The ultimate goal is to enhance a child's learning, whatever his or her ability level. The aim is therefore to pursue increased efficiency in learning, to overcome learning barriers, to achieve higher standards, and of course to promote healthy emotional development through the application of psychology.
Child psychologists provide a wide array of services to parents, teachers, assistants, and other professionals who work with children.
The psychologist assesses the educational needs of children and advises on how best those needs should be met. This can mean advising teachers and other school staff on how to support the educational needs of an individual or advising a school or service provider on how best to prioritise the needs of a child or particular groups of children. In other words, interventions range from working with the individual child to work at the level of the organisation or whole school system.
Educational psychology is geared principally to apply well researched strategies to support for children and young people who may be undergoing learning difficulties, behavioural difficulties or emotional problems.
Educational psychologists can work directly with individual children and with groups of children.
Direct support work is usually carried out in partnership with other practitioners, including teachers, assistants, therapists and indeed with parents.
Educational Psychology is also useful training for teachers and other school staff, parent groups and therapists on a wide range of issues. These include effective behaviour management techniques, organising courses or workshops for teachers on issues such as bullying, ADHD, stress management or specific learning difficulties; and helping schools draw up SEN or behaviour policies.
In practice, a good deal of the work of the educational psychologist is is about helping others to understand children's difficulties more thoroughly so that they can provide more effective teaching, support and care.
Counselling adults and parents is an integral part of service delivery.
The range of activities of the service, then, are varied but will generally include:
Focusing on early problem identification and early intervention
Undertaking therapeutic work with children and young people and their parents or carers
Assisting schools with the development of SEN policies so that the performance of the whole school is enhanced
Assisting education departments and authorities with their own education development planning so that performance is enhanced across groups of schools
Engaging in action research to promote increased teacher knowledge of good practice in the areas of applied psychology, inclusion and raised achievement
Engaging in projects to raise achievement and improve provision for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties
Helping to develop knowledge and skills for teachers, learning support assistants and professions allied to education
Working in multiagency contexts with health, social services, voluntary services and other agencies
Supporting children directly in
1. assessing cognitive strengths and weaknesses
2. measuring IQ and EQ
3. literacy development
4. numeracy
5. thinking skills
6. self-esteem enhancement
7. management of trauma following child abuse
8. planning personalised education plans (PEPs)
9. prioritising and setting learning targets
