Can Research and the Real Work of School Psychologists Mix?

By Brian P. Leung,

Research Committee Chair

Did you know that CASP has had an award to promote school-based applied research for practicing school psychologists for the last 20 years? Are they crazy, you say? Don’t they know that school psychologists are too busy to do research in the schools! 

Before you skip this entire discussion consider that many school psychologists already routinely engage in “research” activities. You are conducting research whenever you help with determining effectiveness of programs (e.g. a reading program, the after-school program, the anti-bullying program). If you’re been doing any student progress monitoring (e.g. of your counseling sessions, or interventions generated at an SST), you’ve engaged in collecting data to verify a hypothesis. And of course, the most common form of research activities for school psychologists is the single-case study of students.

It’s not a big stretch to take your research skills and apply them to new areas or to new programs that your school/district is trying (hey, how about empirically validating a local program to satisfy No Child Left Behind requirement?). The CASP Scientist-Practitioner Research Grant can provide you with some money to get this done. You can use the money for any support that might help you with your activities. Research grant for the last

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