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Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 52(10), 2015 View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pits

2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/pits.21877

PERCEPTIONS OF COMPETENCIES AMONG SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY TRAINERS AND PRACTITIONERS: WHAT MATTERS? PAMELA FENNING AND YAHAIRA DIAZ

Loyola University Chicago SARAH VALLEY-GRAY, RALPH “GENE” CASH, AND CAROLINE SPEARMAN

Nova Southeastern University CYNTHIA E. HAZEL

University of Denver STEPHANIE GRUNEWALD

Naperville School District #203 CYNTHIA RICCIO

Texas A & M University ABIGAIL HARRIS

Fordham University

Increasingly, professional training programs are dealing with the need for competency-based assessments of student learning outcomes. This is particularly challenging in fields such as school psychology, with competencies identified by multiple accrediting bodies and state requirements. The primary goal of this study was to examine the degree to which competencies espoused by differing accrediting bodies are perceived as important among school psychologists. One hundred nineteen participants responded to questions regarding the importance of competencies and foundational knowledge as delineated by the American Psychological Association, National Association of School Psychologists, Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, state boards/departments of education, and best practices in the field. Findings indicated that respondents endorsed most skills as “Very Important” or “Extremely Important,” with slightly less favorable ratings for competencies addressing advocacy and supervision. Factor analysis of the items revealed a three-factor structure labeled teaching/supervision, intervention, and assessment.  C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Increasingly, school psychology accrediting bodies (e.g., the American Psychological Association [APA], the National Association of School Psychologists [NASP], the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation [CAEP], and state departments of education [DOEs]) have emphasized competency-based outcome assessment. School psychology programs face the challenge of responding to the multiple entities, each with its own perspectives on competencies. Professional psychology has experienced a movement toward a culture of competence that parallels medicine (Roberts, Borden, Christiansen, & Lopez, 2005). The degree to which school psychology trainers and practitioners view competencies as important for school psychology practice is largely unknown. Therefore, a gap exists in the validation of competencies and empirically supported data to support their use in school psychology. The purpose of this article is to report initial descriptive findings and a factor analysis from a survey completed by school psychology trainers and practitioners regarding the importance of competencies for practice. Our rationale for the study was a need to begin systematically investigating Correspondence to: Pamela Fenning, 820 N. Michigan Avenue, Lewis Towers 1028B, Chicago, IL 60611. E-mail: [email protected]

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the role of competencies through an initial psychometric study that will serve as an initial step in re-examining competencies from an empirical perspective. H ISTORY

OF THE

C OMPETENCY M OVEMENT

Although the movement toward a culture of competence has come to the forefront of professional psychology standards in recent years, the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology developed one of the first widely accepted models of competence as early as 1986 (Peterson et al., 1992; Peterson, Peterson, Abrams, & Stricker, 1997). In 1996, the APA Committee on Accreditation supported this model by requiring all programs to organize their education and training objectives around competencies (Fouad et al., 2009). However, competencies relating to professional practice were not defined and articulated until the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers convened a national meeting on competencies, which culminated in 12 position papers and resulted in the Cube model (Falender & Shafranske, 2007; Kaslow, 2004; Rodolfa et al., 2005). The Cube Model gained recognition across training groups and contains 12 core foundational and functional competencies that cut across psychology specialties (Fouad et al., 2009; Rodolfa et al., 2005). Foundational competencies are Reflective Practice/Self-Assessment, Scientific Knowledge/Methods, Relationships, Ethical and Legal Standards/Policy Issues, Individual and Cultural Diversity, and Interdisciplinary Systems. The six functional competencies are Assessment/Diagnosis/Conceptualization, Intervention, Consultation, Research/Evaluation, Supervision/Teaching, and Management/Administration (Rodolfa et al., 2005). In 2004, the APA Task Force on Assessment of Competence in Professional Psychology (2006) advocated for a culture shift. In 2006, the Assessment of Competencies Benchmark (ACB) Workgroup (2007) outlined a developmental model of competencies required for entry to practicum, internship, and entry-level practice. Two related documents, the Benchmark Document, which delineates behavioral anchors and benchmarks across levels of training, and the Competency Assessment Toolkit, which contains a set of formative and summative assessment measures, was produced (Daly, Doll, Schulte, & Fenning, 2011; Fouad et al., 2009; Kaslow et al., 2009). More recently, the ACB Workgroup (2012a, 2012b) revised the competency benchmarks and created corollary rating forms for clinical supervisors to evaluate trainee competencies across three benchmark periods (e.g., practicum, internship, practice).

R ELEVANCE

OF THE

C OMPETENCY M OVEMENT

FOR

S CHOOL P SYCHOLOGY

School psychology programs face unique challenges in that the aforementioned competencies were created for professional psychology as a whole. Thus, there is a question as to the fit of general competencies with school-based practices and alignment with requirements of the varied agencies and professional associations that have oversight over school psychology. Further, unlike other professional psychology areas, competencies in school psychology need to be defined at both the specialist and doctoral levels (Daly et al., 2011). Daly et al. (2011) analyzed the overlap and discrepancies between the NASP (2010b) Standards for Graduate Preparation of School Psychologists, the NASP (2010d) Standards for the Credentialing of School Psychologists, and the APA Competency Benchmarks (Fouad et al., 2009). Although there were more commonalities than differences in professional skills and competencies across the documents, differences were most evident with regard to operationalization of broad areas. For example, competencies of applied assessment, intervention, and consultative skills differed substantively across the documents. In addition, although the NASP Standards stressed prevention, Psychology in the Schools

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the application of multitiered interventions, and population-based mental health, the Competency Benchmarks placed more emphasis on professional integrity, deportment, identity, and self-care. M ETHOD This study was conducted in accordance with the research guidelines of the APAs (2010) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Approval for the research was received from the Internal Review Boards of the three institutions that collaborated on the study. Participants and Survey Administration Participants. Participants were recruited from professional listservs. The listservs included the Trainers of School Psychologists, Division 16 (School Psychology) of the APA, and the Council of Directors of School Psychology Program (CDSPP) listservs. The lead researcher contacted one or more board members from each of the respective listservs and asked for permission to disseminate the survey via a message on the listserv. In one case, the survey was posted on the association website rather than being distributed via an e-mail message. A total of 119 participants completed the survey. Most respondents self-identified as female (74%) and Caucasian (85%), which approximates the demographic data collected in a survey of NASP members (Castillo, Curtis, Chappel, & Cunningham, 2011). Respondents specified their primary employment as follows: school-based practitioner (11%), private practitioner (1%), faculty member (79%), administrator at college/university (3%), retired (1%), or other (4%; see Table 1 for additional information). Measure and Measure Development Survey development. To determine domains of competencies to be considered, members of the CDSPP Competency Benchmark workgroup examined various professional associations and state department of education documents that contain professional competencies deemed important for professional practice. These included the APA (2011) Revised Competency Benchmarks in Professional Psychology, the NASP (2010b) Standards for Graduate Preparation of School Psychologists, the NASP (2010a) Model for Comprehensive and Integrated Services (NASP Model), DOE guidelines, and recent scholarly publications regarding school psychology and professional psychology competencies. The CDSPP workgroup also engaged in structured conversations about competencies at professional conferences (e.g., CDSPP, NASP) and with those in leadership positions representing APA, the Trainers of School Psychologists, and the School Psychology Leadership Roundtable from August 2010 to February 2011, with a structured conversation around competencies at the 2011 CDSPP mid-winter meeting. Following the literature review and ongoing dialogue with colleagues in the field, the researchers decided to develop a survey that contained a set of competencies modeled primarily from the NASP practice standards and the APA Benchmark Competencies measuring relative importance for the field. A draft survey with the categories and items was developed using the SurveyMonkey software program (www.surveymonkey.com) from fall 2011 to spring 2012 and then disseminated to experts in the field for their input as to appropriateness of the categories and items, and suggestions for additional competencies. The experts included representatives from APA who had conducted significant competency work, particularly members of the APA Benchmark Competency Workgroup, as well as NASP leaders. The researchers discussed the feedback, and consensus was reached on overall categories and which items to retain on the final survey. The final survey was organized into eight competency areas: (1) ethical/legal/professional behavior, (2) scientific research skills/data analysis and decision making, (3) diversity/cultural Psychology in the Schools

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Table 1 Demographic Characteristics of Survey Respondents Characteristics Identified Role University Faculty Practitioner Primary Job Faculty Member School-Based Practitioner College/University Administrator Other Private Practitioner Retired Gender Female Male Race Caucasian African American Hispanic Multi-racial Native American Training Program Department Department of Education Department of Psychology Other

Frequency

Percentage

93 26

78 22

72 10 3 4 1 1

79 11 3 4 1 1

70 25

74 26.0

80 4 3 3 1

85 4 3 2 1

58 32 4

62 34 4

Note. Primary job (28 missing), gender (24 missing), race/ethnicity (28 missing/declined), training (25 missing).

responsiveness/multicultural competencies, (4) consultation and collaboration, (5) professional practice, (6) applied professional competencies, (7) supervision, mentoring and administration, and (8) advocacy and public policy. Within each competency area, there were from two (Advocacy/Public Policy) to 11 (Applied Professional Competencies) items that reflected requisite skills within each competency area. The survey was disseminated during summer 2013 via the listservs, with a followup reminder. Following the reminder, the survey was closed for participation. Measures. The survey comprised competency items and demographic questions, including age, degree, years of experience, and self-designated role as either a practitioner or trainer in the field. Participants were asked to rate the importance of each item for success as a school psychologist, from a low of 1 (extremely unimportant) to a high of 7 (extremely important). At the end of each competency area, an open-ended question solicited comments about additional knowledge and skills needed in that competency area; at the end of all the competency items, an open-ended question asked whether any important competencies were not included. A total of 45 items were included in the competency survey, and an additional 15 items were specific to demographic information. Research Design and Data Analysis All data were entered into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. Descriptive information was summarized by computing frequency statistics for the sample to gather Psychology in the Schools

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basic demographic information regarding such variables as gender, role, and training, as well as percent agreement for the importance ratings within each item. Responses indicating that an item was perceived as very unimportant and unimportant for professional practice were grouped together due to the low frequencies for these categories, followed by percentages of respondents indicating perceptions of neutral, important, very important, and extremely important for each item. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (Cerny & Kaiser, 1977; 0.82 [meritorious]) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Snedecor & Cochran, 1989; approximate chi-square = 3098.006, df = 990, p < .001) were used to determine the appropriateness of the proposed exploratory factor analysis. Next, a principal component analysis with subsequent varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization was calculated to address whether the survey items could be grouped together reliably to identify specific competency areas. To avoid inflating estimates of variance, the principal axis factors extraction method was selected (Costello & Osborne, 2005). According to Costello and Osborne (2005), “item loadings above 0.30 with no or few item cross loadings [and] no factors with fewer than three items has the best fit to the data” (p. 3). Although communalities of 0.40 to 0.70 are more common magnitudes in the social sciences (Costello & Osborne, 2005), for this exploratory study, the 0.30 item loading criteria was used so that the analysis might be more inclusive. In addition to the factor analysis, Cronbach’s (1951) alpha was calculated as a measure of the internal consistency of the survey as a whole. Cronbach’s alpha ranges between 0 and 1. Reliability coefficients of .70 or higher are considered to be acceptable (Lavrakas, 2008). R ESULTS The respondents endorsed most competencies and skills on the survey as very important or extremely important, with very few items being rated as very unimportant or unimportant, reflecting limited variability in the perceived importance of the items for success as a school psychologist. Please see the online supplementary tables, which provide these data in tabular form. Based on these descriptive findings, however, it is apparent that the skills and competencies addressing advocacy and supervisory strategies were received as relatively less important compared with other competency areas. Cronbach’s alpha for the entire survey of competencies was 0.952, indicating very high internal consistency. From this perspective, the reliability of the overall ratings is more than adequate. To determine whether the respondents who identified themselves as faculty members differed in their ratings of the competencies from those who self-identified as practitioners, a series of Kruskal–Wallis non-parametric comparisons of sample distributions was calculated (Kruskal & Wallace, 1952). The Kruskal–Wallis test was selected because the data were ordinal level and were not normally distributed. A p