working alongside those who work with the pupil. A ‘consultation’ approach does not focus on factors within the child as needing to be remedied, but rather looks to make positive change by supporting school staff to make changes in the environment, in how they mediate learning, and in how they interact with the pupil. In its purist form, a consultation approach may not involve any observation or interaction with the pupil at all from the psychologist. This allows for involvement from the School Psychologist in cases were pupils or their families may not consent to direct interaction.
- Working with Systems – School Psychologists may also have a role promoting change within the systems in an entire school, or in a local area, in collaboration with educational, psychological and behavioral health services. This could involve auditing current policies and processes within the school, and engaging with school staff in a reflective, appreciative inquiry to implement positive change. Themes in this area could include, for example, resilience, restorative approaches to behavior management, or staff well-being.
Perhaps the only certainties of being a School Psychologist is that you’ll never be finished learning, and that every week will bring you new surprises and challenges!
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