The Future of School Psychology
National Invitational Conference
November 14-16, 2002
Indianapolis, Indiana
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Welcome
2. Mission and Goals of the Conference
3. Values and Assumptions to be Observed during the Conference
4. Conference Participants
5. Background Reading List
6. Essay Analyses
7. Conference General Principles and Critical Issues/Outcomes
8. Pre-conference and Conference Structure—Initial Group Composition
9. Pre-conference and Conference Process—A Problem-solving Model
10. Conference Agenda
11. Forms and Instructions
Introduction and Welcome
Welcome to the 2002 Conference on the Future of School Psychology. For the past year and a half, the planning committee has been privileged to engage in intensive planning that culminates in this meeting. We believe that the activities in which you will engage in these days will provide crucial guidance to our discipline to ensure our relevance and responsiveness in meeting the needs of children, their families, and their schools. During the two and half days from November 14-16, all of us will work to lay out school psychology’s role in addressing critical issues that face children, families, and schools in the 21st century. Past conferences have represented significant milestones in forming school psychology’s identity—milestones that have both guided and marked our development into a mature specialty within American psychology. We know who we are and where our competencies lie. Now is the time for us to turn outward, to apply our extensive expertise and organization to improving the health, education, and mental health of those we serve.
The 2002 conference will be a single point in time where we will pause collectively by turning off cell phones and taking a hiatus from email. We have worked to ensure that input to the decisions we will make is a broad-based as possible. In addition to the Indianapolis site, there are 42 other locations where school psychologists, university faculty and graduate students are gathered to analyze, debate, and discuss school psychology’s contribution to children, their schools, and their families. Additionally, every school psychologist that has a computer and wants to participate can contribute to every step of the process.
There is a long road ahead. We will not change the profession overnight. However we must recognize the tremendous resources school psychology can marshal to effect change. The participants at the 1954 Thayer conference could not have imagined that 15 years later the National Association of School Psychologists would form and over the next 30 years grow to an organization of 23,000 school psychologists. Or that the American Psychological Association would have an annual budget in excess of $60 million. Could anyone have forecast that that NASP, Division 16, the Society for the Study of School Psychology, Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs, Trainers of School Psychologists, American Academy of School Psychology, American Board of School Psychology, and the International School Psychology Association would be sponsoring a multi-site conference asking hard questions about how the specialty of school psychology can use our collective resources to better meet children’s needs?
We have a lot to accomplish. Regardless of whether you are student in training, at the early, mid, or well-seasoned stage of your career, it will be stimulating to wrestle with the pivotal questions facing our specialty. We have high hopes for the 2002 Futures conference. It is a working conference, including significant background preparation, challenging discussions, critical analysis, consensus building, and much effort to follow-up.
Again, welcome to the conference. You have an important task ahead of you.
Jack Cummings Rick Short
Peg Dawson Susan Gorin
Pat Harrison Ron Palomares
Mission and Goals of the Conference
It has been 25 years since school psychology last held a major conference to reflect on the profession and to develop an agenda for the future. School psychology has undergone a tremendous growth in terms of membership in our profession and the vision we have for the work that we do. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, we are faced with a shortage of school psychologists that threatens our capacity to meet the needs of children in schools. Furthermore, the needs and pressures facing children growing up in America today are greater than they have been in our lifetime. Given the changes we are facing and their implications for the practice of school psychology, the goals of the conference are the following.
· Achieve consensus on current and future demands for school psychologists and our profession's ability to meet those demands.
· Conceptualize the practice of school psychology in the face of diminishing numbers and increasing demand for services.
· Develop an agenda to use the resources we have to maximize the benefits to the children, families, and schools that we serve.
Conference on the Future of School Psychology
November 2002
Values and Assumptions to Guide Conference Participants
1. The focus of the conference is on current and future needs of children, families, and schools and the capacity of school psychology to provide services to meet the needs. The focus of the conference is not simply to advance the field of school psychology or protect the jobs of school psychologists.
2. Diversity—of the clients we serve, of school psychologists, of other professions—will be celebrated and respected at all times.
3. We are faced with a shortage of school psychologists, with some parts of the country impacted more than others. However, the shortage cannot be addressed adequately by simply recruiting more individuals to the profession. We recognize that we must consider alternatives to, and possible restructuring of our service delivery practices, as well, in order to plan for the shortage and ensure that adequate services will be provided to children, families, and schools.
4. In order to maximize our future services to benefit children, families, and schools, we recognize that we must consider all aspects of school psychology, including pre-service graduate training; services provided by individual school psychologists and school psychological services units; the organizational components of school and community agencies; public advocacy at the local, state, and national levels; etc.
5. The conference participants are encouraged to be innovative—to go beyond the “tried and true” of school psychology practice.
6. The conference will provide many opportunities for discussion on-site and at remote sites, but will be structured and organized to focus on outcomes and actions. It is important that the conference be viewed as much more than an opportunity for talk and interaction---the conference must lead to the actual implementation of plans at the local, state, and national levels.
7. A number of professional groups are participating in the conference, including the eight major national sponsors and many groups at the state and local level. One outcome of the conference will be a national agenda that all eight sponsoring associations will be asked to contribute to in some way. Groups at the state and local level are asked to develop agendas that serve the purposes of the state and local groups, but that also may contribute to the national agenda.
8. To facilitate accomplishment of conference goals, a problem-solving process will be used in the 2002 Futures Conference. On-site and remote site participants will proceed systematically through problem-solving steps, beginning with pre-conference activities and continuing through conference and post-conference tasks. Although a number of different group activity models could have been selected for the conference, the problem solving model was selected because it is a familiar model for most participants, is expected to result in efficient and effective activities, and will allow the contributions of both on-site and remote site participants.
9. It was necessary to limit the agenda in order to have sufficient time and resources to implement the recommendations that result from the conference. Thus, pre-conference activities included selection of 6-8 issues/outcomes that will be the focus of the conference. We will maximize our influence by concentrating on our efforts on no more than six to eight outcomes. We recognize that we cannot possibly cover all issues at the conference, but must focus on the most important.
10. When conceptualizing strategies we will be able to do more by recognizing the importance of resources that exist beyond school psychology. Social workers, counselors, other psychological specialties, paraprofessionals, etc. represent important mental health resources. All professions will be treated with respect for their potential contributions to services for children.
11. Some of the associations participating in the conference historically have disagreed about certain guild issues. Discussion of these issues of disagreement (e.g., doctoral/specialist entry level, licensure for private practice) should be conducted at other venues, not at the 2002 Futures Conference.
12. The on-site and remote conference participants represent a wealth of backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. The diversity of participants is recognized as an important contributor to the success of the conference. Differences of opinion are expected (and welcomed), and all participants—and their viewpoints—will be treated with courtesy and respect.
13. In order to facilitate the effectiveness of the conference in developing workable action plans, the conference schedule has been carefully planned. Please stay on time and on task. Please note that break-out group facilitators on-site and at remote sites have been given structured tasks to accomplish for each breakout session. Facilitators will keep all group activities moving along at a fast pace.
14. All breakout participants are expected to contribute equally to discussions, brainstorming, and action planning. Participants will allow others in their group with opportunities to contribute to the discussion, will stay on task and focused on the topic of discussions, and will not dominate the discussions in their group. Group facilitators will promote contributions from all participants and will keep discussions from getting bogged down on less relevant topics, and will prevent discussions from being dominated by one or two outspoken individuals in the group.
15. Change is inevitable and naturally will result in some anxiety about the future of school psychology. Although our conference is about improving services to children, families, and schools, we must recognize and be sensitive to the anxiety and fear within our profession. We must anticipate the predictable consequences of change.
On-site Conference Participants
Complete contact information for all participants is included in the onsite materials. We have modified some contacts to exclude degrees and credentials in the interest of uniformity.
Brian J. Bartels /Lisa G. Bischof /
Robin Black /
Andrea Canter /
Rachel Brown-Chidsey /
Sandra Christensen
Elaine Clark /
Brian Craig /
Tony D. Crespi /
Deb Crockett /
Jack Cummings /
Michael Curtis /
Ron Davis /
Peg Dawson /
Steve DeMers /
John E. Desrochers /
Beth Doll /
Carla J. Egyed /
Gena Ehrhardt /
Amy Endsley /
Rosemary Flanagan /
Mark Fugate /
Eric Gettes /
Abraham Givner /
Susan Gorin /
Janet Graden /
Tonika Duren Green /
Kathryn R. Grogg /
Steven Hardy-Braz /
Beth Harn /
Pat Harrison /
Virginia SmithHarvey /
Sissy Hatzichristou /
Cynthia E. Hazel /
Thomas Huberty /
Judith Kaufman /
Jennifer Kitson /
Tom Kratochwill /
Chieh Li /
Catherine Louise Lines /
Steven G. Little /
Emilia C. Lopez /
Joel Meyers /
Dan Miller /
Bonnie Nastasi /
R. Brett Nelson /
Ron Palomares /
Melissa Pearrow /
Briley Proctor /
Dan Reschly /
Edward S. Shapiro /
Sue Sheridan /
Rick Short /
Diane Smallwood /
Frank Y. Smith /
Robert Sternberg
Karen Callan Stoiber /
Gary Stoner /
Bill Strein /
Ronda Talley /
Deborah Tharinger /
Lynne Ostroff Thies /
Sandra S. Thompson /
Ena Vazquez-Nuttall /
Cherisse Walker /
Steve Warner /
Christopher Willis /
Marilyn S. Wilson /
Lorraine Wizda /
Lisa Hellwig Wofford /
Background Resources
Along with input from remote and pre-conference sources, these documents comprise foundational materials for decision-making at the conference.
American Psychological Association. (1998). Archival description of school psychology.
Curtis, M. J., Chesno-Grier, J. E., Abshier, D. W., Sutton, N. T., & Hunley, S. (2002). School psychology: Turning the corner into the twenty-first century. Communique.
DHHS. (2001). Report of the Surgeon General's Conference on Children's Mental Health: A national action agenda.
Hatzichristou, C. (in press) Alternative school psychological services: Development of a model linking theory, research and service delivery. In N. M. Lambert, I. Hylander & J. Sandoval (Editors), Consultee-Centered Consultation: Improving the Quality of Professional Services in Schools and Community Organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kratochwill, Thomas R. & Stoiber, K. C. (to be published in Winter 2002) Evidence–Based Interventions in School Psychology: Conceptual Foundations of the Procedural and Coding Manual of Division 16 and the Society for the Study of School Psychology Task Force. School Psychology Quarterly, 17(4).
NASP. (2000). Guidelines for the provision of school psychological services.
NJCLD Learning Disability Policy Roundtable. (2002). Specific learning disabilities: Finding common ground.
President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education. (2002). A new era: Revitalizing special education for children and their families.
Reschly, D. J. (2000). The present and future status of school psychology in the United States. School Psychology Review, 29(4), 507-522.
Sheridan, S. M., & Gutkin, T. B. (2000). The ecology of school psychology: Examining and changing our paradigm for the 21st Century. School Psychology Review, 29(4), 485-501.
Siegel, M. (2002). The future of education. In Zolli, A. Catalog of Tomorrow: Trends shaping your future. Indianapolis, IN: Que.
The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and The Policymaker Partnership for Implementing IDEA at The National Association of State Directors of Special Education. (2002) Mental Health, Schools and Families Working Together for Children and Youth: Toward a Shared Agenda.
Essay Analyses
Content analysis of essay responses is provided below. The analysis identifies some themes, or categories, that seem to be running throughout a number of essays. Especially representative items from essays are included with each category. Themes are organized under three broader dimensions: attracting more professionals into the field, service delivery, and training).
Attracting more professionals to the field