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This paper describes a social skills programme run in one primary school designed to promote children's cooperative skills and anger management. The programme was staffed by Child and Adolescent Mental Health professionals with educational psychologist and school support. Eight children with severe emotional and behavioural problems participated and completed the 20-week programme. Pre and post data were collected for the children, parents and teachers. Parents were supported by regular meetings and domiciliary visits from an assistant psychologist. Teaching staff met regularly with the team and had frequent supportive contact with the assistant psychologist. Two educational psychologists-in-training made an independent qualitative evaluation of the programme, interviewing the children, their parents and teachers, as well as members of the multi-agency team. After attending the group, the children showed a significant reduction in their anxiety, parents reported a significant reduction in oppositional behaviour and teachers a significant reduction in attention-deficit hyperactive difficulties type behaviour. All measures showed a significant or positive trend, although there was some disappointment in the level of parent participation in the school-based parent meetings. Reasons for this are discussed and the case for multi-agency social skills interventions is made, along with a broader discussion of the role of the educational psychologist.

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This paper explores how educational psychologists working in a training/consultative way can enable teachers to manage challenging pupil behaviour more effectively. It sets out a rationale which encourages schools to embrace a group based teacher peer-support system as part of regular school development. It then explores the usefulness of the Staff Sharing Scheme as an exemplar of such an approach from the perspective of school based participants. Through a casestudy approach, the current findings suggest that group based peer-support programmes help teachers reflect on the causes of disruptive behaviour holistically and subsequently to problem solve in a more coherent manner. This leads to changes in teacher behaviour within the classroom. Issues of time and trust were identified as important obstacles to the potential development of such a scheme within the school.

This article takes as its focus the place of ethics within the profession of educational psychology. It argues that ethics within educational psychology is very much an embryonic field of inquiry, even though in their distinctive ways, ethics and educational psychology have much in common as critiques of human behaviour. Generic “at risk” situations which may lead to ethical complications are identified – unforeseen dilemmas, inadequate anticipation, unavoidable dilemmas, unclear dilemmas, inadequate sources of guidance and loyalty clashes. Drawing upon the literature and professional experiences it is then suggested that there are common ethically troubling issues and situations which educational psychologists have to confront – confidentiality, questionable interventions, competence, testing and assessment, resource allocation, collusive practice, conduct of colleagues and provision. Ways and means to promote greater ethical mindfulness among individual educational psychologists (EPs) and within local education authority (LEA) psychology services are suggested. These include planned continuing professional development (CPD) which takes as its foci the importance of ethical insight, ethical principles and ethical decision-making. It is also proposed that psychology services consider a range of organisational arrangements to heighten ethical mindfulness – the formal adoption of professional codes of conduct, ethics education during induction, the establishment of an ethics committee, a charter of users’ rights, the use of an ethical ombudsman and mentors, and the establishment of ethical case conferences along with the elevation of professional supervision to increase the opportunities for conscious consideration of ethical issues.