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Summary School Psychology Lecture Notes
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All lectures notes for school psychology, including every single comment and explanations made by lecturers during lectures.
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School Psychology LecturesLecture 1: Development & Executive Functions
School psychologists support students’ ability to learn and teachers’ ability to teach.
They are experts in:
- Learning (how children learn)
- Behaviour
- Mental Health (issues prevalent among children)
- School Systems
They provide:
- Academic, behavioural and mental health support
- Evaluation, assessment, and data analysis
- Consultation with teachers and families
They support:
- Struggling and diverse learners
- Student achievement and well-being
- School – family communication
School Psychologists: Improve academic achievement
● Promote student motivation and engagement
● Conduct psychological and academic assessments
● Individualised instruction and interventions
● Manage student and classroom behaviour
● Monitor student progress
● Collect and interpret student and classroom data
● Reduce inappropriate referrals to special education
School Psychologists: Promote positive behavior and mental health
● Improve students communication and social skills
● Assess student emotional and behavioural needs
● Provide individual and group counselling
● Promote problem solving, anger management and conflict resolution
● Reinforce positive coping skills and resilience
● Promote positive peer relationships and social problem solving
● Make referrals to and help coordinate community services provided in schools
School Psychologists: Support diverse learners
● Assess diverse learning needs
● Provide culturally responsive services to students and families from diverse
backgrounds
● Plan appropriate Individualised Education Programs for students (with disabilities)
, ● Modify and adapt curricula and instruction
● Adjust classroom facilities and routines to improve student engagement and learning
● Monitor and effectively communicate with parents about student progress
School Psychologists: Create safe, positive school climates
● Prevent bullying and other forms of violence
● Support social-emotional learning
● Assess school climate and improve school connectedness
● Implement and promote positive discipline and restorative justice
● Implement school-wide positive behavioral supports
● Identify at risk students and school vulnerabilities
● Provide crisis prevention and intervention services
Executive Functioning & School
EF Video clip
Best way to think about executive functioning is like an “Air traffic control system” in the
brain. Allows children to do lots of things that are needed in school (e.g. focus on a given
task without getting distracted / focus / work with others / etc).
Has to manage multiple things, just like a child has to manage a lot of information and avoid
distractions. (Concentration, Juggling multiple demands, Working with others, Adapting to
changing circumstances, Dealing with setbacks, Inhibiting immediate rewards)
EF strongly predicts maths and reading competence above and beyond IQ
Involves:
- Working memory
- Inhibitory control
- Mental flexibility
E.g. child has to take turns
Needs to have inhibitory control; be able to stop what they are doing and let other child
take turn
Needs to have working memory; When it's their turn again, they need to remember what it
is they're supposed to be doing
Needs mental flexibility; if children prior child do something unexpected / unpredictable,
child needs to be able to adjust what they are gonna do next
Children who struggle with these capacities look like they aren’t paying attention / aren’t
controlling themselves. Need self regulation otherwise will go into a downward spiral (start
acting out).
How does Executive Function Develop?
Begin to see roots of executive functioning in very little children.
,Prefrontal cortex is important for executive functions, but it does not act alone… it's involved
in controlling your behaviour through its interaction with all other parts of the brain.
Brain goes from a situation where you have nearest neurons communicating very strongly
with each other and ignoring the rest of the brain, to wide spread networks that are
connecting the different areas (behavioural control, use of rules, error processing, working
memory, risk/reward decisions, reactions and responses, emotions).
Executive function changes over the lifecourse, it improves radically over the first few years
and continues to improve throughout adolescence. It's not until adulthood that you have the
adult type networks that are very strongly activated that connect different brain regions
together.
It is believed that executive functions can be trained, the more you practice in the areas, the
stronger the capacity is likely to become because you are helping to strengthen those neural
connections.
Important to learn these skills early as a child, otherwise you will be very ill equipped as an
adult to do anything (e.g. be part of a marriage, maintain a job) / be part of a civil society.
Consequences of Low Executive Functioning
● Worse school performance
● Difficulties later on in life
● Difficulty keeping jobs
● Lower income
● Difficulties maintaining relationships
● Increased risk for mental health problems (engage in substance abuse)
Early identification and intervention by a school psychologist can reduce the chances of
children with ADHD suffering poor outcomes.
Executive Functioning: Definition
Important for academic success and success in life
Umbrella term for various cognitive processes that give rise to goal-directed behaviour (e.g.
completing a maths assignment in school → cognitive ability).
- Novel & demanding situations
- Flexible adjustment
- Adaptive behaviour, creativity
E.g. when child encounters problem they've never encountered before, they need to be able
to act in an adaptive manner/behaviour → come up with solution for new problem (might
require some creativeness)
● Previously: EF is one process (i.e.,cognitive control);
● Now: EF is comprised of 3 core components
, Three Core Components
1) Working memory: the ability to hold information in mind (maintenance) and mentally
work with it(manipulation). Ability to perform mental processes on the information we
have in mind (e.g. reciting a phone number)
2) Inhibitory control: the ability to suppress interfering thoughts and actions that are
not relevant to task at hand (aka inhibition) (e.g. when we try to study we rely on
inhibitory control to not constantly check phone but stay focused on textbook)
3) Cognitive flexibility: the ability to change one’s perspective or approach to a
problem, flexibly adjusting to new demands, rules, or priorities. (aka mental
flexibility/attentional shifting/task shifting) (e.g. we find out that strategy is not helping
us complete a task so we come up with a new one that might be more effective).
Measured in the ability to engage in rule shifting or task switching
… not entirely independent…correlate (weakly) with one another: child can differ with how
proficient they are in each of these different processes (e.g. can have a good working
memory, but weak in inhibitory control) (cognitive flexibility seems to overlap most, requires
both working memory and inhibitory control (e.g. needs to suppress old strategy in order to
apply new strategy)
More Complex Executive Functions
3 components serve as building blocks for higher order cognitive processes:
- Planning
- Reasoning
- Problem solving
- Performance monitoring (e.g. child needs to remember what behaviour led to positive
and what behaviour led to negative feedback, and need to inhibit behaviour that led
to negative feedback, and then flexibility adjust behaviour to prevent getting negative
feedback again)
(these all require working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility)
Measuring Executive Functioning
● Used for research on (the development of) executive functioning
● Often used in clinical/school settings
- EF often impaired in clinical groups
• ADHD
• Learning disabilities
• Depression
School psychologist can assess executive functioning to understand more
precisely what cognitive abilities the child struggles in
● Measures of simple executive functioning
● Measures of complex executive functioning
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