What is an Educational Psychologist?
What is an Educational Psychologist?
Psychology is the study of learning and behavior. Educational psychology is concerned with children and young people in educational and early years settings. Educational Psychologists (EPs) tackle challenges such as learning difficulties, social and emotional problems, issues around disability as well as more complex developmental disorders. They work in a variety of ways including observations, interviews and assessments and offer consultation, advice and support to teachers, parents, the wider community as well as the young people concerned. They research innovative ways of helping vulnerable (British Psychological Society).
EPs are trained to apply knowledge of psychology and child development to help understand what might be happening in a situation and explore ways to move things forward for the child or young person. EPs work with adults who live and work with children and young people to think about the area of concern to increase their understanding of how the child/young person is developing. This may include learning, communication, behaviour, social interactions and emotional wellbeing.
What does an Educational Psychologist do?
Consultation – EPs spent time talking with school staff/parents to clarify the situation, think about what is working well and what is not working so well, identify strengths and areas of difficulty. Consultation involves clarifying issues and problem solving next steps. Consultations can be with individuals or groups of people with the emphasis on partnership and empowering school staff to problem solve.
Assessment – EPs may work directly with a child or young person to observe and find out more about how they are feeling, thinking and learning. A psychological assessment involves the use of a variety of tools, techniques and approaches that draw on relevant psychological theory and research. The purpose is to generate understanding of what is happening, who is concerned, why it is a problem and what can be done to make a difference to the situation. EPs might use assessment activities with a child/young person to find out about their strengths and any areas that they may be finding more difficult. It will be important that we collaborate with others and consider the relationships that the child/young person has to ensure that all the environmental/interacting factors that might impact on development are thought about too. Assessment is therefore also about exploring what others have found and how this relates to the current situation.
Intervention – EPs draw upon the latest evidence based researched interventions to support children/young people and adults to make positive changes in their lives. EPs apply a range of psychological approaches and theories when planning interventions such as Solution Oriented Approaches, Personal Construct Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Approaches, Attachment Theory, Narrative Therapy Approaches, Coaching, Positive Psychology and Systems Theories.
Whole Systems work – EPs apply psychological knowledge of how systems operate at a whole school or service level. This might involve developing systems for the benefit of all of the children/young people and adults working within it. This could involve staff training/workshop packages on a variety of topics, policy development (e.g. positive behavior management) or consultations and joint problem-solving with staff. EPs can support schools when there has been a serious incident within a school to enable school staff to support their school community in coping with this.
Supervision – EPs receive and offer clinical supervision. This can support the development of other professionals through supervision either individually or by facilitating peer or group supervision.
Research – EPs have specific knowledge and skills in research design, are competent in statistical analysis and trained to take a constructively critical stance to research findings. Action research could include implementing and monitoring the impact of an intervention.
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