edpsy: looking back at 2022

2022 has undoubtedly been our most active year and we wanted to take a look back at some of the incredible things we’ve achieved with and for our community

The Festival of Educational Psychology

September saw us host our first ever festival. We had a staggering 410 people attend for some incredible talks that ranged from considering the dyslexia debate, through to hearing young people from the UK Schools Sustainability Network talk about their time at COP26.

Inclusion and accessibility were at the heart of the festival and this was greatly aided by our choice to use the Hopin platform. This meant that auto-transcription could be used, and all our talks were recorded and are now available to everyone with tickets. We also wanted the day to be holistic and so had a chair yoga session, mindfulness and a high intensity workout at the end of the day.

Through ticket sales we were able to raise £1,200 for the vital work of AKT, the charity that supports lgbtq+ young people aged 16-25 in the UK who are facing or experiencing homelessness or living in a hostile environment.

47 blogs, 44 authors

Our blogs remain the heart of our platform and are clearly highly valued with all our blogs receiving 149,670 views across 2022.

2022 was our most active blogging year where we have supported 44 authors to share their insightful and inspiring work across 47 different blog posts.

The first freely available translated resources about the EP role

Last year our profession had its 109th birthday and for the first time in those 109 years, we provided freely available, multi-language resources about the work that EPs do.

The translation work was jointly funded by edpsy and five fantastic private EP services including, Applied Psychologies, Aspen Psychology Services, EdPsychEd, TW Educational Psychology and Waite Psychology Ltd. An incredible example of grassroots work that will make a difference to many families, schools and services.

The current translations (available in Polish, Urdu and Panjabi) are for anyone to use, and our aim is to increase the number of translations.

Community building

Community is one of our core edpsy values and this year we really do feel that we have lived this

Idea dialogues

In January Dan began offering time for ‘idea dialogues‘ as a way to further support new initiatives in the EP community.

These free, 30 minute informal conversations were designed to spark connections and uncover new perspectives and questions that could ultimately give rise to your ideas becoming reality.

Gateshead EPS and assistant EPs

We were thrilled to be able to support Gateshead EPs and Assistant EPs to highlight their project exploring the AsEP role. We were also able to work closely with Maxine, Debs, Sophie and Kate to support in the process of deciding how to disseminate this work, leading to a blog post, a policy briefing for service leads and the full report.

edpsy x EP Reachout

In September we announced exciting news about strengthening our collaboration with EP Reachout. This great connection just seems to easily fit. Many edpsy blog writers have gone on to host an EP Reach-Out webinar and vice versa. Both platforms allow EPs, and others interested in education and psychology, to communicate and disseminate their work in accessible and engaging ways.

Reviewing LA EP service websites

In February we published our ‘Being Clear’ report which was the outcome of a project we undertook to explore to what extent EP services are achieving the basics of a ‘good’ web presence.

We provide a range of recommendations for services in our full report, and in our shorter blog post.

Resources for the whole community

As always, we want what we produce to be available to everyone…no paywalls, logins, memberships. This strategy is ensuring that UK EP work has a global reach (edpsy has visitors from some 191 countries).

Aside from what we have already discussed above, from 2022 we also want to highlight:

• Advice for services about how to maximise the effectiveness and reach of EP job adverts
• A resource to support talking to children about the war in Ukraine (or other conflicts)
• Reflections from TEPs and EPs about preparing for EP training course interviews (many thanks to EP Reachout and Keith, Minoushe, Alex, Janice and Paige)

Thank you

We (Dan, Em and Rich) want to say a heartfelt thanks to the many people across the EP community and beyond who work to cultivate the community, creativity and engagement that we hope are the hallmarks of edpsy.

We especially want to thank all those who use their time to write about their work, and then choose edpsy as the place to share that writing – each blog is a privilege.

A big thank you also to all our festival presenters who really did create something quite special. We are particularly grateful to Kate, Pauline, Jo and Sarah who for 9 months became part of the extended edpsy team – their work behind the scenes made the festival possible.

A huge thank you also to those EPs and services who have used our jobs platform. This is how we can run the site, and has given us the freedom to do everything that you have read about above.

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