Conceptual Foundations for School Psychology and Child Rights Advocacy

Abstract

This chapter presents the conceptual foundations for envisioning school psychologists as child rights advocates. Using an ecological-developmental framework (Bronfenbrenner, Measuring environment across the life span: Emerging methods and concepts. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1999), we depict the child’s ecology as a nested set of systems that influence the child’s development and well-being. The school psychologist is pictured as a central “mesosystem” that facilitates the integration of child rights throughout the ecology. To the macrosystem, we added a meta-macrosystem that represents the all-encompassing influence of child rights on the ecology of the child. The second model is a depiction of child rights-based school psychology, in which we envision the integration of child rights based on the UN (Convention on the Rights of the Child. Available: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm, 1989) Convention on the Rights of the Child (Convention) within professional school psychology. Surrounding the child’s ecology, we portray the key components for professional school psychology that are critical to promotion and advocacy for child well-being: mission, guiding principles, contexts, stakeholders, domains, and roles. Within this model, we integrate child rights and professional ethics as guiding principles for the school psychologist. Finally, we provide an overview of Convention articles and discuss their integration with the mission and standards for international school psychology. This chapter sets the stage for subsequent chapters in the book that address integration of child rights with school psychology.