Headline 2

Across Canada, students and families face long wait times for school-based psychological assessments. These waits reflect broader national shortages in school psychology services. The school psychology profession has faced longstanding staffing shortages, and demand continues to rise. The federal government currently projects a high risk of a national shortage of school psychologists through 2033. In Ontario, the consequences have been visible for years. In 2023-24, only 26 per cent of elementary schools reported regularly scheduled access to a psychologist. Twenty-four per cent reported having no access at all. The lack of access to this professional knowledge is significant as school psychologists can do much more than assess individual students struggling with their learning, behaviour and mental health. Their expertise can be applied across multiple levels of influence: They can consult with teachers, develop school-based prevention and intervention programs and contribute to policies across school systems.  

Identifying barriers and recommending supports

Psychological assessment reports can be enormously valuable in identifying barriers to student success and recommending supports. School teams may recommend a student for a psychological assessment following a period of targeted intervention when questions remain about how to best support a student’s continued learning and development. During the assessment process, a psychologist may examine a student’s learning, attention, memory, executive functioning, behaviour and social-emotional functioning to better understand why they’re struggling at school. They integrate a range of data – for example, from interviews or questionnaires with parents and teachers, observations of the student and assessments related to the above areas – to then develop a specific case formulation. This integrates the psychologist’s best understanding of the student’s strengths and needs. This may or may not include a specific diagnosis. The psychologist generates a written report that provides recommendations. These are intended to translate what was learned about the student into action – particularly in classrooms. This could include recommending changes to teaching practice related to:

• How information is presented;
• Breaking complex tasks into manageable steps;
• Providing organizational supports;
• Offering different ways to access and demonstrate learning;
• Reducing other barriers in the learning process.

A psychological assessment’s recommended strategies may also represent evidence-informed, accessible teaching practices that could benefit an entire classroom. Some strategies that originated in “special education” or for students with identified differences are now understood to have benefits across a larger student population. For example, instructional approaches for writing, assessing the growth of students in basic skills and positive behaviour support interventions and supports are now considered effective universal teaching practices.  

Universal design for learning

Universal design for learning (UDL) is an educational framework to strengthen inclusion. It supports educators in anticipating learner variability and reducing barriers to learning for all students. The UDL framework stresses the intentional design of learning environments to support student agency. It offers corresponding guidelines and checkpoints that focus on designing options for students to engage, access information and demonstrate their understanding. UDL can become a shared framework for collaborative conversations between psychologists and educators. This can help them connect what is learned through the assessment with decisions about instruction and classroom design. Many assessment report recommendations – for example, teaching explicit skills and reducing unnecessary cognitive demands – overlap in meaningful ways with evidence-based instructional practices and principles emerging from the science of learning. The effectiveness of extending recommendations beyond the individual student depends partly upon how they’re communicated to educators, caregivers and other school staff. Our research team in the Improving Accessibility and Application in School Psychology lab at Western University, led by Colin King, the first author of this story, used the UDL framework to conduct pilot work. This examined how common areas of student need identified through psychological assessment aligned with UDL concepts. In this pilot work, we found that in a sample of 50 psychological profiles, there were many areas of overlap between student need and UDL concepts. Common areas included options to support access to language and symbols and ways to support executive functioning and self-regulation skills. Rachel Krahn, the second author of this story, is drawing on her earlier master’s research in the lab to explore in her PhD how school psychologists can support collaborative and inclusive practice and how UDL may be applied in this work. Continued research will highlight educators’ beliefs on UDL and how their perspectives can inform impactful psychological recommendations and consultation.  

Earlier evidence-based support

Ontario’s Right to Read inquiry Report, released in 2022, noted that psychologists are limited in their ability to support professional development for teachers due to the demand for individualized assessments. Providing earlier, evidence-based instruction and intervention for reading challenges could provide greater flexibility to support students and teachers through consultation and professional development. Maximizing the knowledge and expertise from school psychologists to improve learning environments at large will require more than writing different recommendations or assessing more students. Our preliminary research, as well as past research related to actualizing assessment reports, suggests that a shift is needed in psychologists’ and broader educational systems practices. The shift involves focusing more on building relationships with teachers, strengthening consultation and using psychological knowledge to build capacity across school systems. Past scholarship has highlighted the need for a larger framework for school psychology that also includes the important role of rich teacher education training to support inclusive practice. When psychological services are scarce, questions remain about how to use the knowledge generated through assessment more effectively and how to translate it from individual learners into stronger learning environments for everyone. This would help systems leverage a key principle from UDL: “What is necessary for some is beneficial for all.” Colin King, Director, Mary J. Wright Child and Youth Development Clinic, Western University and Rachel Krahn, PhD student, School and Applied Child Psychology, Western University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Expert Insight reflects the perspective and scholarly interest of Western faculty members and is not an articulation of official university policy on issues being addressed.