| EDUC 895 Self-Study for Teacher Educators: Final Project |
Self-Study and the School Psychologist: Reflections on Changes in Current Practice
Abstract
assessment method called Response-to-Intervention as information for special education eligibility for students with learning
disabilities. As a practicing school psychologist, this shift is in contrast to my previous training and theoretical orientation,
however my county is moving to adopt the RTI method. This self-study is an attempt to examine my opinions about the use
of RTI and the shift in practice it will create. It also will look at teachers’ opinions of consulting with school psychologists in
the classroom and will target areas of need teachers see in literacy education. Finally, the self-study will provide information
regarding how the information collected impacts my current practice and how this information can be useful to the
school division as a whole.
Self-Study and the School Psychologist: Reflections on Changes in Current Practice
What is a school psychologist? According to the National Organization of School Psychologists (NASP), “school
psychologists help children and youth succeed academically, socially, and emotionally…school psychologists work to find
the best solution for each student and situation and use different strategies to address student needs and to improve school
and district-wide support systems” (NASP, 2003, p.1). Some of the many ways school psychologists address student
needs are through consultation with teachers, assessment, mental health interventions, and working on prevention
programs. Often school psychologists have been viewed as the “gatekeepers” to special education particularly in the area
of identification of learning disabilities (LD) since their assessments typically provide comprehensive information about a
student’s cognitive ability and processing skills.
With the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 2004, the traditional role of the school psychologist in the special education process appears to be changing. The new document gives state education departments the opportunity to use traditional methods of identification of learning disabilities such as looking at the discrepancy of a student’s performance on standardized cognitive measures in relation to his/her performance on standardized educational tests. However the document also allows for states to use a student’s progress related to interventions as data to document the presence of a specific learning disability. This method, called Response to Intervention (RTI), has been a hot topic in the field of school psychology for the past several years. Numerous articles in NASP publications have highlighted both the possible benefits and concerns that could arise from adopting an RTI approach to LD identification as opposed to more traditional assessment methods. As part of the new changes in IDEA 2004, school psychologists will be required to have a better working knowledge of school curriculum and expectations, developmental appropriate teaching, research methods, and consultation strategies. Many school psychologists have concerns that the modifications to the federal law will change the face of the profession as we know it today.
Because I currently am employed as a school psychologist with a public school division that is considering the move to RTI-based assessments, I decided to gain more information about how the changes could possibly affect my position. Since RTI examines student progress within the general education curriculum, I would be asked to spend more time engaging with students and teachers in the regular education classroom setting. I decided that to be an effective practitioner, I should investigate what the teachers I would be working with see as needs in their regular education classrooms, particularly in the area of literacy (reading and writing). In addition, I wanted to gain knowledge regarding their opinions of working with the school psychologist in a consultant-type role. I also wanted to look at my current practice and see how I was feeling about the change to RTI and my preparedness to move from assessment to more consultation and data collection. Using self-study inquiry, I hope the data I find will help me begin to shift my practice for the coming school year. I also intend to share the information with the principals in the schools where I work.
This paper will present a brief discussion of Response to Intervention and its impact on school psychologists as documented in the literature as well as a discussion of the self-study method and how it relates to this project. The self-study methods used will be described along with information gathered from the data collection. Finally the paper will highlight the relevance of the findings to the writer’s practice and to the field of school psychology.
Response to Intervention and the Role of the School Psychologist
According to an article from NASP, “Response to Intervention refers to an array of procedures that can be used to determine if and how students respond to specific changes in instruction” (Canter, 2006, p.1). RTI is not comprised from an individual method, but uses a variety of models to look for strategies for potentially beneficial instruction techniques and then tracks their effectiveness. RTI can involve the use of curriculum-based measurement, a process that uses information based on a student’s current curriculum to determine data such as reading level, percent of words read, comprehension, and spelling level. It can also use research-based programs such as DIBELS to collect and graph data on student progress. IDEA 2004 promotes the use of RTI methods as part of an assessment to determine a student’s eligibility for special education. However legislature does not mandate the way data about student performance and progress should be gathered, leaving state and local education departments to blaze their own trail into this new territory. Since school psychologists often take leadership roles on school teams, like eligibility committees, NASP feels that they are in a prime position to help schools understand and implement RTI (Canter, 2006).
Shifting from the use of traditional standardized methods to more curriculum-based data collection methods may be a difficult transition for some professionals who have spent the majority of their career interpreting tests and relating the outcomes to classroom performance. Most of the recent articles in the NASP Communique, the newspaper of the National Association for School Psychologists, have expressed the fact that the shift will require much training. Burns and Yssekdyke (2005) examined four school divisions that currently use the RTI model for special education identification decisions and state that “perhaps the most important is the need for phased-in implementation and extensive training of both specialized and school-wide personnel” (p.1, 5). LaMura (2006) also expresses concern about the shift and says that in order for it to begin extensive training will be needed by many education professionals and “for school psychologists I’m talking about a great amount of formal training and guided training (in many regards well beyond what was learned from grad classes) in skills such as functional assessment, curriculum-based assessments, progress monitoring, and systematic intervention” (p.19). While school psychologists have traditionally worked with students who have been referred for academic concerns, their new roles may require consultation and involvement with students much earlier in the process, for example, by using programs to establish baselines and monitor the progress of all students in a classroom, not just students referred for difficulties (Canter, Cowan, & Boyle, 2006, p.32). NASP asserts that RTI can be an effective use of school psychologists’ time and expertise, although they acknowledge that the shift of moving to this type of program is difficult and may be overwhelming to some individuals. They suggest that practitioners remain “open to change, …open to training…willing to look at both individual and systemic approaches to serving schools…and willing and able to communicate their worth to administrators and policymakers” (Canter, 2006, p.3-4).
As the transition to RTI became imminent in the county where I worked, I began to think about how the changes would affect my own practice. I had been trained in the natural sciences prior to my career in education and had a graduate degree in neuropsychology. I was known for my expertise in interpreting traditional assessment measures and for my knowledge regarding the role of processing problems in learning disabilities. However, I had also been a teacher and have a strong understanding of curriculum and instruction practices. I felt as though RTI could be beneficial to the assessment process, but I was not ready to throw out all of the training I had received in brain-based learning and standardized measurement. At the end of the first semester of my doctoral program, I was feeling quite overwhelmed and discouraged, when I saw the advertisement for a class called Self-Study for Teacher Leaders. The class proposed learning about qualitative research methods, specifically self-study, and appeared to encourage students to develop their own self-study research based on their interests. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to dig deeper into my questions about RTI and how it would impact my practice, but I wasn’t sure what exactly self-study entailed.
In January the self-study course began. We quickly learned that there was not a cut-and-dry answer for the definition of self-study. Self-study, we learned, developed from the teacher inquiry paradigm that looked at teachers as researchers. Reflection and action research also played a role in the development of self-study. Self-study “focuses on improvement on both the personal and professional levels. And although self-study may incorporate action research methods, it also incorporates other methodologies, such as narrative inquiry, life history, autobiographies, and biographies” (Samaras and Freese, In Press). Another important factor of self-study is that the research must contribute to the larger practice of education or the field studied. Although self-study has not been widely used outside education, Wilcox, Watson, & Patterson (2004) describe the use of self-study for professionals in areas including library science and occupational therapy (p.273-312).
Method
In order to examine my feelings about RTI and to investigate how I can make the most needed impact in the general education classroom setting, a preliminary self-study project was developed to address these topics. A literature review was completed on RTI and the self-study process. A seven-question survey was developed to investigate teacher needs with literacy instruction and to look at their feelings about collaborating with another professional. Approval for distribution was obtained from the building principals and approximately 40 surveys were distributed to the general education teaching faculty in grades kindergarten through fifth at the two schools where the author currently works. A note explaining the project and asking for participation was attached to the forms. All information was collected anonymously with the option to list grade level taught and teachers were offered the option of receiving a copy of the final paper upon request. The surveys were distributed twice during the month of March in order to allow maximum participation and small candy treats were attached to the second set of surveys as a thank you for the teachers. A total of 21 surveys were returned. Completed surveys were coded and analyzed for recurrent themes. Since the teachers surveyed work with the author, it should be noted that this may have affected their responses to the questions and possibly may affect the ability of the information to be generalized to the work of other school psychologists in the county.
In addition to the surveys, journals were kept for seven weeks regarding the author’s feelings about her current participation in the intervention process and her opinions regarding the shift from standardized assessment to RTI. The journal writings were also analyzed and coded for themes. Letters to a critical friend provided support and questions regarding the development and analysis of the project data. Pre- and post-concept maps were also constructed.
Data Analysis and Discussion
In order to interpret the information received from both the surveys and the journal entries, each item was read individually and coded based upon the theme that was dominant. This was a first attempt by the author at coding and inter-rater reliability was not established, therefore it should be noted that the themes discussed might be affected by the views of the researcher.
Several points of interest arose from the survey data. First, teachers were overwhelmingly positive about collaborating with a school psychologist and were excited about the possibility of additional help with instruction for their at-risk students. What was surprising to me was that most teachers described the type of intervention they would prefer as one where the school psychologist would come into the classroom and work on specific strategies with the students during their language arts center time. I had assumed that teachers would prefer that students who were behind academically receive individual instruction in a small group setting out of the classroom. Second, very few of the teachers requested assistance with monitoring student performance (i.e. using curriculum-based measurements) and teachers who did like this type of help wanted assistance giving measures like the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA). Third, of major concern to the teachers was that the school psychologist would be consistent with providing instruction and would have enough time to visit all the classrooms that requested assistance. Questions about who would do the traditional job of the psychologist (for instance, testing and working with emotionally or behaviorally challenged students) were noted by several of the teachers interviewed. Finally, I found it surprising that none of the teachers surveyed requested classroom assistance from the school psychologist with their special education students. They described a need for someone to work with their “at-risk” students and welcomed the additional instruction for their students and the chance to have a “fresh pair of eyes” assess their learning situations.
I also coded information from the 15 journal entries I had written during the course of the semester. The four major themes that emerged from the analysis were positive comments, negative comments, consultation concerns, and personal revelations. From the positive comments, I recognized that I enjoyed interactions in the classroom and had a good working knowledge of teaching strategies, such as identifying patterns in a student’s reading. The negative comments that consistently were reported in my journals were feelings of confusion about changes in my job, feeling a lack of competency and knowledge for Response to Intervention methods, feeling like I failed a student, and expecting that I should be able to answer any questions a teacher might bring up. This carried over into the consultation theme where I noted that I am having difficulty moving from an expert to a consultant model of intervention. Fears of being perceived as an outsider and of being disliked by teachers were also described. Finally, I made several personal revelations that were repeated throughout the journals. These centered on the fact that I enjoy being in the classroom setting and enjoy bonding with students. I become excited when I am seen as part of the school team and am eager to share when others have an interest in what I can do in the school. I strongly believe in respecting the professional integrity of others and find relationship building to be a priority in my practice.
Conclusions
This first attempt at self-study has given me the opportunity to investigate a number of my thoughts and opinions about my practice as a school psychologist and my feelings regarding the shifting role of my profession. When I originally began this project, the focus I intended to study was what do teachers need help with in the area of literacy instruction and how can I be most useful in their classrooms. I also wanted to look at my current practice and see how closely the strategies I was giving teachers addressed those concerns. However, as I began to research and journal, I soon realized that what I really hoped to gain from the project was a better understanding of my own feelings about moving from standardized assessment to the Response to Intervention method. With my interviews I not only gained knowledge of what areas teachers’ report they could use assistance with in literacy education, but also collected information about their preliminary ideas about the school psychologist shifting to a more curriculum-based role in the classroom.
This data has shown me several things about the current state of my practice and what I would like it to become. First, I have fundamental difficulties with the Response to Intervention method because as a practitioner trained in neuropsychology, I strongly believe that learning disabilities are brain-based and not solely reliant on the presentation and differentiation of instruction to student levels. However, I think that the RTI method will allow me to spend more time in classrooms with students where I am most energized. I realize that I will need extensive training to become comfortable with the consultation process and with not feeling like I have to know all the answers to student learning problems. The surveys in particular have shown me also that teachers value my current role in assessment and my ability to work with students with emotional and behavioral needs, and this will have to be balanced with the classroom-based interventions when the county shifts to using RTI.
Additionally, this study has given preliminary information that can be used on a county level. As mentioned above, based on my interviews and journals, specific training must be provided to all school staff to explain the RTI process and to explain how this will be used to determine special education eligibility. Changes in current scheduling should be completed to allow for consultation time for psychologists and teachers during the school day and the county may want to consider placing one psychologist with each building in order for he/she to effectively address both RTI and emotional and behavioral needs of the school. Psychologists in the division will also need to take a leading role in advocating for culturally competent practice in using RTI with English as a Second Language and other diverse learners.
Engaging in this self-study project has been beneficial to allowing me to address my bias and opinions regarding my current practice and my feelings about moving to the RTI method. Receiving input from the teaching staffs at the schools where I work has been helpful not only in demonstrating areas of need in literacy education, but also in taking a preliminary measure of what teachers believe would be most valuable for their students. The data I collected allows me to critique my current practice and to highlight areas where training will be needed for school staff. As a member of the steering committee for staff development for school psychologists, this is vital information for programming for future trainings that will be needed to meet the expectation of moving to an RTI-based system in the next three to five years. It would be interesting to revisit this study in five years to see how relevant the data collected was to the way the changes in the school division assessments came to pass.
Burns, M.
& Ysseldyke, J. (2006, February). Comparison of existing Response-to-
Intervention models to
identify and answer implementation questions.Communique, 34(5),
pp.1,5.
Canter, A. (2006, February). Problem solving and RTI: New roles for school psychologists. Communique (Insert), 34 (5),1-4.
Canter, A., Cowan, K., & Boyle, J. (2006, February). RTI: Challenge and effective communication strategies for school psychologists. Communique, 34(5) 32-33.
LaMura, R. (2006, February). RTI as classification model for LD-Additional questions to ponder. Communique, 34(5) 19-20.
National Association of School Psychologists. (2003). What is a school psychologist?
Retrieved April 21, 2006, from http://www.nasponline.org/ about_nasp/whatisa.html.
Samaras, A.
& Freese, A. (In Press). Self-study of teaching practices primer.
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