School psychologists are key school-based personnel when responding to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The present paper explored the experiences and attitudes of school psychologists, with a special focus on collaborating during suicide intervention activities. Using a descriptive phenomenological approach, a purposive sample procedure identified 10 school psychologists. Data were collected via inperson, semi-structured interviews. Most participants were female (n = 9) and all were practicing within the school setting and had delivered suicide intervention activities.Experiences described through interviews suggested collaboration while responding to suicide was a common activity that enhances the quality of services, external collaboration-though beneficial for students-can be a barrier to the provision of services, school psychologists cope through collaboration, and suicide intervention services would benefit from increased collaboration.Implications for practice include working to develop stable partnerships with external stakeholders and increasing collaboration during suicide assessment and response.
In schools today, educators are frequently assessing students' academic performance and growth for a variety of reasons, including planning and evaluating the effectiveness of instruction, determining placement in special programs and services, and fulfilling accountability requirements. Each of these assessment purposes raises unique questions and concerns about what is measured, how it is measured, and how the information is used. These concerns are heightened for students who are linguistically and/or culturally diverse (e.g., Abedi, 2004;Abedi & Gándara, 2006) and contribute to the substantial differences in educational opportunities and academic achievement that continue to exist between English learners (EL) and non-ELs and students of historically underserved racial and ethnic groups
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