Children who suffer traumatic brain injury frequently experience difficulties in those behaviours represented as “executive” or prefrontal lobe functioning. In an educational setting these may involve disorganisation, difficulty moving from one activity to another, following rules, and staying on task to complete activities. Return to school involves a three-phase process: (1) an assessment period where school is viewed as a vehicle for stability; (2) modification of the school environment; and (3) student strategies. For the assessment phase, checklists are based on neurobehavioural sequelae of brain injuries in children and classified according to functional categories of Personal/Social, Work Habits, and Cognitive/Communicative behaviours. These are used to generate teaching and learning strategies for the second and third phases. One approach presently under trial is the development of executive skill training involving student plans. Student plans provide a framework for training students to generalise from one activity to another. Recent research provides some promise for the efficacy of this approach. The challenge to those working in rehabilitation of students with brain injuries, particularly where the frontal lobes are implicated, is to develop a process where students can recognise there is a problem, apply strategies across settings, unprompted, and monitor their performance. These are the very dysexecutive behaviours typical of students with brain injuries.

The initial interview is an important aspect of development of and intervention in tertiary student learning. Yet there are no published interview schedules available to psychologists working in the area of tertiary academic skills development This paper presents an interview schedule for use with individual tertiary students seeking assistance with learning and academic skills development. Some preliminary comments about the application of the schedule are also offered.

Legal applications of developmental psychology are an increasingly important research topic. A symposium examined children as witnesses, offenders, and participants in the legal process. Children's reporting of events is affected by long delays, interview format, and motivational factors, and their understanding of the meaning of truth develops prior to their definition of lying. The fairness of the law and its processes shows developmental changes in perceived justice. The process of sentencing shows that extralagl factors such as offender age, gender, and employment status affects the penalties imposed by magistrates.

Smartphone ownership estimates indicate the vast majority of young people are engaging with smartphone devices. The medium offers a promising opportunity for psychologists to connect with young people seeking help to traverse challenges with mental health, behaviour, learning and wellbeing. However, the views of young people using apps alongside face-to-face therapy remain largely unexplored. Given that clients make the single strongest contribution to therapeutic outcomes it is important to consider the perspectives of adolescents in clinical settings. Using semistructured qualitative interviews, the experiences of seven Australian secondary school-aged adolescents (12–18 years) involved in app-integrated therapy were explored. Thematic analysis resulted in the identification of eight key themes: Between-sessions, Introduction, Responsive, Age, Mindfulness-Meditation, Connection, Knowledge, and App features. Recommending apps appears to encourage young people to take ownership of their therapy, affording opportunities for self-reflection and rehearsal of valuable skills. Further research focused on understanding the views of young people utilising apps with therapy is needed to maximise potential therapeutic benefits. Preliminary practice recommendations and future research directions are proposed.

During the last decade there has been a call for schools to become more active in the promotion of students’ social and emotional learning (SEL). Given that teachers are significant adults in young people’s lives, they are often in the best position to deliver SEL programs. This small in-depth study investigated the impact of implementing a specific SEL program, “The Best of Coping”, on both the teacher and a class of 26 Year 9 (15-16 years) students. The study used a mixed methodology to evaluate the impact of the program. Both quantitative and qualitative data, including two case studies and entries from the teacher’s reflective journal, are reported. Changes in coping for both teacher and students as well as a positive impact on relationships between teachers and students were demonstrated. The study highlights the importance of the teacher’s role in implementing SEL programs and the challenges for teachers of delivering these programs. Issues associated with the implementation of school-based coping skills programs and the role of educational psychologists in supporting teachers in this work are discussed.

The article discusses the occupational status of school psychologists, and the implications of that status. The question as to whether school psychologists are professionals is quickly dealt with. They are. Then questions are raised concerning problems in professional practice in contemporary Australia, and possible sources of support for the professional in his or her own practice. Continuing professional education (CPE) is suggested as the means of supporting professionals, such as school psychologists, in their practice. Three bases for the type of CPE being advocated are suggested: professional practice; a consortium for provision; clearly defined goals. The perspective of the article is that of all professionals working in Australia. Experience and research in other professions in Australia and from overseas are related to the professional practice of school psychologists in Australia.

The present paper reviews the empirical psychological literature on moral development to examine the hypothesis that children today are more advanced in their moral reasoning than their earlier counterparts. The review briefly examines the classic research on how children understand morality and when they understand the short- and long-term consequences of their behaviour. It then examines replication studies in the moral development literature. The review concludes that there is no evidence for or against the proposition that today’s children are more advanced in their moral reasoning than their earlier counterparts, as there is a distinct lack of reliable replication studies that could answer the question one way or another.

The debate regarding age of entry to school goes back a number of years. It seemed to come to a head in the late 1970s, coinciding with the visit to Australia of Dr Raymond Moore, who put forward the somewhat extreme view that children should not start school before the age of about 8 to 10 years. Hisargument was based on a maturational view of development. Experiences must wait until the child is ‘ready’ and the brain has ‘matured’. In particular, he argued that exposure to early reading and the close work involved in the pre-school and early primary school could harm the developing visual system and lead to long-term visual defects, particularly short-sightedness.

Moore's position was of course contrary to the mainstream of thought in this area, and particularly the recognition, stemming from the work of Hebb and Piaget, of the importance of the early environment in laying the foundations for later development. It nevertheless had some popular appeal, and was taken up by various parent and teacher pressure groups who called for changes to school entry policies and specifically raising the age of entry to school to five years.

The greater risk of mental health issues for all members of a family when a child has a physical disability is well established. Families' views of the type of psychological services that will be most helpful were surveyed. Parents of 69 children with physical disabilities (primarily cerebral palsy) completed a postal survey of psychological issues they had experienced in the past, value of any help received, and their descriptions of experiences with support workers that were either helpful or unhelpful to their psychological coping. Parents indicated strongly that the help for the psychological issues was helpful. Of all categories of support worker identified, the percentage of psychologists being helpful was highest. One distinctive quality of the parent-identified features of effective support services reported in this study is their simplicity. Parents want to be supported by workers who are caring, do their jobs well, provide good information about the issues and help them connect with other families.

Hyperactive children first diagnosed as toddlers were followed up into the early school years. When Compared with matched normal children the hyperactives showed clear problems in behaviour temperament, and cognitive development, at the time of first assessment. After two follow-up assessments at 5 and 6 years of age the only differences remaining between the groups were those involving hyperactive and conduct problem behaviour and a difficult temperament profile. Academic progress was normal although this may have been influenced by sample attrition where lower I.Q. children dropped out. Hyperactive children remained at risk for behavioural problems at home and at school.

According to Farrell and Lunt (1995), educational psychology is in danger of becoming a second class profession in applied psychology. Controversies about the role and training of educational psychologists need urgent attention for the profession to prosper. A clear view of roles that educational psychologists are expected to fill and of roles that are best filled by educational psychologists will improve the content and nature of training programs. Graduate training programs are likely to be where change is either resisted or nurtured. Six issues facing educational psychologists in Australia and ways that training programs may contribute to their resolution are canvassed.

Clinical supervision is an essential feature of high-quality psychological practice. However, it has been under-investigated within the field of school psychology and particularly in Australia. An overview of the field of school psychology, its clinical supervision, and its use by school psychologists is provided. Past literature has suggested inadequate engagement with supervision among these practitioners. In order to examine current work contexts and supervision experiences, 77 school psychologists were surveyed. Engagement in supervision appears to have markedly increased since the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) Continuing Professional Development mandates in 2010. However, the data indicated that further organisational and policy support of school psychologists is warranted.

Two key assumptions fundamental to theories and research that explain the learning of tertiary students is that students readily know and can articulate which behaviours of academics positively influence their learning. In this study open-ended questions were used to elicit responses from 200 students, one group enrolled in psychology as a major, and another group studying psychology units as an elective. Results showed that there was no difference in the perceptions of students as a function of their major in psychology. Clear and professional delivery of material was most frequently identified as best practice for academics. Students knew this because it was most frequently associated with student understanding and performance. The teaching approach of academics and the aids to learning used by academics were nominated most frequently as staff activities that enhanced student learning. Students knew this was effective because it enhanced understanding and performance and because of the provision of information from staff. It was suggested that academics could be more effective and students would learn more effectively if lectures and tutorials were delivered more carefully and facilities and aids were improved. For each question, between 12% to 40% of respondents did not know how to appropriately respond. The discussion focused on the meaning of the no responses, the identified factors of instructional metacognitive knowledge, the areas that academics might improve, and the necessity for instructional metacognitive knowledge to accompany information transferred in lectures and tutorials.

About eight years ago I co-wrote a paper on guidance officer training in Victoria which argued that guidance officers required training in six core competency areas. There were identified as assessment, counselling, research, educational consultancy, systems intervention, and professional practice.

At the time, the intent was to argue for a broader training for guidance officers rather than the traditional focus on issues of assessment and counselling. It was recognising an international trend in service delivery from individual casework models to those which incorporated consultancy and direct classroom interventions. The paperwas arguing fora comprehensive training program which supported guidance officers and gave them the skills and strategies required to make this shift.

A key assumption of the mainstreaming movement is that exposure of young children to their disabled peers provides opportunities for the formation of accurate views of the characteristics and attributes of children with disabilities. Essentially, it is argued that experience enables children to transcend labelling, stereotyping and stigmatization. Prospective data are reported on the mainstreaming of two preschool aged children with spina bifida, based on the content analysis of records of speech, collected over a school year, on 22% of the times when children had opportunities to interact socially. The data indicate that the children seemed to generate their own labels, disability terms and developmental mythologies, which endured across the year. The study highlights the limited attention that has been paid to the collection of data on the social-cognitive processes of children and their disabled peers in mainstreamed settings and emphasizes the scant consideration of evidence from psychology in the mainstreaming debate.

If you are a psychologist interested in children with learning problems, the odds are high that one of your main assessment tools is the WISC—R (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Revised). Yet the WISC—R has come under heavy criticism in recent years, because of the lack of a theoretical rationale for the subscales as measures of intelligence, and the lack of a rationale connecting the assessment measures with remedial procedures. In this paper I'll briefly review these criticisms, and concentrate primarily upon reviewing a recently released test battery (the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children) which claims to overcome these two criticisms.

This paper reports information from three separate large-scale surveys of students' spelling achievement in South Australian schools. The data were collected over a period of twenty-six years. Changes in spelling standards are discussed, with particular reference to the possible impaa that changes in teaching methods may have on children's spelling ability. The instrument used for testing was the South Australian Spelling Test (SAST).