What is Educational Psychology? Preliminary thoughts.

I am quite aware that, of the core texts of educational psychology courses in Britain that I have seen, the courses are focused on Special Educational Needs. This seems to imply that the basic job of an Educational Psychology is to diagnose Special Educational Needs in children, and indeed that is what they are required to do within our current educational system as far as I have currently read. Yet, this has led to the appellation of "problem pimp", the idea that edpsychs simply go around bringing to light these problems and then disappearing to let someone else deal with it. I imagine that this is most likely to happen in infant and primary schools.

However, working in a Sixth Form College I do not see this initial diagnosing of problems and the resulting aftermath of difficulty and dislike. Instead I see students who are aware of, but have hidden their educational needs all their life. I see students struggling with the concept of being labelled. On the reverse side, I see students desperately wanting to be labelled as an excuse. And, otherwise, I see that almost all students have a diagnosable need. To give one common but perhaps counter-intuitive example, some students are so hard-working and task-focused that this behaviour starts to impair them educationally and even emotionally, the stress becoming crippling. It might even be said that, generally, the easier a student finds education and assessment the less likely they will be to succeed to their potential, except in some very lucky cases. There will always be points at which hard-working students simply cannot cope.

I want to see a widening and breadthening of educational psychology provision. I think educational psychology is necessary all over the place, for all sorts of learners, in all sorts of settings. I do not think that educational psychology is useful if it mainly exists to diagnose the SEN of young children. I imagine that there are two good reasons to hold back from intergrating educational psychologists into schools and make them work closely with classes, individuals and teachers. These would be money and territoriality. Educational Psychologists are fantastically expensive and we still need to pay for teachers. Also, teachers have a general feeling of 'professionalisation', and don't like their toes being stepped on. I get a feeling that this sometimes leads to a mutual distrust, as if there are opposing 'sides' that must do battle.

Educational Psychology should have a lot to say about education, learning, and teaching. It should not just be concentrating on SEN to the exclusion of NEN - 'normal' educational needs.