School Psychologist and Educational Diagnostician Perceptions of Training Preparation for Conducting Bilingual Assessments

Abstract

In the United States, schools are required to assess the psychoeducational functioning and needs of multilingual learners referred for Special Education in their native language; however, only a small portion of qualified evaluators report speaking a language other than English. In order to better understand the training needs of evaluators of multilingual learners, school psychologists and educational diagnosticians were invited to participate in a survey asking about their perceptions of preparedness for best practices in the assessment of multilingual learners. Results suggest that both school psychologists and educational diagnosticians report wishing they had additional formal training of best practices for multilingual learners. The majority of respondents did not associate length of graduate training with higher levels of preparedness in conducting bilingual evaluations following graduation. Training program characteristics such as the presence of bilingual faculty with expertise in bilingual topics was found to be a significant predictor of perceptions of preparedness. Evaluators reported learning on the job through online workshops, district in-service training, colleagues, and related readings. Overall, this study has implications for graduate school training programs and collaboration across a!liated diagnostic fields.