Exploring the historical origins of school psychology faculty

The history of school psychology is difficult to understand because the field is derived from a variety of other disciplines of psychology and related fields. In addition, the development of the field has been further influenced by social and historical events, including compulsory education and World War II. As a result, it is difficult to determine where the true roots of school psychology lie. This study attempts to gain a better understanding of the historical roots of school psychology by examining the academic genealogy of current faculty members in school psychology doctoral training programs. A total of 294 tenure-track faculty of 80 doctoral-level school psychology training programs in the United States and Canada were included in this study. A total of 350 distinct academic lineages were identified and of those, 250 were completed (71.4% of the lineages). Overall, the field of school psychology was found to be derived from psychology, education, philosophy, entomology, and other fields. Most notably, 140 of the completed lineages (56.0%) were traced back to Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, with an additional 47 tracing back to other pioneers of psychology, including William James, Carl Stumpf, and James R. Angell. One surprising result is that certain major influences in the history of school psychology, such as Lightner Witmer, Henry H. Goddard, and Lewis M. Terman, were all or nearly absent from the overall academic genealogy. In general, the genealogy suggests that different people have influenced the development of the field in different ways. The implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.