| Abstract: | SCHOOL psychologists serving primary and secondary schools in New South Wales were surveyed to ascertain their attitudes towards the main‐streaming of children with a wide range of disabilities. They were also asked to identify the resources required to meet the needs of these children in regular classrooms and to indicate their perceived role in the process of mainstreaming. Results indicated that school psychologists appeared to have a fairly optimistic perspective with regard to mainstreaming when compared with teachers. Comparisons of factor analyses of attitudes also suggested that school psychologists tended to group disability characteristics more in terms of traditional handicapping categories than with regard to the educational demands made upon teachers. While children with learning and behavioural difficulties represented psychologists’ largest case load, they did not always feel they had the skills to assist this group and were even less confident about other categories of disability. School psychologists also saw their roles with regard to mainstreaming as consultative rather than interventionist and attached little importance to knowledge of classroom techniques to facilitate the mainstreaming of children with disabilities. Implications of these data for the training and practice of school psychology were subsequently discussed. |
