According to UNESCO, Covid-19 crisis it’s the biggest disruption of educational systems in the history. On 30th September 2020, around 1.077 billion learners has been affected by school closures. School at distance impacted also on reduced psychological support and determined psychological negative effects, as demonstrated by scientific research, a needs analysis performed by IIAPHS among 4471 tests and demonstrated increased levels of anxiety, psychological distress, and sleep disorders, and a research study performed by Istituto Piepoli and commissioned by the Italian Order of Psychologists that found that the 73% of the respondents requested more presence of psychologists in the educational system in order to support students.
The Covid-19 crisis forced also psychologists to offer a support at distance. Anyhow, this found both psychologists and beneficiaries unprepared because:
- in the vast majority of cases psychological consultancy is offered in presence;
- before Covid-19 psychological orders had contrasting positions about the performance of online consultancy, publishing guidelines at support in some cases or also discouraging this method;
- we analyzed the University Bachelor and Masters Degrees in the Psychology offered by the Universities of the participating countries. The application of online consultancy is not a topic of all the analyzed degrees, showing that specific competences in this field are not offered. Also curricula about school psychology are not present in common Bachelor’s Degrees in the analyzed countries;
- there is not a validated profile of competences for school psychology in Europe. The lack of definition of rules, responsibilities and reporting measures of effectiveness lead to several obstacles in the delivery of psychological services at schools.
Requirement to access the profession vary across EU in terms of needs for a specific degree, may include voluntary subscriptions to association or a public examination to be included in Orders. Some states (Romania) has also a specific register for School Psychologists, in all other cases it’s not clear the requirements and conditions to determine if a psychologist has competences to work in the school education system. More specifically, in Europe there is no agreement on the functions of psychologists in school, despite several factors suggests that psychologists can be supportive in the school educational system.
According to this needs analysis, we designed the project “The Worldwide School Psychological Support in the Post-Covid Era” in order to encourage the school education system in the promotion of psychological support services for school students and teachers.
The project includes 3 innovative intellectual outputs translated in 8 languages.
O1. EU Model of Competences of the School Psychologist. 200 pages document designed to determine competences, roles, responsibility, and guidelines for the measurement of the psychological impact of the profession, explained according to ECVET terminology and EQF qualification
O2. The Worldwide Network of E-Schools Psychologists. An online platform including 400 minutes of video-lectures for the training of school psychologists and a network of school psychologists for the performance of projects and activities of online psychological support across Europe
O3. The Policy Recommendations for the School Psychology. A 80 pages document including policy recommendation and transnational analysis of existing policies for the inclusion of psychologists at school and performance of support actions toward students, families and teachers.
The target groups of our project are: school psychologists, school teachers, school students, school directors, policy makers.
The project include 4 transnational project meetings, 1 international multiplier event with (44 participants, 30 local and 14 foreign), and Impact Study including number of participants (500 for O1, at least 200 for O2 participating at piloting stage and 200 for O3 participating at evaluation of policy measures). Sustainability plan ensure the maintenance of all project’s results and their exploitation after the end of the project.