It is widely recognized that multiple factors are involved in the production of student disadvantage, and that the difficulties which many children face at school are complex, multilayered and intersectional (Thomas & Loxley, 2022). Nonetheless, the current development with more children deemed eligible for special education and psychiatric services also raise questions about the way students with special needs are understood and described. In this presentation, I will focus on educational psychologists (EPs), who play an important role in assessing student eligibility for special education. Currently, EPs spend a considerable amount of time writing psychoeducational reports or what is also often referred to as statutory educational psychology reports (Buck, 2015).
In most countries, EPs have tried to shift from an individualized focus on children with problems to a focus on how systemic and relational understandings of children are expected to improve educational psychological services for children, professionals, and parents (Szulevicz & Tanggaard, 2017; Moen et al., 2018; Kolnes et al., 2021). The main reason behind this shift is that EPs are supposed to help facilitate inclusive learning environments as special education needs expenditures represent an ever-increasing part of school budgeting. It currently seems, however, that the need for educational psychological services has grown substantially over the last years. The consequence of the enhanced need for educational psychological services is that EPs end up spending more time making individual student assessments and writing psychoeducational reports in place of engaging in preventative work and pedagogical counselling (Burns et al., 2020)
Interestingly, the time spent, and the efforts made by EPs in writing the psychoeducational reports do not seem to measure up with the expectations of teachers and parents. Teachers often report low satisfaction with psychoeducational reports, as they are difficult to translate into everyday practice for teachers, and because the readability of the reports often is relatively bad (Burns et al., 2020).
Different studies have investigated teachers’ understandings, preferences and comprehension of psychoeducational reports (Umaña et al., 2019), and although Brenner (2003) and Dobrowski (2020) argue that the recommendation section in a psychoeducational report is the most important section of the whole report, as it offers parents, teachers and others advice and a way forward in relation to the child/student, surprisingly little research has been devoted to the specific recommendations made by EPs in psychoeducational reports (Burns et al., 2020).
This presentation is based on an empirical study in which 111 psychoeducational reports from two different Danish authorities were analyzed. The following questions guided the study: (a) what kinds of recommendations are made in the reports? and (b) what do the recommendations in the psychoeducational reports tell us about EPs’ work, assessment methods and understandings of children. The results are used to discuss what the recommendations in the psychoeducational reports tell us about (a) the status of educational psychology practice and (b) the schools and learning environments that children are part of.
Across the 111 reports and regardless of the length of the recommendation sections, a consistent pattern was identified: the need for clear structure in the learning environment was part of the recommendation section in 107 (98, 2%) of the 109 reports with a recommendation section. Whilst there were slight variations in the specific formulations of the recommendation across the reports, the need for providing structure on a consistent basis was, in other words, a standard recommendation in the reports.
In the presentation, I will analyze what this standardized and maybe even stereotypical recommendation can tell us about 1) EP’s counselling routines, 2) the understanding of children with special needs and 3) the school system.

In this presentation, an empirical study in which 111 psychoeducational reports from two different authorities – 94 reports completed by 31 different EPs from one authority, and 17 reports completed by nine different EPs from the other authority – are analyzed. The first authority is a relatively big Danish authority, while the second is a relatively small one. After receiving permission from the local authorities and a university faculty review board, 111 statutory psychoeducational reports were randomly selected from the population of reports in the two authorities from 2019-2021. All the collected reports were completed by trained psychologists. 13 EPs from the two authorities were also interviewed for the study. Braun and Clarkes’ (2006) thematic analysis was used as an approach to analyzing both the psychoeducational reports and the interviews. The thematic analysis was accomplished in four steps: Step 1: Familiarization with the data. The first step consisted of reading through the reports to identify initial themes and patterns. Step 2: Qualitative interviews. On basis of the identification of the different themes, an interview guide was formulated and the 13 qualitative interviews with the EPs were conducted. The interviews were conducted by the author of the paper, and they were transcribed verbatim. Step 3: Categorization of the reports: The psychoeducational reports were coded and categorized. Categorizations for example consisted of patterns in referral reasons for the students in the reports or of different kinds of recommendations in the reports. Step 4: Searching for themes. All reports and transcribed interviews were compared to identify cross-cutting themes and patterns. The two datasets were grouped in themes and re-examined.

The practice field of educational psychology counselling is of an extremely multifaceted nature with different types of users and parties (parents, teachers, stakeholders et), a diversity of methods, a broad range of needs and services at different levels (Rosenfield, 2022; Müller et al., 2021). The range of work that EP-counsellors do is ever widening. It is nowadays a vibrant and expanding profession field which is becoming more influential, in both the lives of children and in its influence on government policy (Swinson & Stringer, 2019). Nevertheless, the role of educational psychologists and counsellors has been heavily discussed for the last 30 years. Despite the difficulties to define the effects of educational psychological services (Müller et al., 2021), the growing special education expenditures and increased time spent on statutory psychoeducational reports have sparked a renewed interest in the professional backgrounds and competencies of EP-counsellors. By analysing the recommendations in psychoeducational reports and interviewing EPs about their perspectives on psychoeducational reports, the expected outcome of this presentation is threefold. Firstly, it will focus on the working practices of EPs in supporting inclusive learning environments and assessing student eligibility for special education services. The presentation will also ask critical questions about the normativity of educational psychology practice (Szulevicz, 2021). Secondly, the presentation will discuss what the standardized recommendations in the reports tell us about the understanding of students with special needs. Thirdly, I will discuss what the EPs’ repeated recommendation on the need for further structure in relation to the students tells us about the school system. Do schools in general have difficulties in meeting the needs of all learners and how can the EPs’ recommendations be interpreted from an educational/school perspective?

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