Editorial Note: Promoting Social Justice

Abstract

The field of school psychology has an impressive track record of advocacy for students with special needs. Spurred by the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Students Act in 1975 and subsequently by versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Act, most recently in 2004, the school psychology profession has been extremely active in promoting social justice for children with disabilities. Although the primary focus has been advocacy at the individual student level, school psychologists have advocated successfully for the rights of disabled children and youth at the district, regional, state, and national levels. Although advocacy for other segments of the child population has not been as systematic and forceful as that for disabled children, school psychology also has amassed a track record of advocacy for other underserved populations. For example, there have been considerable efforts to promote academic and social competence among students of minority ethnic and racial background (e.g., Manz, Fantuzzo, & Power, 2004); children living in poverty (e.g., Fantuzzo, Perry, & McDermott, 2004); English language learners (e.g., de Ramirez & Shapiro, 2006); students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (Espelage & Swearer, 2008); and victims of aggression (e.g., Bradshaw, Sawyer, & O'Brennan, 2007). Efforts to promote social justice to date have emphasized primarily advocacy for the individual child whose needs are unmet or who is being victimized. The need to intervene at the level of the student and the systems in which the child is developing has been repeatedly affirmed (e.g., Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000). The incorporation of an ecological-systems model into the basic framework of the profession has accompanied a shift in focus from a service delivery approach for individual students to a comprehensive, prevention-oriented model that promotes academic and social competence for all children. The shift to incorporate a systemic paradigm has set the stage for school psychologists to broaden their agenda to include both services for marginalized students and efforts to reform systems that exclude and oppress them. However, the focus of attempts at systemic change has been primarily on microsystems (classrooms) and not the larger systems in which they are embedded (school district, community, state, and national policy). An exception to this rule has been initiatives to achieve whole school reform, such as those advocated by the school-wide positive behavior support movement (Sugai & Horner, 2006). However, systems change efforts related to whole school reform typically have placed little emphasis on examining power dynamics within systems that maintain unfair practices and keep children marginalized. In general, macrosystemic and exosystemic issues (i.e., cultural, political, social, economic factors) have largely been ignored, resulting in approaches to change that are not sufficiently comprehensive. The two special topic articles in this issue, both of which were unsolicited submissions, address the gap in research related to system reforms needed to promote social justice in schools. These articles address Outcome Goals 3, 4, and 5 from the Futures Conference in School Psychology, which are related to systems change in schools (Dawson et al., 2004) and have been substantially understudied in the school psychology science base (Power, 2006). Further, these articles provide examples of how to apply qualitative methods to break ground in new areas of inquiry. The article by Shriberg et al. (2008) attempts to define social justice for the field of school psychology and identifies priorities for a social justice agenda. This study illustrates the usefulness of the Delphi approach for obtaining information from experts to delineate directions for future investigation. The article by McCabe and Rubinson (2008) examines how a graduate education department, including a training program in school psychology, prepares students to serve as advocates for underserved and marginalized students, specifically those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered. …