Commentary: Sheridan and Gutkin's Vision of the Future: Information Will Help Get Us There

In their article on the ecology of school psychology, Sheridan and Gutkin offer a vision of the future with which it is hard to argue. My concerns are that Sheridan and Gutkin do not go far enough in their analysis of the anomaZy and in helping to map “how we get from here to there. ” In making these comments, I want to emphasize my reliance on their argument as a starting point; I think they are right on almost all counts. My goal in these remarks is to push further the premise that new information is the key to a vibrant school psychology that consumers find helpful. As Sheridan and Gutkin emphasize, the symbiotic connection of school psychology and special education remains a great impediment to the field’s development. But we should recognize that at some level school psychologists (and many trainers) like giving diagnoses; they are rewarded for it. Doing so confers status in a range of social and professional settings and diagnostic labels reduce uncertainty and help people believe they can manage information better. For this to change, it is not enough to just disengage from special education eligibility: alternate actions at least have to confer status and acknowledge expertise. But the profession also needs to become comfortable with uncertain explanations for behavior. Thus, until trainers and practitioners have a conceptual model that helps them manage comfortably complex information about interactions among teachers, children, schools, and families, and until they become confident in using that information to help constituents solve problems, then anomalous practice and training will not disappear. In terms of getting from here to there, the ecological model advanced by Sheridan and Gutkin is an improvement over the medical model. However, they set up the medical model as a straw man. Although much practice adheres to the medical model of diagnosing children, I think most school psychologists accept the basic tenets of the ecological model-at least in terms of how they think about the work they are doing. Also, I think most trainers of school psychologists view themselves as training from an ecological model. They know that peers, classrooms, and families are important. Yet, what accounts for the disconnect between how people see themselves and what they do? This is, in part, a problem with the ecological model as it is understood, communicated, and taught: a problem that is reflected in the Sheridan and Gutkin analysis. Fundamentally, the ecological model as understood (and practiced) in school psychology is not fully informed; it is not sufficiently developmental or systemic in nature. A simple “map” of the correlates of child outcomes, while crudely descriptive of an ecology, is not sufficient to understand the development of and response to child outcomes that are of concern to teachers and parents. Such a map, particularly when the child is in the middle, often presents the determinants of, or ecological influences upon, child outcomes in terms of arrows (e.g., from peer group to child aggression). This helps us understand that a child’s aggressive behavior is, in part, a function of the child’s peer group-an advance over labeling aggressive behavior as deviant. But the circles and lines in these diagrams overstate the distinctness of these entities they depict, which can lead to thinking it is appropriate to give a diagnostic label to a child (as if aggression or learning problems reside in the