What would happen if we use the phrase "diagnostic
intervention" instead of "psychological/psycho-educational
assessment"?
When we use the word "assessment" we
assume that the child whom we "assess", along with his home and
school environments, are "static", unchanging, at least during the assessment
process itself. We "study" the
child and the interactions between him and his home and school environments,
and in effect "take a picture" or a "snapshot" of the
situation.
But in fact we psychologists do much more than
taking a snapshot when we perform a psychological/psycho-educational
assessment. We perform a diagnostic intervention.
The word "intervention" designates a
process of change (sometimes, maybe, an uninvited change), a change that
happens when someone "intervenes" in the status quo.
Each and every question we ask during the
interviews with the child, with his parents and with the educational staff, and
the way we react to what our clients say, are diagnostic interventions. They instigate
thought and change. When we unfold with
the parents and the child the child's developmental and educational history and their family history,
we are not merely passive audience to the existing narratives the parents and
the child have. Our questions, and the
ways we ask them, open new perspectives, create changes in the narratives and
enrich of the narratives. We are active
participants in the making of these changes.
Every interaction we have with the child
during testing is a diagnostic intervention.
In every interaction we not only learn about the child, the relation
between us and the child, and about ourselves – we intervene and create a
change in the child, in the relationship, and yes, also in ourselves. The child emerges from the testing process
with new knowledge about himself.
The feedback and follow up processes are
diagnostic interventions. The things we
say and the way we say them affect the parents' narratives about their child
and about their relationship with the child, the teacher's narratives about the
child and his or her relationship with the child, and the narrative the child
constructs about himself.
A few years ago, I asked an adolescent, in the
beginning of the testing session, which kind of tasks he wants to begin
with: visual tasks, in which he works
with shapes and models, or verbal tasks, in which he answers questions. The boy said:
"We better start with verbal tasks, since I'm not good with visual
tasks". "What makes you think
so?" I asked. "That's what I
understood from my prior assessment" he answered. Eventually, this boy did in the visual tasks
as well as in the verbal tasks. What a
shame that he had such a notion about himself.
This was thought provoking and saddening for me, since I was the one who
performed his prior assessment!
We have to think how
to conduct the feedback session in a way that will make the child, his parents
and the educational staff feel emboldened with a sense of self-efficacy and hope.
If all this is not an intervention process, I don't know
what an intervention process is.
So – "diagnostic intervention".
If we write in our report heading "Diagnostic
Intervention Report", this may strengthen our awareness that we did not
take a snapshot of the child's situation or status. We took a "selfie" with the child,
his family and the educational staff. We
are not outside the intervention. We are
part of the intervention. And the
"selfie" is not a "stills" but a video of a dynamic
situation in which we are conducive to a change. Luckily, the child, the family and the school
environment are dynamic, and thus an improvement is always possible.
If we write in the heading of our report
"A Summary of a Diagnostic Intervention", this may strengthen our
awareness that we did conduct an intervention, that we even implemented some of
our recommendations during the diagnostic intervention itself. This may lead us to try to think and what
exactly was the intervention we conducted.
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