Ten Years Later: Current Practices and Preferred Roles of School Psychologists in Nova Scotia

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Date
2017-09
Authors
Khalil, Mirna
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Publisher
Mount Saint Vincent University
Abstract
This study surveyed school psychologists in Nova Scotia to determine whether they incorporate the core competencies in their practice at school and to update and extend the study conducted by Corkum et al. (2007) to learn about their current and preferred roles. Results indicated that school psychologists do not have the opportunity to fully engage in each core competency and that they spend the majority of their time conducting psychoeducational assessments. School psychologists continue to prefer reducing the amount of time spent on psychoeducational assessments. They highlighted the drawback of this, as it compromises their ability to engage in all core competencies. To allow school psychologists to have a comprehensive role, their workload needs to be reduced by reducing the school psychologist to student ratio to ensure that students receive quality service. Furthermore, the perception of the role of the school psychologist needs to be inclusive of all the services they could provide rather than solely focusing on and valuing psychoeducational assessments.
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Keywords
School psychologists, Nova Scotia, psychoeducational assessment
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