ABSTRACT
Recent research has shown that educational psychologists can have a huge impact on the development of policy and practice towards the maintenance of segregated special education systems. For example a recent survey of educational and school psychology practice in ten countries (Jimerson et al., 2004) indicates that educational psychologists (EPs) continue to have a key role in the assessment of children with special educational needs and in making recommendations for educational provision, with this being the most commonly performed task in eight of the countries that took part in the survey. In addition, over the past twenty years or so a number of surveys of teachers’ and administrators’ perceptions of the EP role in Europe and the USA indicate that, in the main, they expect them to carry out special education assessments (Ford and Migles, 1979; Evans and Wright, 1987; Dowling and Leibowitz, 1994; Kikas, 1999; DfEE, 2000; Gilman and Gabriel, 2004; Farrell et al., 2005).
