History of School Psychology in Ohio

In a 1942 issue of the Journal of Consulting Psychology, Symonds (1942) spoke of the term “school psychologist” as being about twenty years old. The psychologist was described as being brought into the schools to give Binet tests and group intelligence tests developed from those used in the first World War. It mentions that the first use of the term “school psychologist” probably appeared in the published literature in 1923. Dr. Arnold Gessell said of his own appointment as a school psychologist, “In 1915, the Connecticut State Board of Education appointed a School Psychologist to make mental examinations of…children in rural, village, and urban schools, and to devise methods for their better care in the public schools. Connecticut was the first state of the Union to create a position of this kind.” (Cutts, 1955, p 23-24).