School of Psychology

I am seconded currently on a part-time basis (0.5 fte) to the School of Psychology, Cardiff University, where I work as a Professional Tutor with the DEdPsy Professional Training Programme for educational psychologists. I am also seconded for an additional 0.2 fte to run the CPD programme.

I am permanently employed by Gloucestershire Educational Psychology Service where I have a small generic patch of schools, responsibility for a pre-school allocation, three Out of County special schools, and I am ‘bought in’ by Gloucestershire Reintegration Service (GRS). I also have an allocation of county wide training as well as the training I develop with my schools.

Employment Experience

Before training as an educational psychologist in x, I worked part-time and full-time as a qualified teacher for nine years within a variety of educational settings, including:

• mainstream secondary schools;
• middle schools;
•  upper schools; and
• FE

For approximately the last twenty years I have worked as an educational psychologist in Local Authority Psychology Services. For four years of that time I have also been seconded on a part-time basis to contribute to the initial professional training of educational psychologists at Cardiff University.

As an applied psychologist, I am primarily a practitioner and my professional fieldwork activities include a wide variety of generic approaches with children, families, schools and other agencies. I am concerned with the broad application of psychology to promote positive change for individuals, groups and organisations. This work is undertaken in many different contexts and involves systemic work with organisations; consultative work with groups and individuals; and direct change-focused work with individuals. The work incorporates proactive and preventative approaches as well as approaches that are planned in response to specific issues and concerns within the unique, local contexts of individuals, groups and organisations. The emphasis throughout, however, is firmly on the idea of enabling and empowering people to implement and maintain positive change.

The main theories and conceptual frameworks underpinning my work are drawn from the psychology of change; social constructionism; phenomenological and interactionist approaches; systems theory; the theory of group processes; motivational interviewing; personal construct psychology; and the psychobiology and social mediation of learning.

I am also interested in the conceptual, theoretical and process issues associated with models of professional practice and, together with my colleagues, I am developing and using the Constructionist Model of Informed Reasoned Action (COMOIRA). This is a flexible, integrated model that is designed to enable and empower people to make sense of and manage the complex processes associated with change. The concepts, theories, structure, functions, processes and practice issues associated with COMOIRA are discussed in a series of publications listed below.

I have recently been working on adapting the COMOIRA framework to make it of direct use with teachers and school staff. This has involved changing the language used in the model and adapting the mode of presentation. This will be ‘unveiled’ at the DECP conference in January 2008.

Professional Activities and Interests

• In 1998-2005 I was seconded to Gloucestershire LEA to help set up a run its Inclusion initiative. This entailed research; ‘hearts and minds’ work (photographic essays, dissemination of good work, setting up a database, working with schools to produce their own response to inclusion); writing reports for the Education Committee; county wide training; and pioneering ways of accessing the views of vulnerable children. This work has also been written up and published in ‘Including Special Children’.
• I am currently ‘bought in’ by GRS and am working with the service to improve outcomes for vulnerable children, developing a system for the delivery to centres of psychology to centres that makes a difference, which includes using the outcomes of problem based learning tasks I have set the DEdPsy trainees to make recommendations about the rationale and running of centres.
• I make frequent contributions to ‘Supervision Development Days’ for fieldwork supervisors and other qualified EPs who engage in the process of supervision within their services.
• I use COMOIRA to contribute to the training of educational psychologists and am adapting this for use directly with teachers.
• I am responsible for planning, commissioning and staging training opportunities, which are run at Cardiff University, for educational psychologists, practitioners in other allied professions and school staff.

Publications

Parry, J. (2003). Brain-friendly Teaching for MLD Children. Special Needs Coordinator's File. PFP Publishing.

Parry, J. (2003). ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’. Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Special Needs Coordinator's File. PFP Publishing.