Educational Psychologists for Material Change Position Statement
Educational Psychologists for Material Change (EPMC):
Position Statement
If you would like to join EPMC please contact us at epsformaterialchange@gmail.com
We are a group of educational psychologists and members of the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) who are united in our support for a materialist understanding of psychology. We believe an understanding of this philosophical perspective to be vital in promoting social justice within the AEP and our broader profession.
A materialist psychology is one that understands our material conditions as being central to the formation of our individual and collective subjective experiences. Our material conditions include our access to money, our economic class, the quality of our public services and housing, access to good quality jobs and schooling, access to an inclusive local community, and safety in our physical environment. Materialist psychology incorporates an analysis of how material conditions emerge within a given social, historical and political set of circumstances.
We argue that, for educational psychology to be truly emancipatory, our key focus must be on material change. By this we mean working to change the structures of society to remove the systemic barriers and entrenched power hierarchies that prevent equity and equality for all. Political engagement and a critique of the capitalist politics that maintain such hierarchies are central to this worldview.
Our Core Beliefs
We understand humans to be collaborative, relational beings connected through universal needs. Those being: the need for love, connectedness, belonging, emotional and physical safety, and a sense of competence and autonomy.
We acknowledge that within this, there are differences which have material effects, creating barriers that make it harder or easier for an individual to have these universal needs met.
We believe these barriers are produced by interactions at the cultural, socio-political and biological level. However, they are not absolute. They are constantly in a state of change, and we need to understand them as always interacting with each other. We have contradictory consciousness, meaning that whilst these barriers impose themselves on human beings, simultaneously human beings are able to act with agency to push back and make change in the world.
We believe that it is vital to hold onto a sense of solidarity, collectivity and shared interest, whilst at the same time never losing sight of real and material points of difference. In doing so we hope to unite in both celebrating diversity and challenging all structures that make it harder for some groups to have their universal needs met.
We believe that the origins and practices of Western Psychology often overlooks the impact of material conditions on the collective psychological experiences related to learning, health, and wellbeing. Instead it primarily focuses on looking to individual human beings to change their linguistic or mental representations as a mechanism for positive change. Simply put, individuals are asked to think or speak differently in the hope that this will make them happier or more fulfilled.
We believe that in reality, the only thing this process is capable of is encouraging human beings to internalise the belief that there is no alternative to their existing material conditions, whether they be poverty, entrenched hierarchies, lack of opportunity, racism sexism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any other form of psychological or material alienation. We believe this to be fundamentally unethical and would argue that this form of psychology perpetuates inequality, existing power relations and negative affective experiences.
This is not to say we discount subjective experience and only focus on a mechanical analysis of the material environment. Instead, we situate our analysis at the point where material conditions, social relationships and individual experience meet, never trying to separate them out.
We are actively critical of forms of psychology that attempt to:
Situate problems as emerging from within the individual.
Promote solutions that require the individual to change their mental representations of the world, rather than engage in work that supports material change in the world around them and their individual situation.
Promote solutions that explore a change in discourse but do not address material change. Examples of this are:
A school calling itself ‘trauma informed’ without fundamentally changing its policies to meet the needs of those who have experienced trauma, and in which exclusions and sanction rates remain the same.
An Educational Psychology service referring to themselves as being anti-racist after undergoing unconscious bias/microaggression training, as opposed to recognising racism as a historically constituted system of power aimed at controlling racialised populations, and in turn, making meaningful systemic changes to address this.
Presents the human as somehow ‘apart’ from other human beings and the natural world (e.g. unaffected by the actions of others or changes in their environment).
Presents the human as somehow static, inert and taxonomized (e.g. extroverted, depressed) rather than in a constant state of becoming and changing alongside other humans and the material world.
We promote a form of psychology that seeks to:
Emphasise that subjective experience is produced through social interaction as well as interaction with the material world; we cannot separate human experience from this social or material world. Through this we acknowledge the key role that ideology, power structures, politics, class struggle, and systemic oppression have on individual and collective experience.
Find solutions that focus on real material change in the world. This includes prioritising an understanding of change and fluidity within subjective experience and promoting real and material inclusivity within psychological theory and practice. Key to this will be efforts to practise in a way that engages with:
Decolonial strategies, as an endeavour to actively unlearn and dismantle dominant Eurocentric and neoliberal ways of thinking and understanding the world; whilst rebuilding forms of knowledge-making that exist outside of these norms.
Neurodiverse critiques of psychology and society.
Class struggle between economic classes is the basis of fundamental socio-historical change; for example, under capitalism, between workers, benefit claimants and students, and those whose form of property ownership enables them to economically exploit the rest.
Feminist psychology as a means to understand the role that patriarchy, gender and intersections of race and ethnicity play in the distribution of power in society, and subsequent social experience.
Disability studies, which understands the world as disabling people and looks towards a social model of disability.
LGBTQ+ solidarity, to refute the idea of ‘heteronormativity’ and dismantle traditional assumptions about gender and sexual identities.
How might this work in practice?
Using critical frameworks such as those listed above to expose the systemic roots of psychological suffering and oppression in order to challenge and overcome them.
Primarily demanding change in the system, as opposed to change within an individual.
Supporting children, families and education staff, in a consciousness raising project, through consultation to develop ‘outsight’ (i.e. recognise the root cause of many problems to be located in the system, rather than in any internal ‘deficit’) and act in solidarity with them to resist oppressive practice.
Engaging in political activism both inside and outside of the AEP, such as through industrial action and solidarity with other workers’ just struggles, to fight for effective public services and legislation to promote equality.
Measuring success in material outcomes (e.g., a child being included within the mainstream classroom as a result of an intervention or a school's exclusion rate dropping because of training that has been implemented) rather than mental representation (e.g., measuring how people ‘feel’ after EP involvement).
What are the requirements for membership?
Whilst we celebrate difference and diversity within our group, all EPs who wish to be a member of EPMC must align with our core beliefs and sign up to our core values. This is non-negotiable. This will involve a willingness for all members to support each other to learn, reflect, grow and explore our unconscious biases.
We believe in the concept of universalism. We do not understand rights to be a ‘zero-sum-game’ where rights have to be taken off one group to be given to another. We seek to create a world where adaptations are made within the concept of ‘each according to need’. We believe that a world can be created where the physical and psychological needs of all groups can be met and all can live alongside each other equally.
We believe in the Marxian notion of changing the world rather than just interpreting it.
We have a firm commitment to redistributing material, social, cultural and political power hierarchies so that power is equally shared and experienced.
We recognise the trade union movement as a mechanism to create change and strengthen bonds of solidarity and collectivity across the profession; whilst also remaining critical of barriers linked to trade union bureaucracy and looking to overcome these.
We reject the dividing of groups into ‘good’ vs ‘evil’, or reductionist understanding which leads to simplistic ideas relating to ‘cause and effect’. We understand the world as a complex system and recognise the need for systemic change rather than change or blame at an individual level.
We need members to support us to actively fight alongside and for oppressed and marginalised groups as well as representing them. We are currently focused on:
Solidarity with the Palestinian people, an immediate ceasefire, an end to arms sales to Israel, and an end to apartheid.
Anti-austerity politics and properly funded public services.
Trans-inclusionary politics and policies.
Relational and inclusive practice within schools, and a challenge to schooling policies based on neoliberalism, oppression, behaviourism and exclusion.
Proper pay for Trainee Educational Psychologists via contracts.
Structure of the organisation
We currently have a voluntary committee of members who are charged with the day-to-day running of EPMC. We meet on a monthly basis.
We also have a wider group membership. General members of EPMC are invited to semi-regular meetings to hear about our work and suggest future directions.
Finally, we will create a variety of safe-space networks, where members can come together in solidarity with each other in a smaller and more contained setting, to seek mutual support.
Our key objectives are to:
Build networks of solidarity between like-minded psychologists, AEP members and other professionals and activists.
Explore the various ways a social-materialist psychology can be interpreted and used to create social change.
Celebrate and acknowledge diversity within our group and use our spectrum of subjective experiences to strengthen lines of solidarity, compassion and empathy throughout our collective.
Encourage members of our group to stand for elected positions within the AEP.
Collectively develop and propose motions within the AEP and affiliated organisations (e.g. GTFU, TUC) to influence these institutions in a positive way
Collaborate with grassroots movements and agitate for political policy change on progressive issues.
Facilitate action research and other radical, emancipatory research methods.
Educate and inform others about the social-materialist position to expand our numbers
Further Reading on Materialism and Psychology:
Chapman, Robert (2023), Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Pluto Press
Ferguson, Iain, (2017), Politics of the Mind: Marxism and Mental Distress. Bookmarks Publication
Smail, David (2005), Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress. PCCS Books
Parrington, John (2022), Mind Shift: How culture transformed the human brain. OUP
Agostinone-Wilson, Faith (2013), Dialectical Research Methods in the Classical Marxist Tradition. Peter Lang Inc.
Franklin, Shirley (2021), Vygotsky, Education and Revolution. Bookmarks.
Burman, Erica (2024), Child as Method: Othering, Interiority and Materialism. Routledge.
Fanon, Frantz (2001), The Wretched of the Earth. Penguin.
Bryski-Hamrick, Sarah (2024), The Psychology of Capitalism: A Beginner’s Guide. https:www.besttherapists.com/blog/psychology-of-capitalism