What is the core of educational psychology, and what are its boundaries? How would you want educational psychology to evolve? What are your values and goals as an educational psychologist? How might you participate in creating the future of our field and your place in it?
Since our field’s inception, educational psychologists have been grappling with questions regarding what educational psychology is, and what it should become. These questions are as pertinent today as they were 100 years ago; perhaps even more so. The recent pandemic and visible racial injustices have made blatant the foundational social inequalities in our society. These events have exacerbated ongoing changes in science, society, and technology that have been substantially impacting what we do, how we do it, and why we do it; in other words, who we are! This is a moment of uncertainty, anguish, but also of opportunity to assume agency in forming who we want to become as individuals and as a collective.
This year, APA Division 15 is organizing a sequence of participatory events for educational psychologists across career stages, different professional foci, and diverse positionalities to connect with colleagues and explore the field’s identity. We need our members’ diverse voices to clarify our mission and values and to proactively frame the future of educational psychology and our role in it.
The first of these events involves a series of 1-hour participatory workshops, each highlighting a partially overlapping segment of our community. This initial series aims to facilitate members’ personal and collective identity exploration around being educational psychologists, and to generate insights for the design of further activities focusing on emergent goals. The workshops will highlight the experiences, values, needs, and insights of (1) graduate students (2) early career educational psychologists, (3) mid-career educational psychologists, (4) senior educational psychologists, (5) practice-focused educational psychologists, (6) teaching-focused educational psychologists, and (7) research-focused educational psychologists. Members can participate in each workshop they consider to be a fit with their professional identity—engagement across overlapping segments is encouraged.
Please stay tuned for calls to participate in these workshops that will be published in the next couple of weeks.