"The school psychology profession is inextricably linked to issues of student success and advocacy. In the past decade organizations such as the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) have updated their official documents to push school psychologists to be social justice advocates within schools (Shriberg et al., 2013; Ysseldyke et al., 2006). This research study investigated graduate student perceptions and whether they feel they are being exposed to social justice issues specific to school psychology within their graduate training program. Student responses indicated exposure to awareness of the overrepresentation of students of color in special education and overrepresentation of underrepresented group members in special education. Responses indicated that issues related to institutionalized racism, homophobia, sexism, and allocation of resources within school districts were areas that were hardly ever or occasionally addressed. This study identified areas where school psychology training programs could begin addressing specific social justice issues within their curriculum"--Abstract, p. 1.

"This book will provide an introduction to social justice from the perspective of the major topics that affect school psychology practice"--

The second edition of the Handbook of Multicultural School Psychology continues the mission of its predecessor, offering a comprehensive, interdisciplinary view of the field of multicultural school psychology and addressing the needs of children and families from diverse cultural backgrounds. The revised organizational structure includes the following: History and Professional Issues; Consultation and Collaboration; Interventions Focused on Academic and Mental Health Issues; Data-based Decision Making; Systems-based Issues; Training and Research; and Future Perspectives. Nineteen of the volume's twenty-three chapters are completely new to this edition, while the rest have been effectively revised and updated. Comprehensive—In seven sections, this book covers theoretical, research, and practical concerns in a wide range of areas that include multicultural and bilingual issues, second language acquisition, acculturation, parent collaboration, research, and systemic issues. Chapter Structure—Chapter authors follow a uniform structure that includes theoretical and research issues and implications for practice. Recent practice and training guidelines including Blueprint for Training and Practice III (2006), NASP Model for Comprehensive and Integrated School Psychological Services (2010), and APA Multicultural Guidelines (2003) are covered. Interdisciplinary Perspective—Contributing authors are from a wide range of related fields that include school psychology, special education, general education, early childhood education, educational psychology, clinical psychology, counseling, and mental health, thus exposing readers to theory and research from various approaches. Changes—New to this edition is a section focusing on systemic issues such as overrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in special education, prejudice, response to intervention (RTI) for CLD students and English Language Learners (ELL), and end-of-chapter discussion questions. This book is ideal for graduate courses and seminars on multicultural school psychology. It is also a useful reference for researchers and practicing school psychologists and the libraries that serve them.

This book weaves together critical components of student development and community building for social justice to prepare students to engage effectively in community-campus partnerships for social change. The author combines diverse theoretical models such as critical pedagogy, asset-based community development, and healing justice with lessons from programs promoting indigenous knowledge, decolonization, and mindfulness. Most importantly, this book links theory to practice, offering service-learning classroom activities, course and community partnership criteria, learning outcomes, and assessment rubrics. It speaks to students, faculty, administrators, and community members who are interested in utilizing community engagement as a vehicle for the development of students and communities towards wellbeing and social justice.

School psychology is moving toward more culturally competent practice; one way of attaining that is through increasing the number of culturally diverse practitioners. African-Americans in particular are needed. Various factors including a negative perception of psychology and lacking knowledge of school psychology contribute to the low numbers of members of this ethnic group in school psychology. Social justice issues, such as prejudice and disproportionality in special education seemingly affect minority groups' interest in the field; however, little research has been conducted to examine this interaction. Effective recruitment and retention strategies to increase the number of African-American school psychologists in the context of social justice were explored via survey and focus group in the current study. There were 33 survey participants, including graduate students and practitioners. Of those, 2 people participated in a follow-up focus group. Results suggest that culturally diverse faculty, mentorship, financial support, and establishing graduate school psychology programs at historically Black colleges and universities would encourage recruitment. Social justice issues do appear to affect recruitment efforts, specifically experiencing identity threat from being in a majority Caucasian learning environment and knowledge of the large number of African-American students in special education. Furthermore, focus group data suggests that an open environment to discuss cultural differences in a predominately Caucasian graduate program is vital to retaining African-American school psychology graduate students. Implications for practice and future research include creating culturally accepting programs where identity threat may be decreased and drawing more African-American psychologists into academia as faculty members.

The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts draws from a growing body of research on how and why various aspects of social relationships and contexts contribute to children’s social and academic functioning within school settings. Comprised of the latest studies in developmental and educational psychology, this comprehensive volume is perfect for researchers and students of Educational Psychology. Beginning with the theoretical perspectives that guide research on social influences, this book presents foundational research before moving on to chapters on peer influence and teacher influence. Next, the book addresses ways in which the school context can influence school-related outcomes (including peer and teacher-student relationships) with specific attention to research in motivation and cognition. Within the chapters authors not only present current research but also explore best-practices, drawing in examples from the classroom. With chapters from leading experts in the field, The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts provides the first complete resource on this topic.

The purpose of this book is to examine and learn lessons from the way leadership for social justice is conceptualized in several disciplines and to consider how these lessons might improve the preparation and practice of school leaders. In particular, we examine philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, public policy, and psychology. Our contention is that the field of educational leadership might consider taking a step backward in order to take several forward. That is, educational leadership researchers might re-examine social justice, both in terms of social and individual dynamics and as disciplinary-specific, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary phenomenon. By adopting this approach, we can connect and extend long-established lines of conceptual and empirical inquiry and thereby gain insights that may otherwise be overlooked or assumed. This holds great promise for generating, refining, and testing theories of social justice in educational leadership and will help strengthen already vibrant lines of inquiry. That is, rather than citing a single, or a few, works out of their disciplinary context it might be more fruitful to situate educational leadership for social justice research in their respective traditions. This could be carried out by extending extant lines of inquiry in educational leadership research and then incorporating lessons gleaned from this work into innovative practice. For example, why not more clearly establish lines of educational leadership and justice research into the Philosophy of Social Justice, Economics of Social Justice, Political Studies of Social Justice , Sociology of Social Justice, Anthropology of Social Justice, and the Public Policy of Social Justice as focused and discrete areas of inquiry? Once this new orientation toward the knowledge base of social justice and educational leadership is laid, we might then seek to explore some of the natural connections between traditions before ultimately investigating justice in educational leadership through a free association of ideas as the worlds of practice and research co-construct a “new” language they can use to discuss educational leadership. Such an endeavor may demand reconceptualization of both the processes and products of collaborative research and the communication of findings, but it will demand a breaking-down of methodological and epistemological biases and a more meaningful level and type of engagement between primary and applied knowledge bases.