In the decades following the beginning of the pre-doctoral degree in Psychology, Spanish Psychology has developed rapidly, being as it were obliged to make up in a very short time for the three decades' vacuum which was the result of the aftermath of the civil war. Successive generations of graduates in Psychology have become progressively incorporated into the labour market which is always complex and diversified. In conjunction with the Spanish Society of Psychology (SEP), new scientific societies and associations have been created. In December 1979 the Spanish Parliament and the Crown created the Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos (COP). New specialized journals have appeared, often linked to university Departments or Faculties of Psychology, reflecting the results of their research activity which is increasing in quantity and quality. The truncated relationship with Higher Education and Research centers in other countries have been renewed and new bridges and ways of collaboration and exchange have been forged.
In short, the panorama of academic and professional psychology in Spain has gone through a considerable change in these years, achieving status and prestige, and coping with and solving problems of varying complexity, as it is often the case in other countries of similar geographic and cultural milieu.
2.1 School Pscyhology and the School Support Services
The first group of graduates with a predoctoral degree in Psychology who entered the labour market coincided with the first steps of educational reform, propelled by the General Education Law of 1970. This law, stating the need and rightof students in High School to vocational guidance, caused applied psychologists to harbour great hopes, with a priority interest in carrying out their professional activity in tasks related to schools and education. However, neither this law nor later directives enacted in 1982 by the Educational Authorities, which oversees the creation of Vocational Guidance Services in the school system produced immediate developments.
About 31.5% of those graduates who obtained their degree in Psychology before 1980 were self-employed, part-time or temporary employees in the school system. So, for many years, the professional action of psychologists in the education field was carried out mostly in the competitive profit system. They offered their services to school centers, mainly private schools, and to the parents looking for help for their children's learning difficulties or other school-related problems. Special education centres with financial resources also paid for this type of specialized service. In this phase, the emphasis was on the psychological assessment of intelligence, aptitudes, skills, achievement, personality traits and so on using standard tests and questionnaires (most of them validated in Spain under the framework of factor-analysis procedures or specific psychometrics procedures).
Diagnoses on students with learning difficulties and developmental or behavioural disorders were carried out These diagnoses were followed by the design and implementation of reeducation programmes to treat such problems.
Thus, the practice of School Psychology was understood as psychotechnics in the education system, that is, the application of psychological principles, theories, methods and instruments to analyse, to control or alter child's behavior. A great deal of attention was focused on psychological actions with difficult children. Gifted or normal students received scarce attention. The emphasis was on the development of diagnostic and reeducation techniques.
Perhaps this practice and the social image of school psychology associated with it, is how it remains today.
A number of initiatives were taken at the end of the 70's, the goal of which was to support school services. Though they were not in any strict sense school psychology services, all of them foresaw the contributions of school psychology as an essential element and, more important, they foresaw this collaboration as "school support".
The first of these initiatives was taken by the Ministry of Education in 1977. The Ministry created services for Educational Counseling and Vocational Guidance in each province of the country. According to the directives, these services should include, at least, three practitioners, although in some cases this number has since increased in accordance with the school population index in each province. The service emphasized the counseling of students, teachers and parents concerning the child's problems and progress. Special education-related tasks, diagnosis of pupil-behavior problems, school phobias, learning block and so on were not excluded, but more emphasis was placed on tasks and functions linked to normal education and the normal pace of student schooling. Conditions of practice in these services required the individual to have civil servant status (in the Educational System) and the degree of Licenciatura (5 year in a Faculty) in Psychology or Pedagogy . These Services of Educational Counseling and Vocational Guidance, in spite of having their growth limited after the implementation phase (from 1977 to 1982), are still active at present in some Spanish provinces.
In 1978, the National Institute of Special Education, developed a plan of action for the creation of multiprofessional teams with expertise in special education needs and programmes. These teams were to act in coordination with the Services of Educational Counseling and Vocational Guidance. In each team psychologists, pedagogues and social workers work together. Entry to multiprofessional teams requires that the individual has obtained a univeristy degree. Unlike the civil servant status of counsellors in services of educational counseling and vocational guidance, members of multiprofessional teams work under a termed contract of employment.
By 1982, Multiprofessional Teams in Special Education existed all around the country. These teams were to maintain standard procedures in their service, while promoting the integration of disabled students by offering them personalized attention. As a consequence Multiprofessional Teams in Special Education work in a close contact with teachers and schools. In this way, there is a progressive overlap with the function of the Services of Educational Counseling and Vocational Guidance. Although conflict may at times arise between the two services, both provide expert-knowledge and support to the Spanish educational system.
A third initiative came from Local Authorities or City Councils. It was in response to infrastructural deficiencies in public schools, resulting from extreme poverty in industrial belts of big cities. This poverty was a consequence of the migratory movements from rural to urban milieux. In 1950, 69% of the Spanish population lived in small towns whereas in 1980 this figure declined to 42% .
In 1973, Municipal Psychopedagogical Teams in the industrial belt of Barcelona were created. With the advant of the first democratic municipal elections in 1979, the initiative developed in Catalonia and other industrial locations. In 1984, a follow-up study was carried out which showed the existence of 50 teams in Catalonia, 100 in Valencias and 15 in Madrid (Gilolmo, 1989). These teams differed from one another, in terms of their training, types of graduates, membership and conditions of employment. However, pyschologists played an important role, together with pedagogues and, occasionally, social workers.
There was no common plan in the way each team conceived their support functions to the public school system. In many cases, they were still paying more attention to "difficult pupils" and, quite often, followed psychotechnic approaches. In some cases, emphasis was placed on collaboration with schools and teachers to improve the quality of learning achieved. In other cases, attempts were made to compensate for social and cultural inequalities. Efforts were directed toward a community focus, strengthening "direc contact with the population and permanent coordination with political priorities and municipal resouces at the communities´s service" (Bassedas & Huguet, 1983).
These Municipal Teams started to decrease as as consequence of the network of Services and Teams, previously discussed. Nevertheless, their role in building-up school psychology in Spain has been noteworthy. Until the mid-eighties, these municipal teams were the only existing psychological and pedagogical support service to the public school system in Spain. Some teams developed research projects and programmes on educational questions and issues that forged a new way of understanding School Psychology. In contrast to school psychology attending to the diagnosis and treatment of difficult pupils and school problems (i.e, an exclusively individual phenomena), municipal teams called people's attention to the importance of an institutional point of vie. This approach puts the student back into the school context and takes into consideration the goals and characteristics of the school in all its complexity. Municipal teams led to the understanding that school psychology can and should be considered not only as a support services to students with problems, but also a service of benefit to the entire school community.
The transference of educational responsibilities to Territorial Authorities (Comunidades Autonomas) in the country produced a new challenge in what concerns the coordination and even the permanence of the Psychological and Pedagogical network already discussed .
In Catalonia, for instance, it was decided to unify the three kinds of services available. Negotiations, conflicts, functional overlapping and priorities were considered (Giné & Fernández, 1986), and now almost complete integration has been achieved . In the other regions, the unification process has been rather slow and, in some cases, nonexistent.
2.3 School Psychology as a stable professsion
There is little information concerning the number of psychologists that, at present, carry out school and education-related tasks in Spain as a whole . Some data suggest, however, that the number of psychologists working in the educational field has grown spectacularly in the last two decades and that, comparatively, it represents a high percentage of psychologists involved in all professional activities (Hernandez 1982a & 1982b, 1983, 1984; Coll 1989a).
In 1989, according to information received directly from the Department of Teaching of the Generalitat of Catalonia, in this Comunidad Autonoma alone, there were 64 Teams of Psychopedagogical Counselling and Vocational Guidance. Of the 287 professionals working in these teams, 142 were psychologists. In the same framework of Catalonia there are stable teams devoted to "Infantile and Adolescence Attention", "Social Primary Attention Services" and "Precocious Stimulation Services". These services include a certain number of psychologists who carry out tasks related to informal or extra-curricular education. There are also a few Municipal Teams of Psychologists and Pedagogues.
The situation is similar in other Comunidades Autonomas. In 1989, a total of 506 psychologists carried out their professional activity on Multiprofessional Teams and in Services of School Counselling and Vocational Guidance. This number is exceeded by 175 for psychologists who work in Vocational Education units in school centres within the framework of a pilot programme.
A survey carried out by the Colegio Oficial de Psicologos in March 1990 (R.Diaz & I. Quintanilla, 1992) shows that 38.5% of Spanish Psychologists view Educational Psychology as their main field of professional activity. Of these psychologists, 75.9% of them are over 30 years of age and 63.2% are female; 67.1% obtained their degree in Psychology during the 80s. 28.4% have been tenured in a senior position for 2-5 years while 58.3% have been tenured for more than 5 years.
Among Educational psychologists, 19.5% are stable civil servants and 1.5% are temporary. 9.8% have an stable contract of employment in the Public Administration. 7.6% have a temporary contract of employment. 15.1% have stable jobs in private schools whereas 8.2% have temporary contracts of employment in private schools. Finally 30% are self-employed psychologists working in support to the school system. 8.1% are volunteers, mainly in a period of practicum. The average salary is below the average salary among other specialities in Applied Psychology.
Of the 38.5% of Spanish Psychologists working in Educational Psychology. 64% of them carry out clinical psychology as a secondary activity. Conversely, of the 29.9% of psychologists working in clinical psychology. 60.3% of them state that educational psychology is their secondary field of activity. It seems that there is an overlapping between both fields of speciality.
The ten tasks carried out most regularly by educational psychologists include the following: counselling parents about emotional problems and school difficulties of their children, Diagnosis and treatment of learning difficulties, Diagnosis and treatment of problems of adjustment in the school, Individualized attention to children with emotional and personality disorders, Diagnosis and treatment of pupils behaviour in the class, Report authoring for parents, for the management and several authorities, Regular collaboration with teachers in syllabus planning and teaching methods, Diagnosis and treatment of language dysfunctions and, finally, Regular lectures to parents about School Psychology issues.
68.1% of Educational Psychologists are registered in the Social Security System and 30.2% have insurance policies in private firms covering medical services. Only 12.4% of them are affiliated to a trade-union. 76.4% of them have a workweek of five days. 42.1% of them work 30-40 hours a week.
From another survey carried out by the Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Catalunya in July 1987, based on the answers of 20% of its members, the following percentages were calculated : 34.23% were working in the health field; 27.52% worked in the education field; 4,70% worked in work and organizational psychology; 8.72% in the social services field; and the rest were unemployed.
The main methodological differences between the two surveys described is that in the COP study (all the country except Catalonia) the sample was randomized; however, in the COP of Catalonia there was not a randomized distribution of questionnaires. The questionnaire of the COP included a long list of activities (following a task analysis approach) of daily tasks done in present and past jobs. The COP of Catalonia 's survey included only a short-list of regular activities in applied psychology. In the COP of Catalonia the main activity seems to be clinical psychology, while in the COP the main activity is educational psychology.
JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
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