Prácticas profesionales de los psicopedagogos en la evaluación del alumnado cultural y lingüísticamente diverso

Abstract

The increase in immigrant or culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in a great many state schools has become a new challenge for school counsellors when they have to identify the Special Educational Needs of these students. This is due mainly to the lack of suitable diagnostic instruments and the lack of language skills of these professionals when they have no fluency in the language of students requiring this assessment (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, 2009). This has contributed to a questioning of the practices and diagnostic tools used in identifying the Special Educational Needs (SEN) of these students (Guzman & Jimenez, 2012; O’Bryon & Rogers, 2010). However, little or no research has been focused on this issue in Spanish. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to explore the practices of school counsellors in the process of CLD student assessment. A sample of 64 counsellors belonging to the educational psychology teams of Tenerife, answered an ad hoc questionnaire consisting of 20 closed questions grouped into four dimensions. The results on the most common practices used by counsellors when conducting assessments of CLD students fluent or not in Spanish are presented in relation to: factors they attach importance in psycho-educational evaluation, selection and use of tests, considerations regarding identifying language proficiency and experience in the use of interpreters when the evaluator and the student do not share a common language.