What Are Psychoeducational Assessments in Edmonton?
Hi there. My name’s Dr. Kelly Clark, and I want to talk about psychoeducational assessments today.
A psychoeducational assessment is a process where we use standardized measures to measure intelligence, academic skills, emotional, behavioral, and social components influencing a student’s learning. When psychoeducational assessment is introduced, typically assessments start in kindergarten as soon as kids get in. A teacher, after a period of time—at least in the Edmonton area—is going to utilize something called the Early Years Evaluation Teacher Assessment tool.
They will look at five areas of functioning: awareness of self and development, awareness of self and environment, social skills and approaches to learning, cognitive skills, language and communication, as well as physical development. Teachers are experts on kids’ behaviors. They’re very good at starting to observe somebody’s development, particularly academically, but they also look at emotional and behavioral features as well.
Initial Intervention in Kindergarten
The psychologist is not involved at that point. A psychoeducational assessment comes further on, but the first introduction to an assessment is early on in kindergarten. If a student starts to have some difficulties, typically with these Early Years Evaluation forms, a teacher will speak to the parents, bring them in, and talk about areas the student might be having some difficulty if they’re extreme. There might be some difficulties, and they’ll target interventions to improve these areas.
If they’re extreme, sometimes they’ll introduce other people like speech or language pathologists, occupational therapists, or sometimes behavioral consultants if a student has some severe emotional or behavioral difficulties. That’s when the student starts to be assisted with some challenges in school.
When Is a Psychologist Introduced?
A psychologist is introduced after about a year or so in kindergarten if these challenges are not remedied by targeted interventions. Sometimes the school will call on a psychologist to come in and do a psychoeducational assessment. We take a look at things like academic skills and intelligence as a very basic psychoeducational assessment. Sometimes behavioral evaluation is part of that as well. If it’s severe—if a student is having, say, some severe behavioral challenges—they could be drawn into the assessment process as early as kindergarten. That’s pretty extreme.
Usually if there’s some academic or delays around cognition, that’s not introduced unless it’s severe in either kindergarten or grade one, but more typically at the end of grade two or grade three. The reason for that is a student may be having some delays because of lack of exposure in schooling. Sometimes students are missing a lot of school in kindergarten or grade one, or there might be a pandemic, which has restricted exposure to education. We don’t know if those delays are related to things like attendance or if there’s another factor at play.
Really, it isn’t until about late grade two or grade three that, when it’s clear the teacher has used targeted interventions and the student is still struggling, a psychologist is brought in to look at those challenges. At that point, grade two or late grade two or grade three, it’s clear that after the teacher has put in place a bunch of supports, something is going on and not progressing well. Someone like me will come in and do a psychoeducational assessment.
Why Conduct an IQ Assessment?
One of the things that’s commonly asked is why we need to do an intelligence assessment, why we need to do the academic or the behavioral piece. One reason we do cognitive assessment or an IQ assessment is to rule out that intelligence is a factor contributing to academic delays. In other words, if reading, writing, and math are not related to intelligence—meaning they’re smart kids or they have average to above-average IQ—then we’ve ruled out intelligence as a possible explanation for why they’re struggling in school.
Once the intelligence results come in, we can look at strengths and areas of limitation. Other things IQ tests measure include short-term memory and mental working speed. There’s a lot of information, including learning style. A student might be a better hands-on learner versus a language-based, more auditory learner. We get a lot of information through the IQ assessment.
Academic Skills Evaluation
Once the IQ assessment is done, we look at academic skills. Typically reading, writing, and math skills are evaluated. If we learn that someone is really struggling in math, but their intelligence is fine, we might look at whether there’s a learning disability in mathematics. A psychoeducational assessment is used to determine what’s going on—why there are difficulties, whether it’s related to intelligence or more related to learning.
In the case where math is a difficulty, we look at things like number reasoning or language-based mathematical reasoning (e.g., a question like, “There are nine geese flying north, five more join them—how many are there altogether?”). The mathematics skills are examined to see if there are impairments or delays. Typically we look at reading and writing as well. The academic portion looks at a person’s ability to blend sounds together, articulate and sound out words, and blend endings or beginnings or middles together. Those skills are also assessed in an academic assessment.
You may have noticed in consultation with your child’s teacher that your child is having difficulties with sounding out letters, for example, in kindergarten. They can’t come up with the “ah” sound for apple, the letter-sound association, or they may have difficulties blending the sounds together. They may have difficulty with rhyming words. Typically, these are skills learned in kindergarten, but if by grade one or grade two they’re still delayed, we wonder if there is an academic learning disability.
The reason we do the academic evaluation is to look at what the learning challenges are and where the problems lie. Again, we start to wonder if there’s a learning disability because, despite exposure to curriculum, the student is still struggling. Maybe the pandemic was over, and now they’re attending school regularly. Despite targeted interventions—phonetic awareness, letter-sound association, and all of those things—they’re still struggling. By grade two or three, we look at those skills to determine if there is a language or a learning disability. That’s why IQ testing is done as well as academic testing: to determine if there’s a learning disability and where it might be.
Emotional and Behavioral Evaluation
The last area that’s looked at with psychoeducational assessments, at least in early school, is emotional and behavioral evaluations. This is for a student who might be having severe behaviors at home and at school, really struggling with defiance, not following through on instructions, or refusal to comply. They might be throwing objects, having a difficult time managing behavior and emotions both at home and in the classroom. A psychoeducational assessment brings in the parents and the teachers as well, to create a greater picture of what’s going on for the child.
You may be looking at severe, overt behavior like aggression or conduct problems. We also take a look at things like ADHD. In those cases, kids are having severe difficulties with paying attention, concentration, forgetfulness, constantly losing things, or being distracted during instruction. They might be very impulsive, interrupting people while they’re speaking, cutting them off, or blurting out answers. They might be very hyperactive, unable to sit still, getting up and moving around without permission, or fiddling at their desk or the supper table.
When we look at a behavioral evaluation, we consider things like overt aggressive behavior or possible ADHD, as well as emotional factors like anxiety, depressive features, self-doubt, and self-esteem. All of these can also be taken into account during an emotional or behavioral evaluation. A psychoeducational evaluation looks at those three components at the very least: cognition or intellectual ability, academic skills, and behavior.
Putting It All Together
Once that information is gathered, it’s put together in a psychological report, and the information is then distributed to both the school and the parents, usually in the form of a conference. We would all meet together, either in person or virtually, and the results of the assessment are shared with the parents, as well as the teacher or assistant principal. After the results are shared, often there may be a diagnosis—like there is a learning disability or some behavioral challenges, possibly ADHD.
Once the school and the parents have all that information, there usually is something called an Individual Program Plan (IPP) in which the school targets these areas to support the student who has these needs. They implement those supports in school, with suggestions to the parents to help them as the student progresses. After the results are gathered, the school continues to use the IPP and share progress updates with the parents. If the student is not improving, new supports are put in place. That’s how it continues with a continuous evaluation of those areas.
In short, a psychoeducational assessment usually takes a look at three factors: intelligence and academic skills for a very basic psychoeducational assessment. If there are behavioral or emotional factors—such as anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, or inattention—a behavioral assessment is completed as well.
I’m Dr. Kelly Clark, and you can reach me at drkellyclark.com.