Your Service: Whose Advantage?

Abstract

Simon's Psychologist has a particular interest in ‘the assessment of the pre-school handicapped’ and everyone knows he has, so he is inundated with referrals. The historical antecedents of practitioner psychology have been largely in the realm of the abnormal, the difficulties and aberrations of learning, the problems of adjustment. In terms of the skills peculiar to the educational psychologist it must be obvious that he has more to offer an LEA than psychometric assessment of the individual child. The basic and perhaps unique role of the psychologist in an LEA is now being depicted as ‘questioner’; the issues may be presented for formulation into a questioning format that lends itself to testing for solutions. Clearly descriptions of different levels of operation indicate the changing emphasis the educational psychologist places on the different aspects of the job. Psychologists who are Education Department-based are, by definition of their role and function, inescapably community-based.