What do you see as the most significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the field of school psychology?
COVID-19 may prove to be one of the most disruptive experiences that schools in the United States and around the world have faced in modern history. It will profoundly affect the field of school psychology in terms of policy, practice, and research. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and intensified longstanding inequities and opportunity gaps within the U.S. public education system, illustrating racial and socioeconomic disparities. Students did not have equitable access to real-time online instruction, and those who were English learners or receiving special education services did not have their needs met. Some children experienced trauma, stress, grief, loss, and food insecurity because of the pandemic; others were exposed to abuse or maltreatment. The need for schools to offer safe and secure learning environments, deliver academic and mental health services, and support educators and families has never been more critical or central to society.
So far, reentry planning has been tenuous given rapidly changing guidelines and recommendations as well as a lack of knowledge about the full impact of COVID-19 on educational, family, and health care systems. Educators, caregivers, and school administrators are grappling with the educational and COVID-19 risks of back-to-school options. School psychologists are key figures to advocate for children’s physical health, social-emotional learning, well-being, and education as children return to school in any format. School psychologists will help to identify academic gaps and mental health supports for students. They will also bolster multitiered prevention systems to make sure services are delivered, whether in school buildings or via hybrid and remote learning. Being informed about and sensitive to trauma as well as being culturally responsive will be essential to addressing the needs of the school community. If schools do not physically reopen, ingenuity will be required to provide these supports remotely. School psychologists may work with administrators to use community-based resources to support children, educators, and their families as school systems try to mitigate the potentially large learning losses from a months-long hiatus from school.
How can School Psychology help the field address the challenges we are facing?
The editorial team supports the submission of manuscripts that capture resiliency, innovation, and creativity that came from the challenges that arose from COVID-19. We currently have a call for papers for a special issue, Perspectives on COVID-19: Addressing Diverse Needs of Children, Youth, Families, Educators, and Human Service Professionals. We encourage authors to submit manuscripts that address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth and their families, educators, allied human services professionals, and the systems in which they work. We are particularly enthusiastic about submissions related to youth who may be most vulnerable to the educational impacts of COVID-19, including youth with disabilities; English language learners; undocumented children and families; and youth who are in foster care, experiencing homelessness, or in the juvenile justice system.
As the editor of a journal, how have you seen capacities and workloads change during the COVID-19 pandemic? How do you think journals can best address the needs of authors and reviewers during this time?
Preliminary analysis of manuscript submissions within science and economic fields as well as analysis of emergency COVID-19 grant awards has highlighted disparities across gender and race, with suspected high impact on early-career professionals. Lower submission rates among women, scientists of color (especially women scientists of color), and parents of young children (because of schooling from home and daycare closures) have been broadly documented. We should attend to these data carefully given the disproportionate percentages of women in psychology who receive APA fellow status and scientific awards. This pandemic is likely have a disproportionate impact on productivity for parents, women faculty, and faculty of color. Journal editors and editorial review teams can promote the citation of women scholars and scholars of color as well as account for this discrepancy when it comes to scholarship recognition. As a starting point, our editorial team has extended the timeline for completing reviews from 21 days to 35 days, and we are happy to individualize timelines for authors making revisions. We have asked senior scholars to consider reviewing more manuscripts than typical and serving the journal in guest action editor roles.
Your editorial also discusses the current climate and efforts in the fight against racial and social injustice. What role does the journal play in supporting those efforts?
The inequities and systemic racism highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic along with the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have generated one of the most significant calls for social justice and antiracism in recent history. The school psychology community and its leaders generated a unified antiracism statement and call to action recognizing and reaffirming the ethical responsibility of school psychologists to be antiracist agents of change. The editorial team supports this call to action and is committed to making changes for the field of school psychology. To that end, the editorial team will
- Work to ensure we have diverse representation on our editorial board.
- Promote culturally competent manuscript reviews by encouraging reviewers to access APA reviewer training resources as well as encourage the use of and familiarity with JARS, bias-free language guidelines, and APA’s multicultural guidelines and race and ethnicity guidelines.
- Update guidance for authors to consider how their positionality influences their perspective, research design, and data interpretation and generalizability.
- Actively recruit manuscripts on topics related to students from historically marginalized backgrounds, systemic inequalities, and structural racism.
- Invite scholars from racial and ethnic minoritized backgrounds to submit their work.
- Provide annual updates on our progress to our editorial board members, readers, and potential authors.
What do you look for in a manuscript?
We look for manuscripts that are (a) well written and follow APA recommendations and guidelines; (b) address critically important issues pertaining to the science, practice, and policy of children, youth, and the adults who support their school-based experiences; and (c) use appropriate methodologies (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods) to answer research questions. We also are looking to see whether a manuscript fits within four major types: the standard empirical article, brief report, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and advances in research methods.
What advice do you have for prospective school psychologist authors who have not yet submitted a manuscript to School Psychology?
We encourage submissions from new authors of manuscripts that fit within our scope, as we would like to increase the diversity of voices and reach of our journal. A prospective author should become familiar with the mission of the journal and author guidelines. I encourage prospective authors to read one or two published articles representing the manuscript type aligned with their project to evaluate journal expectations and visualize the final product. I am happy to discuss manuscript fit with authors who reach out to me by email.
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Robin Codding, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences and the editor-in-chief of School Psychology.
