An Analysis of School Psychology Faculty by Graduating University.

Abstract

Shortages of school psychologists have been documented for many years with this deficiency extending not just to practitioners but to trainers as well. This article presents the results of a search to identify individuals employed in academic institutions and their graduating universities. Using an Internet search and mailings to doctoral degree-granting school psychology programs, 633 individuals were identified as having graduated from a school psychology program in the United States or Canada and being currently employed full-time in a faculty position in an institute of higher education. When graduating university was examined, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Texas at Austin were consistently the highest rated programs in terms of producing school psychology academics. Other findings indicated that APA-accredited programs produced the majority of individuals in academic positions and that women have outnumbered men in entering the professorate every year since 1987. Women also currently comprise 51% of the school psychology professorate. While these data should not be considered a measure of program quality, they do provide an objective rating of program success in preparing students for careers in academia.

Men in academic school psychology: A national survey

“…Generally, the findings from this survey indicate that, for the most part, the perceptions about workplace climate and experiences of male academic school psychologists parallel those reported by women in a previous study (Akin‐Little et al, 2004). Although differential treatment based on gender was perceived to exist for both genders, it was not of a large‐scale magnitude.…”

“…In 1971, Farling and Hoedt reported that women comprised only 18% of school psychology faculty. This increased to 24% in 1977 (Brown & Lindstrom, 1977), 34% in 1989 (McMaster, Reschly, & Peters, 1989), 46% in 1998 (Thomas, 1998), 51% in 2002 (Curtis, 2002), and 53% in 2004 (Little et al, 2004). Reschly (2000) predicted that women would continue to increase proportionately to men, with women making up 65% of faculty and 50% of program directors by 2010.…”

“…Out of this pool, 146 (41%) agreed to participate in this study. As a comparison, these participants will be compared with participants from a survey of women conducted in a previous study (Akin‐Little et al, 2004). Demographic characteristics are shown in Tables 1, 2, and 3.…”

“…Other studies have found gender differences in academia in terms of mentoring (Brown, Caraway, Brady, Iwamasa, & Caldwell‐Colbert, 2002), rating of vitae (Sandler & Hall, 1986, as cited in Akin‐Little et al, 2004), rating of letters of recommendations for academic positions (Madera, Hebl, & Martin, 2009), salary (Nettles, Perna, & Bradburn, 2000; Perna, 2001), expectations for future salary (Singer, Cassin, & Dobson, 2005), tenure (Perna, 2005), and faculty rank (Perna, 2005). In each case, the differences favored men.…”

Research productivity and scholarly impact of APA-accredited school psychology programs: 2005–2009

“…(2004) conducted the first examination of the research productivity of faculty in APA-accredited school psychology programs using data in the PsycINFO database from 1995 to 1999. Prior to their study, previous research on research in school psychology focused only on articles that were published in the major school psychology journals (e.g., Little, 1997;Little et al, 2004;O'Callaghan, 1974;Reynolds & Clark, 1984;Roberts et al, 2006;Webster et al, 1993). Carper and Williams, however, showed that 70% of the publications by school psychology program faculties appeared in other social and behavioral science journals.…”