Denise Faith R. Belizario Dr.

Lara Maguad
Psychological Assessment October 28, 2017

Journal Article:
Bridging the gap between psychological assessment and educational instruction

I. SUMMARY
The paper is about the current practices of assessment in educational setting. The paper
tackled the issues that the educational institutions are faced with in terms of assessment on
students with special needs and the educational psychologists’ role on addressing the issue.
Largely, the issue is at the practice of maintaining the traditional assessment in terms of dealing
with students with special needs in educational institutions. Primarily, schools are more focused
merely on the diagnosis of children with special needs rather than moving to the next level,
which is doing something about them like identifying their educational needs and addressing
those. Currently, even most people, laypersons and professionals, both in first world or
developed and 3rd world or developing countries are desiring to still seek for labels and
diagnoses. They do not see the need to do away with the traditional methods or practices in
assessment; routine assessment in order to avoid simply labeling these students. Albeit, this is the
thrust of educational psychologists, it is still being hampered largely by the bureaucracy of
institutions.

Formal assessment is somewhat good since its aim is to protect the “most vulnerable
children”. However, in reality, it goes to show that the educational institutions already lost track
of this goal and prioritized gaining resources and profit through it. That’s why it is not yet
practiced full-blown. Also another contributing factor is that the “scientific practices” do not
approve of the use of new cognitive approaches that aim to improve these children’s academic
skill. As much as educational psychologists want to influence the current classroom practices,
institutions cannot do away of what has already been practiced since time immemorial.

Collaborative approach was suggested to be a small step solution to this dilemma. This
involves the partaking of the parents, teachers as well as students in using an assessment for
intervention model. The psychologist’s role here is to operate as a scientist-practitioner actively
engaged in all stages of the assessment. Earlier another paper highlighted the importance of
having the education psychologist not to conduct a direct assessment but rather provide a training
program to educators that involve research, theory, and teachings principles taken from
instructional psychology. This requires precision teaching techniques, however lost its popularity
as cognitive approaches emerged.

In light of the aforementioned case, the journal article also highlighted the role that cognitive
and metacognitive processes plays in this day and age in assessment and intervention. One of the
researchers highlighted the importance of case study examples in shedding light in the
importance of contextualizing and developing an assessment and intervention based on the
child’s sociocultural background.
 Another approach, the dynamic testing approach, provides assistance to the child during the
testing process but also equally clearly anchors on the standardized tradition since they (Touw
and colleagues) see the scientific approach of high value. In both papers, information about
specific children that can soon lead to their intervention were brought about by the results of
dynamic assessment.
Another research /approach by Dolores Calero et al., Bonnett et al., and Hessels-Schlatter
and colleagues highlighted the importance of (small) group interventions that paved way in
discovery of the recent theory and practice in the areas of cognition, executive functioning,
metacognition, self-regulated learning and problem-solving.

The aim of the aforementioned approaches and researches boils down to the thrust of putting
forth superior assessment and intervention practices through the inputs of educational
psychologists in doing something about the current inappropriate practices in educational setting.

II. RELEVANCE
This journal article sheds light in one of the pressing issues that educational psychologists as
well as students, educators and educational institutions at large, are faced with. I believe that we
are in dire need of change in terms of our methods in assessment in school setting particularly
with students with special needs. In another article by C. Samuels (2016), she mentioned that in
the United States, “The count of students ages 6-21 with disabilities fell to a low of 5.67 million
in fall 2011, but had risen to 5.83 million by fall 2014, the most recent year for which statistics
are available.” The rapid increase of students with disabilities, especially with autism, supports
the notion that there is a pressing need of designing and implementing superior assessment and
intervention practices in educational setting. That is in United states, but globally, according to
UNICEF, on ages 0 – 18 years of age, the estimated number of children with disabilities ranges
from 93 million to 150 million. That is a lot. Although it was not mentioned from that
population, how many are going to school, but still with that population, it goes to show,
something has to be done to help improve the lives of these people, starting at their education.

However, there might be, to some extent, maybe for some people, a question on the
relevance of the article since there is really relatively little data that exists on children with
disabilities or special needs and from the evidences that exists, it is based on a smaller set of
studies than available for most other groups of children. For example, there are groups that are
not subject to assessment as to whether children with special needs are prevalent or numerous in
that certain community. Few research are done on the marginalized sector, but they should be all
the more evaluated and assessed since those that belong to the grassroots level are more likely to
have special needs due to poor healthcare services, lack of proper nutrition, lack of basic
sanitation, dangerous living and such.

There has to be a clearer global statistics on the current population of children with special
needs so that people and the government would see the high relevance and pressing need of
improving on the psychological assessment for them in school setting. With that, these new
interventions would be in full implementation in schools.
 III. PERSONAL IMPLICATIONS AND INSIGHTS
I personally find the article relevant, as I am currently working in an educational institution. I
see the need to really change the old ways in assessment in educational setting as it does minimal
help to students with special needs. Reflecting on why new assessments and intervention
methods cannot yet replace the traditional ones is because of two factors.

One is people are, if not contented, passive and/or afraid of challenging the status quo.
People by nature, are somewhat adamant to change unless something really hits them hard in the
head that change should take place. Traditions, customs, old ways and practices are part of our
comfort zones. With change, there are a lot of adjustments. People think short-term, that’s why. I
think it takes to have an eye of a visionary before one can fully embrace change. People have to
think long term and see the bigger picture in order for change, in this case change in assessment
practices, to take place.

Talking about seeing the bigger picture, I think that even if people as individuals, would have
a paradigm shift from wanting merely labels and diagnoses to wanting a deeper, comprehensive,
student-centered assessment, it would still be difficult to implement the new assessment practices
since its not the people who hold the power, its these educational institutions. So long as
capitalist mindset and bureaucratic system prevails, it’s difficult to make the transformation
happen. I know it will be costly at first if new assessment methods will be implemented, since a
lot of changes will take place, but these institutions should look beyond profit and primarily
think of the welfare of their students. If that would be the case, profit will follow. Profit should
never be the primary aim, for everything may be compromised, even the welfare of these student
with special needs. It is somewhat understandable for developing countries to think that way,
however it has to be inculcated in the hearts and minds of these businessmen that if they continue
that mindset, what kind of society are we going to produce? If we will not be able to meet the
needs of these people, what kind of future workers or non-workers will our society have?
Bureaucracy has its pros and cons, but learning from the past, we can see it does more harm than
good. It hampers improvement.

Having said that, part of the solution would be, giving the educational psychologists a voice
in educational institutions. Educational psychologists, especially in third world countries should
be empowered. They should be part of the planning team. How can they spark the change that
we wish to see if it’s only the higher ups that get to decide?
So there, these factors contribute on why new assessments and intervention methods cannot
yet replace the traditional ones.
 IV. RECOMMENDATIONS, COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS

For the article itself, it is recommended to provide more research on the current population of
children with special needs in schools so that it would be more compelling to have a paradigm
shift in assessment and interventions in educational setting.

For the issue that the article poses, I suggest that there would be a comparative analysis on
the assessment methods on the educational institutions of developed and developing countries so
that educational psychologists and researchers will know what to work on. I think different
countries may have different practices in assessment of students with special needs developing a
“canned” approach or model might not work for all types of school setting. As what one of the
researchers mentioned, socio-cultural context should be considered.
I believe it is not the dominant practices that seem highly resistant to calls for change, but
rather it is us. Let’s put the blame in all of us, us laypersons for not caring about such issues or
not being woke enough, the educational psychologists for being lax and too comfortable with the
old practices, the teachers for not being proactive on this pressing issue when they especially
have the direct contact to these students, the educational institutions for being bureaucratic and
too profit-driven; we are all at a fault and so we must all help in finally putting forth what would
be most beneficial to our fellowmen, especially to these students with special needs. Besides,
they are part of the future of our nation, of this world.