Overcoming Disaster Through Critical Consciousness and Ideological Change

Abstract

In this commentary, I argue that the systemic inequities driving and resulting from the wide-ranging immediate and long-term effects of COVID-19 are the key issue around which our field should rally as we reconceptualize school psychology in the 21st century. I offer this commentary as complementary to the growing body of scholarship describing reforms and practices to address the current and long-term challenges of COVID-19, as well as to broader calls to address systemic racism wherein critical consciousness and interrogation of the roles of systematic racism in the field are prerequisite to action and sustained practice change. I first enumerate the multisystem, intersectional complexities of the COVID-19 disaster, synthesizing scholarship on how it has been particularly detrimental to minoritized communities and students, as a basis for fostering critical awareness. I then propose three core ideological shifts as the basis for expansive reflection and re-envisioning across all areas of professional activity. I conclude with implications for graduate educators and scholars to support fieldwide transformation as the field endeavors to rise to the challenge of this historic unfolding and advance social justice and antiracism.

Impact Statement

COVID-19 as more than a matter of health or disparities thereof—indeed, it is a disaster—because of the consequences across all domains of life and social systems. School psychology’s short and long-term responses to COVID-19 and advancing social justice and antiracism should be grounded in ideological shifts foundational to lasting change in rhetoric and other practices. These include centering the most marginalized, uprooting white supremacy in our field, and conceptualizing trauma and associated professional responses intersectionally.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• professional issues
• social justice
• health disparities

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Shane Jimerson

DISCLOSURE

The author has no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

1 This usage is intentional as much of the ableist narrative around the purported end of COVID-19 centers the most privileged and not communities multiply marginalized and systematically made vulnerable to exposure, infection, and severe complications. This is especially true when prevention and mitigation measures are discontinued despite continued high risk of infection, as with the changes of CDC risk thresholds and associated masking recommendations of February 25, 2022 and later in 2022.

2 If we understand COVID-19 primarily as an educational issue of access related to school disruptions, emphasis on pivoting our practice via telehealth practices and so-called learning loss is reasonable. If we instead orient around the largescale systemic inequities, a more expansive response (i.e., one that emphasizes ideology, not simply modality) is needed.

3 An epidemic is a contagious condition affecting a particular location or population. A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs across multiple populations. A syndemic refers to the synergies of an epidemic, other health conditions, and social or structural conditions that worsen health outcomes.

4 Language, too, is an important tool for oppression and marginalization, even if wielded without that explicit purpose; implicit bias matters and such language can cause harm (O’Reilly, 2020). Here, I emphasize the need for systems-centered language in describing risk and vulnerability.

5 Following Reid and Knight (2006), we use the term disabled “to emphasize that disabled persons constitute a marginalized group “disabled” by physical and social barriers that result in pathologizing, infantilism, exclusion, and poverty” (p. 18), and as emphasized by many disabled activists. At the same time, we recognize the competing preference for person first language, and endorse the practice of using an individual’s preferred terminology in direct interactions.

6 i.e., growing disparities between higher and lower performing groups as systems of privilege exacerbate relative advantages and disadvantages

7 For example, failing to account for influence of family social capital or neighborhood resources (e.g., internet, enrichment programming, nutrition services) when considering access to educational supports or measured learning losses; failing to consider intersections of race, gender identity, disability when examining potential discipline disparities; refusal to consider harms of assessment paradigms outside of mainstream positivistic conceptualizations of measurement, validity, etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda L. Sullivan

Amanda L. Sullivan is the Birkmaier Educational Leadership Professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the School Psychology Program. Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on identifying education and health disparities affecting students from minoritized backgrounds, understanding (in)equity in and effectiveness of the educational and health services they receive, and exploring how ethics and law shape professional practices and students’ experiences.