The Relationship between Professional Development and School Psychologists’ Self-Reported Multicultural Competence

Abstract

According to the US Census Bureau (2015), over half of the U.S. population will belong to a racial or ethnic minority group by the year 2044. Due to this growing diversity, it is crucial that schools understand how to best serve diverse children. However, research in this area is extremely limited, specifically research around school psychologists’ ability to work with CLD students. More studies need to take a data driven approach to evaluating multicultural competence. This study evaluated school psychologists’ self‐reported multicultural competencies with the School Psychologist Multicultural Competence Scale (SPMCS) (Malone, 2016). To do this, participants took the SPMCS (Malone, 2016) in the fall of 2018. Throughout the school year, they completed multicultural centered professional development (PD) activities within their school district. These activities were conducted by district personnel, without involvement from the researcher. Once they completed the final PD course, they took the SPMCS a second time in the spring of 2019. Pre- and post- test surveys were compared to examine differences in self-reported multicultural competence.