The field of school psychology is united around the conversation of finding what gets in the way of kids learning, within the structure of our present delivery system. As a profession we primarily look at the child, his/her behavior, cognitive abilities and performance within this context, try to determine the problem, and then attempt to remediate within this existing structure. Traditionally the child's abilities and behaviors are measured and potentially diagnosed based on standards and norms for behaviors of typical children in their respective age ranges. The dominant conversation is one of looking for intra-personal psychological processes and/or cognitive deficits that get in the way of inputting, integrating, and expressing information within a systematic structure of knowledge exchange. It is a conversation that is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of diagnostic language, focusing in, on the individual mind. It has been, and continues to be, largely a "describe and explain" discourse.

In the dominant discourse and historic traditions of this field the relational components have rarely been a point of focus. Yet there is ample empirical research that clearly identifies the child/teacher relationship as a major component in the success of the learning experience in the school environment.

Ellen will take a closer look at the relational components of learning, one of which would be to include and assess the relational resources a child has access to and explore the impact this might have on a child's experience of success, competence, engagement and motivation. Another area of specific interest would be to look at the relational process of the teacher/student from the viewpoint of transformational dialogue as described by John Stewart and Karen Zediker. In this broader context and discourse, she will explore whether additional offers and options for action are created for struggling children in the learning environment.

The goal of this dissertation is to look at these two very different discourses communities to see if they can make meaning together in a way that can lead to more promising results for children.

Questions that will be explored in the dissertation are:

• How does this difference of discourse regarding children, change outcomes?
• Is there a dialogue which can lead to more promising results?
• How do you bring the polarized discourse communities together?
• How do you create a transformative dialogue within these two incommensurate discourse communities to continue the conversation and bridge the tools of each to make meaningful contributions to the lives children?