The school psychologist as educator: A new conceptualization

Abstract

Most educators view the school psychologist primarily a diagnostician concerned with individual child study. Gilmore and Chandy, among others,1 found that teachers perceive the school psychologist as a specialist in emotional problems whose major diagnostic procedure is testing, who recommends treatment but does little himself. Teachers think him knowledgeable about child development and skilled in assessing intelligence and describing personality. Thus, it seems beneficial to refer to him children experiencing learning or emotional difficulties. Once he sees the child, he diagnoses the child's difficulties and offers recommendations generally useful to the teacher in understanding and helping the child. We believe, however, that individual child study becomes a narrow, severely limited function. Statistics detailing the number of children requiring psychological help are so large that the relatively few school psychologists can deal with only a few. We question the feasibility of continuing to operate so inefficiently. Furthermore, we question the validity of psychological tests in predicting a person's behavior across varied situations. A final and, perhaps, most revealing criticism is widespread dissatisfaction with services school psychologists currently provide. Phi Delta Kappa, March 1969, published a survey of approximately 5,700 teachers indicating that over 71 percent found school psychological services either of no help (17.9 percent), detrimental (1.6 percent), or irrelevant (51.8 percent) to their functions teachers. In a more recent study, more than 85 percent of the teachers surveyed offered multiple recommendations for changing school psychologists' roles. We may infer, therefore, that the psychologist engages in activities impractical, unhelpful, not appreciated, and of questionable validity. We suggest here, for individuals in public school leadership positions, alternative ways to utilize the school psychologist, including recent directions in psychological practice, a general model of functioning for the school psychologist consistent with these directions, and specific activities consistent with this model.