Scholarly Works Of School Psychology Faculty: How Much Of Our Field\u27s Current Publications Focus On Racism And Anti-Racism?

In the summer of 2020, following heightened attention on instances of police brutality, racist violence, and Black lives lost at the hands of police, the school psychology community came together to reaffirm their commitment as anti-racist agents of change (García-Vázquez et al., 2020). School psychology faculty and their publications can be a key force in moving these efforts forward. Their works train future school psychologists and guide best practice, and can demonstrate current activity, focus, and expertise within the field. With these potential impacts of scholarly works in mind, work that identifies and describes racism specifically is productive because it addresses racism without softening language in fear of white fragility, or other sensitivity or defensiveness. Work specific to anti-racism is important because it demonstrates a practice beyond being non-racist, one that is an active practice of challenging racism and the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate it (Kendi, 2019; Nelson, 2015). Thus, this inprogress study seeks to identify existing scholarly publications that focus on racism and antiracism from among all school psychology publications. The research team identified 906 professors from 213 American Psychological Association (APA) accredited and National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) approved school psychology programs and examined a sample of 11,262 publications conducted by 510 professors from 130 programs looking for content relating to the field of school psychology. Accredited programs were found through APA and NASP websites, while each professor’s name was listed on their university’s website. An initial publication search was conducted using each professor’s name within Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), APA PsycInfo, and APA PsycArticles. Upon close inspection, 3,351 publications were found containing research in school psychology. A small sample of 284 publications were categorized yielding to 2.46 percent publications relating to racism and 0.70 percent relating to antiracism. The remaining 96.8 percent related to other categories within school psychology. Considering the impact of the field’s scholarly publications on current and future school psychologists, the field needs an increase in articles focusing on racism and anti-racism to cultivate our skills as school psychologists and to demonstrate our field’s growth in building expertise and focus on these important efforts over time. Some limitations of the current study, including difficulty identifying professors and each of their publications, will be listed within our poster.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/urs2021psych/1018/thumbnail.jp