Generalizable findings and idiographic problems: struggles and successes for educational psychologists as scientist–practitioners

There are around three thousand educational psychologists (EPs) working in the United Kingdom, the vast majority of whom are employed by Local Education Authorities with a small proportion working in private practice or specialist settings. By virtue of studying psychology as undergraduates, these EPs have been inducted into the experimental method. And yet it is noticeable that practitioner EPs in their publications hardly ever use an experimental approach. Accounts involving single case quasi-experimental designs also very rarely appear in the profession’s major journals.