Understanding Student Experiences in School Psychology Doctoral Programs: A Case Study Exploring Ontario’s School Psychologist Recruitment and Retention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The persistent shortage of school psychologists in Ontario's K-12 schools significantly impacts students' access to essential mental health and academic support services. Despite the critical nature of this shortage, limited research exists examining why school psychology graduates choose to work outside the education system. This qualitative case study investigated the experiences and perspectives of nine doctoral students enrolled in Ontario's three school psychology graduate programs to understand the factors influencing their career decisions. Semi-structured interviews explored participants' program experiences, practicum placements, and workplace preferences. Thematic analysis revealed three primary themes: (1) Challenges to Professional Identity (PI) and PI Development—including the perceived status of school psychology, the scope of practice and misalignment between training and practice, and ethical conflicts between professional guidelines and school board practices; (2) Importance of Connection and Collaboration—highlighting the benefit of supportive program faculty and placement supervisors, the value of sustained relationships with colleagues, families, and students, and the barriers created by the current service delivery models; and (3) Weighing the Practicalities—encompassing concerns around program coursework and school board placement logistics, as well as work-life balance and schedule flexibility. The findings suggest that addressing the school psychologist shortage requires a multifaceted approach: school boards must expand service delivery models and offer flexible employment options, while doctoral programs need to provide more comprehensive training across all competency areas. Additionally, strengthening collaboration between universities and school boards, coupled with initiatives to encourage practitioners to supervise and teach, is essential for building a sustainable pipeline of school psychologists in educational settings. This study contributes novel insights into how graduate training experiences shape career decisions and offers specific recommendations for systemic change.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.028 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".