Sherrie Proctor

Queens College, CUNY | QC CUNY · Department of Educational and Community Programs

This phenomenological study used a series of three in-depth interviews with seven African American participants, for a total of 21 interviews, to explore their experiences in the specialist and doctoral level school psychology programs they left prior to obtaining a professional entry-level degree. The study' s purpose was to investigate what...

Lack of racially, ethnically, and linguistically (REL) diverse school psychologists has been a concern for decades. Recent and rapid increases in student diversity within America’s public schools require that school psychology address the longstanding lack of diversity within the field. This article details the demographics of school psychologists...

Since the mid 1960s, there has been a noticeable decrease in the percentage of African American educators. Although a sizeable literature is dedicated to understanding how to recruit African American teachers, fewer studies focus on recruiting and retaining African American school psychologists. Therefore, this exploratory qualitative study investi...

Response to Intervention (RtI) consists of multi-tiered instructional delivery systems in which educators provide research-based interventions to students that increase in intensity depending on students’ instructional response. RtI is currently being implemented in schools across the United States. RtI’s shift away from standardized testing offers...

Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth experience harassment and discrimination in schools and these experiences lead to increased negative social-emotional outcomes. Youth who can identify at least one supportive adult at school report better outcomes than youth who cannot identify a safe adult. Yet, many educators report feelin...

The extrajudicial murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020 sparked protests across the United States (U.S.) with demands that the country reckon with its legacy of structural racism. School psychology responded to this moment with the School Psychology Unified Anti-Racism Statement and Call to Action, a commitment among the national U.S.-...

There are growing calls to diversify the ranks of school psychology practitioners, graduate educators, and researchers by recruiting more students of color in school psychology doctoral programs. Past research on retention across many fields in higher education indicates that Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC) students entering doctoral...

Doctoral training programs educate future practitioners, scholars, and researchers. They therefore are an important site of inquiry for critical school psychologists interested in interrogating and confronting the inequities that exist within the field. We conducted four focus groups with 15 Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC) students in...

This study used an exploratory case study approach to explore the race-related experiences of a Black male specialist level school psychology graduate student. We used the CRT tenets of racism as normal and permanent and intersectionality and antiessentialism to help us make sense of the findings. Findings revealed that race and racism did not nega...

This article reflects on key ideas in Graves (2009) that are relevant to recruitment, retention, and inclusion of Black people in school psychology. The article begins with a critique of the field's lack of engagement with the ideas Albert Beckham introduced in the 20th century. Then, the article discusses issues that Black school psychologists are...

Critical Theories for School Psychology and Counseling introduces school psychologists and counselors to five critical theories that inform more equitable, inclusive work with marginalized and underserved student populations. Offering accessible conceptualizations of each theory and explicit links to application in practice and supervision, the boo...

Gender and sexually diverse (GSD) students face unique challenges in schools due to the privileging of cisgender and heterosexist norms in these settings. In particular, GSD youth who belong to ethnically and racially minoritized groups face further challenges within school environments that disregard their cultural contexts and intersectional iden...

The health, economic, and social challenges associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present a range of threats to students’ well-being, psychoeducational experiences, and outcomes, spurring fears for a “lost generation.” In this article, we present COVID-19 as a large-scale multisystemic disaster causing massive disruptions and losses,...

School psychologists enter the third decade of the 21st century marked by mass protests against state-sanctioned violence against Black people, worsening economic and environmental crises, and a deadly pandemic that makes preexisting disparities worse. We argue that the profession can respond to the challenges children, families, and schools face a...

The extrajudicial killing of Black people, particularly unarmed Black boys and men, at the hands of police is one of the most pressing social and racial justice issues in the USA. The awareness of, and indirect exposure to, police killings of Black people has a detrimental impact on the academic achievement, school attendance, mental health, and so...

This article introduces the articles in the special issue, School consultation grounded in social justice: Dismantling white privilege in education. The authors first highlight salient aspects of each of the five articles. The article ends with a call to action for educators to use consultation to effect systems change that will interrupt white pri...

This paper explores how intersecting identities within poverty, race/ethnicity, and sexuality, often lead to increased risk factors within multiple health domains. The intersectionality framework provides an approach to understanding the pernicious effects that identifying with multiple stigmatized social identities has on youth. The authors highli...

Lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the school psychology workforce has been a concern since the profession's inception. One solution is to graduate more racially and ethnically diverse individuals from school psychology programs. This structured review explored the characteristics of studies published from 1994 to 2017 that investigated graduat...

This qualitative study investigated eight African‐American specialist‐level students’ experiences with and perceptions of their retention and persistence toward degree completion in school psychology programs. Findings indicate that participants deemed the general supports faculty offered to all students and positive, supportive relationships with...

The U.S. population is rapidly becoming more diverse in a number of ways. This rapid diversification has implications for pre-K–12 schools as well as for society at large. Diversity within the student population provides educators with an important opportunity to teach students how to live in a pluralistic U.S. society and an increasingly global wo...

This newsletter article explicates the meaning of intersectionality and offers recommendations for how school psychologists can use intersectionality as a practice lens to service students who are the most risk for experiencing discrimination and marginalization in school settings.

The current study investigated the intersection of race/ethnicity and two related factors, gender and bilingual status, and the experience of racial microaggressions in a sample of school psychology graduate students. We proposed that race intersects not only gender but also bilingual status, leading to significant differences in the frequency of e...

This chapter advocates for the use of qualitative research to explore issues related to multicultural populations in educational settings. The chapter explores paradigms, philosophical parameters, and approaches to qualitative research that can be used in pre-kindergarten to university settings with multicultural populations. The chapter also offer...

Scholars in special education and school psychology are engaged in renewed debate about the disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in special education following research and commentaries challenging long held assumptions that many students are inappropriately identified with special needs...

Racial and social(in)justice issues continue to exist in U.S. educational institutions. Despite this, school psychology research rarely addresses issues related to racial justice. Further, the emergence of social justice discourse and research is fairly recent in school psychology. The purpose of this special issue is to present conceptual articles...

The purpose of this study was to investigate ethnically and racially diverse school psychology students' experiences with racial microaggressions in school psychology graduate training. Through a national survey of ethnically and racially diverse school psychology students (N 5 228), the study examined if level of graduate training (i.e., interns v...

Shortages of school psychologists and the underrepresentation of minorities in school psychology represent longstanding concerns. Scholars recommend that one way to address both issues is to recruit individuals from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds into school psychology. The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics and m...

Schools in the United States are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of students’ disability status, ethnicity, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other characteristics (Lopez & Bursztyn, 2013; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2014). This diversity provides educators opportunities to teach stu...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth experience typical tasks of adolescence, but may also face heterosexist and homophobic environments and LGBT-related victimization that can lead to greater risk of poor psychological outcomes compared to non-LGBT youth. LGBT youth who are supported by peers, parents, and school personnel may be pr...

U.S. population demographic shifts present challenges for school psychologists regarding culturally responsive and competent primary prevention of academic, behavior, and mental health problems. These challenges exist not because diversity is problematic, but because increased diversity requires school psychologists to develop awareness, knowledge,...

Rapid demographic shifts in the United States’ school-aged population require school psychology to research and address issues related to limited racial/ethnic diversity in the profession. This qualitative study explored the work-related experiences and perceptions of 30 African American School Psychologists who practiced in the Southeastern United...

An empirical focus on the perspectives and experiences of practitioners who work in urban school districts is lacking in the school psychology literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the professional roles and practices of school psychologists who serve students, families, and schools located in urban school districts. S...

Previous research has examined the quantity and types of diversity-related research in the field of school psychology, revealing gaps in the literature. Extension of this line of research with current data and comparison to related disciplines is needed. This study used content analysis to address these issues, with a specific focus on the racial a...

Despite a clear need, few resources exist to guide field-based multicultural internship supervision practices in school psychology. This article draws on literature from counseling and clinical psychology and related disciplines to ground and define multicultural internship supervision within the context of school psychology professional practice....

This article presents the conceptual foundations and specific features of an ecologically oriented model of school-based organizational consultation. The authors begin by providing an overview of ecological theory. This is followed by a brief description of a model of school-based organizational consultation, with a special focus on the ecological...

School psychology: A blueprint for training and practice IIII (Blueprint III; Ysseldyke et al., 2006) represents a model for future school psychology instruction and practice. This model illustrates how, along a continuum of skill development from novice to expert, school psychologists can develop professional competencies that support our role as...