A psychologist studies normal and abnormal mental states, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior by observing, interpreting, and recording how individuals relate to one another and to their environments. To become a psychologist, a person often completes a graduate university degree in psychology, but in most jurisdictions, members of other behavioral professions can also evaluate, diagnose, treat, and study mental processes.
Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests, which are designed to be "an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior". The term sample of behavior refers to an individual's performance on tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand. The samples of behavior that make up a paper-and-pencil test, the most common type of test, are a series of items. Performance on these items produce a test score. A score on a well-constructed test is believed to reflect a psychological construct such as achievement in a school subject, cognitive ability, aptitude, emotional functioning, personality, etc. Differences in test scores are thought to reflect individual differences in the construct the test is supposed to measure. The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
Neuropsychological assessment was traditionally carried out to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to determine the area of the brain which may have been damaged following brain injury or neurological illness. With the advent of neuroimaging techniques, location of space-occupying lesions can now be more accurately determined through this method, so the focus has now moved on to the assessment of cognition and behaviour, including examining the effects of any brain injury or neuropathological process that a person may have experienced.
A school social worker provides counseling and psycho-social services to children and adolescents in schools at both micro and macro levels. Social workers work as mental health experts, leaders of social and emotional development within the school community, family-school liaisons, and program development experts. They aim to address student issues by working with an ecological, systems approach with parents, the school, and the community. They also work with crisis intervention, group treatment, child neglect and abuse identification and reporting, integrating services to culturally and economically diverse populations, and working on education policy issues. Most school social workers in the United States hold a Master of Social Work degree and have specialized training in helping students within the context of local schools.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a four-part (A-D) piece of American legislation that ensures students with a disability are provided with Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that is tailored to their individual needs. IDEA was previously known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) from 1975 to 1990. In 1990, the United States Congress reauthorized EHA and changed the title to IDEA. Overall, the goal of IDEA is to provide children with disabilities the same opportunity for education as those students who do not have a disability.
The Individualized Education Program, also called the IEP, is a document that is developed for each public school child who needs special education. The IEP is created through a team effort, reviewed periodically. In the United States, this program is known as an Individualized Education Program .(IEP), and similarly in Canada it is referred to as an Individualized Education Plan or a Special Education Plan (SEP). In the United Kingdom, an equivalent document is called an Individual Education System. In Saudi Arabia, the document is known as an Individual Education Program.
Dynamic assessment is a kind of interactive assessment used in education and the helping professions. Dynamic assessment is a product of the research conducted by developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. As an alternative assessment modality, it seeks to identify the skills that an individual child possesses as well as their learning potential. The dynamic assessment procedure emphasizes the learning process and accounts for the amount and nature of examiner investment. It is highly interactive and process-oriented. It has become popular among educators, psychologists and speech and language pathologists. It is an alternative to the wide range of standard IQ tests, and it originated in the writings of psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) of his most mature and highly productive period of 1932-1934. The notion of the zone of proximal development that he introduced in 1933, roughly a year before his death, served as the banner for his proposal to diagnose development as the level of actual development that can be measured by the child's independent problem solving and, at the same time, the level of proximal, or potential development that is measured in the situation of moderately assisted problem solving by the child. The maximum level of complexity and difficulty of the problem that the child is capable to solve under some guidance indicates the level of potential development. Then, the difference between the higher level of potential and the lower level of actual development indicates the zone of proximal development. Combination of the two indexes—the level of actual and the zone of the proximal development—according to Vygotsky, provides a significantly more informative indicator of psychological development than the assessment of the level of actual development alone.
In education, response to intervention is an approach to academic intervention used in the United States to provide early, systematic, and appropriately intensive assistance to children who are at risk for or already underperforming as compared to appropriate grade- or age-level standards. RTI seeks to promote academic success through universal screening, early intervention, frequent progress monitoring, and increasingly intensive research-based instruction or interventions for children who continue to have difficulty. RTI is a multileveled approach for aiding students that is adjusted and modified as needed if they are failing.
The psychosocial approach looks at individuals in the context of the combined influence that psychological factors and the surrounding social environment have on their physical and mental wellness and their ability to function. This approach is used in a broad range of helping professions in health and social care settings as well as by medical and social science researchers.
Inclusion in education refers to a model wherein special needs students spend most or all of their time with non-special needs students. It arises in the context of special education with an individualized education program or 504 plan, and is built on the notion that it is more effective for students with special needs to have said mixed experience for them to be more successful in social interactions leading to further success in life. Inclusion rejects but still provides the use of special schools or classrooms to separate students with disabilities from students without disabilities. Schools with inclusive classrooms do not believe in separate classrooms. They do not have their own separate world so they have to learn how to operate with students while being less focused on by teachers due to a higher student to teacher ratio.
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is a set of testing standards developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME).
Special education programs in the United States did not always exist."The idea of excluding students with any disability from public school education can be traced back to 1893, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court expelled a student merely due to poor academic ability". This exclusion would be the basis of education for all individuals with special needs for years to come. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education sparked the belief that the right to a public education applies to all individuals regardless of race, gender, or disability. Finally, special education programs in the United States were made mandatory in 1975 when the United States Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) "(sometimes referred to using the acronyms EAHCA or EHA, or Public Law 94-142) was enacted by the United States Congress in 1975, in response to discriminatory treatment by public educational agencies against students with disabilities." The EAHCA was later modified to strengthen protections to students with disabilities and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA requires states to provide special education and related services consistent with federal standards as a condition of receiving federal funds.
Cecil Randy Reynolds is an American psychology professor best known for his work in psychological testing and assessment.
Learning disability or a learning disorder is a condition in the brain that causes difficulty and struggle to comprehend or process information and can be caused by several different factors. Given the "difficulty learning in a typical manner", this does not exclude the ability to learn in a different manner. Therefore, some people can be more accurately described as having a "learning difference", thus avoiding any misconception of being disabled with a lack of ability to learn and possible negative stereotyping. In the UK, the term "learning disability" generally refers to an intellectual disability, while difficulties such as dyslexia and dyspraxia are usually referred to as "learning difficulties".
Teachers College is an academic college of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Teachers College is housed in a 10-story, 138 feet (42 m) building which is the second tallest in Delaware County. It is home to six academic departments: Educational Leadership, Educational Psychology, Educational Studies, Elementary Education, Special Education and the interim department Family, Consumer, and Technology Education. It also houses the Office of the Dean and the Office of Teacher Education Services and Clinical Practice.
The Regional Assessment and Resource Centre is a project funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities of Ontario. It provides psycho-educational or neuropsychological assessment services to students at all publicly funded post-secondary institutions in Southern Ontario. The team of professionals who work with RARC are recognized for providing high quality assessments with on-site follow-up care and support.
David L Wodrich is an American psychologist, professor, researcher, and author. He is currently professor emeritus in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies at the University of Arizona. He previously held the Mary Emily Warner Professorship of Psychology in Education at Arizona State University.
