The Golden Age of School Psychology?

• Published in: Contemporary psychology Vol. 42; no. 9; pp. 842 - 844
• Main Authors: Brazelton, Elizabeth W., Barrett, Patsy, McGarity, Jain, Michael, Nancy, Paul, Carolyn, Tarver, Aleada Lee, Hauenstein, Anita
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.09.1997
• Subjects: Educational Psychology; History of Psychology; Human; School Psychology
• DOI: 10.1037/001354
• ISSN: 0010-7549

The editors' interest in the history and development of school psychology appears to be the driving force in the compilation of this encyclopedia (see record 1996-97520-000). However, the expressed purpose of this work is to fill "a void in the school psychology literature by providing a reference work of modest length to which school psychologists and others may quickly turn for historical and contemporary information" (p. ix). The argument for the need for such a reference book in school psychology is adequately addressed by Fagen and Warden and to this end they have, at least minimally, fulfilled their purpose. One key to keeping the text to a manageable size was the effort of the editors to separate the disciplines of school psychology and educational psychology. There are concerns about some of the entries and although these concerns do not apply to all or even to most of the entries they are significantly distracting to the quality of the text that corrections in future editions would be beneficial. One of these concerns is the brevity of the entries. Another concern are the entries relating to prominent individuals who are past contributors in the field of school psychology. Several of these include information of a personal nature that seems more appropriate for an obituary or a eulogy than an entry in a historical encyclopedia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)