What Is My Educational Psychology Action Plan For 2026? A Careers In Psychology Podcast Episode.

As I explained in my psychology podcast episode, How To Advance Your Psychology Career In 2026, I'm starting to pursue a career in educational psychology. As part of this careers in psychology drive, I made an action plan that will help me develop my knowledge, apply psychological theories, research and concepts to education and I'll be better prepared to apply for the educational psychology doctorate later in 2026. Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, I'll guide you through my action plan, I'll give you tips and tricks on creating your own psychology action plan and by the end of the episode, you'll understand how to practically take steps towards your 2026 psychology goals. 

Today's psychology podcast episode is sponsored by Applied Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Introduction To A Psychology Career Action Plan

Whilst I highly recommend that you go back and read or listen to the episode "How To Advance Your Psychology Career In 2026?". This episode is essentially a practical demonstration of the two following shortened extracts from that previous episode.

What's Your Dream Psychology Job and Goal?

Firstly, I highly encourage you to think about your goal. You need to understand what you're working towards so you can understand how to get there, what skills you need to develop and what's driving you. Since if you know what's driving you then this will help in the low moments when psychology just feels flat out impossible. 

Your psychology goal might be to become a clinical psychologist, forensic psychologist or a CBT therapist. Or you might want to become an academic or psychology researcher as well as you might want to become another type of mental health professional. 

After you've figured out what your goal is for your psychology journey and researched what you need to do to become that psychological professional. It can be really useful to break it down into smaller steps on a piece of paper and it can make the process seem a lot more manageable. 

On the whole, writing down what you need to achieve to increase your chances of becoming your dream psychology job can make it seem easier, less overwhelming and it allows you to pick what you want to achieve this year so you can develop your skills for your psychology journey.

Pick Your Psychology Focus Areas for 2026

After you've done this, I highly recommend that you pick a few areas you want to focus on in 2026, because unfortunately you cannot become your dream psychology job in a single year. Your psychology journey is exactly that, a journey so you can't do everything I just listed above. If you focus on a few things in 2026, then you can develop those skills, learn a lot and become really good at those skills then you can focus on other areas next year and the year after and so on.

What Do I Need To Understand In Educational Psychology?

Because I'm relatively new to educational psychology at the time of writing and I need to build my knowledge and understanding of psychological concepts, theories and research and how it relates to education. I needed to pick some focus areas to help aim my learning. 

This is why I want to learn about the following topics in 2026:

·       theories of learning

·       models of teaching

·       student motivation

·       RE-STAR

·       theories of development

·       organisational factors on learning

·       how parent-teacher relationship impacts learning

As a quick note, RE-STAR seems to be something to do with neurodiversity that I saw mentioned on an educational psychology podcast quite a few times, so I thought at some point I better learn about it. 

Personally, theories of learning and theories of development I already have a good understanding of, because my undergraduate dissertation required me to look at a lot of learning theories. As well as my undergraduate degree required a lot of lectures, assignments and readings on human development. However, even though I have this knowledge, for one, I haven't looked at it in at least 2 years, and even when I was learning about these theories, I wasn't applying them to education. 

Therefore, in 2026, to help develop my educational psychology thinking, I need to revisit these theories of learning, apply them to education and try and link them to different situations that I've experienced. Either as a teaching assistant or as a postgraduate ambassador who created educational content for students. 

In addition, I'm really, really interested at the moment in the teacher-school relationship. I find it fascinating because I've seen how it works and how it impacts students. I've seen how a positive teacher-parent relationship improves outcomes for the child and how a negative teacher-parent relationship doesn't lead to as positive outcomes for the child. 

For example, before I was transferred to a different school, there was a brilliant young woman in the class and her mum was just as lovely. The mum also worked at the school but because she was so nice to us and vice versa, this meant we were happy to help the daughter and go the extra mile for her. As well as because the mum was lovely, we were very willing to talk to her about anything medical, educational or whatever we needed. 

All because we knew we could have a constructive, useful conversation that would help us be better for her daughter and it would help the daughter thrive. 

Whereas on the other side of the equation, when there was a girl who wasn't the kindest woman anyway. Once she threatened to hospitalise me just because I asked her to stop swearing because it was distressing other students. Her mother had a bad relationship with the teacher because it's hard to explain without going into a lot of history that I'm not comfortable sharing on a podcast. 

In essence, she's the type of mother you wouldn't go the extra mile for because you knew if you did something even slightly out of line, not by the book or you even hinted at an unprofessional opinion, she would twist it and make it come back to bite you. 

This led us to be very aware of her and her daughter, so we didn't go the extra mile to help her daughter. We still supported her learning, her wellbeing and her special educational needs, but we needed to protect ourselves too. 

I have a lot of other examples but for now, those are the two clearest examples of how the teacher-parent relationship can impact academic outcomes. 

This is something I want to learn a lot more about in 2026, and this is an important area for educational psychologists.

Finally, it's all well and good me saying I'll research them, but how will I? Yesterday the book "Key Topics In Educational Psychology" arrived, I started reading it today and it's a very accessible and interesting book. I will create podcast episodes based on these psychology topics from time to time and I'll do online research too. 

Listing how you'll research them make these topics seem more accessible, less overwhelming and they become easier to manage.

Therefore, these are going to be useful focus areas for me because they will allow me to develop my understanding of educational psychology, increase my knowledge basis and start allowing me to apply these to theories and frameworks to my work as a teaching assistant. All in all this will increase my chances of being a better candidate for the doctorate of educational psychology compared to right now. 

In terms of practical tips for you, this section shows you the importance of researching the major topics within your dream psychology job, make a plan to research them and most importantly, apply these topics to your chosen dream psychology job. Since a lot of ideal psychology jobs involve you applying this knowledge to a wide range of different situations. The sooner you start developing this skill the better. 

Why Will I Investigate Educational Psychology Doctorate Course Websites? 

Personally, I've been rather surprised by just how useful the webpages are for different educational psychology doctorate courses. Some of these websites tell you the topics, skills and experience requirements of their courses. This helps you prepare for your interview and application and this, in turn, helps inform your psychology action plan. 

For example, the University of Nottingham website didn't give me much information, and neither did the University of East London. Yet the University College London website was brilliant because it explained (at the time of writing) that candidates for their doctoral course need to understand Bronfenbrenner's Social ecological theory and the legislation impacting special educational needs within the United Kingdom. This was very useful information as someone who is academically "trained" in clinical psychology, but doesn't have the greatest understanding of educational psychology at this moment in time. This knowledge gives me information on my focus areas, what I need to learn and where my focus should be in 2026.

Another benefit of investigating University College London was it reminded me I needed to be able to answer the following question, “what is your understanding of the role of an educational psychologist?”. Normally, these questions always stump me in job interviews, but if I want to get onto the doctorate of educational psychology then I cannot afford a silly mistake like this one. I need to learn what educational psychologists do off by heart. This led me to remember the following definition.

Educational psychologists are professionals who specialise in applying psychological theories, research and principles to the field of education. They study human behaviour and mental processes related to learning and human development. Also, educational psychologists research the social, physical, psychological, emotional and wellbeing factors that aim to explain the individual differences in academic performance, student motivation and learning styles.

In addition, educational psychologists focus on designing and developing informative instructions for a wide range of learners, and they apply their knowledge of human development and learning to create academic programmes, assessments and interventions. As well as educational psychologists evaluate existing academic programmes and recommend improvements based on their research.

Finally, educational psychologists conduct research to deepen and advance our understanding of learning and education. For example, they might research the effectiveness of revision strategies, how the teacher-parent relationship is modulated by organisational factors or the relationship between student motivation and trauma.

You might think that was a long definition, but in a job interview as I’ve constantly found because I always gave short, vague answers that didn’t demonstrate my true level of understanding. You really need to give detailed answers that demonstrate your understanding of your dream psychology career.

On the flip side, the University of Manchester also gave me a lot of information on what they look for in candidates, but the main takeaway for me was I need to be able to discuss verbally and in written form my assimilation of information and how I would use this in an intervention. Now, I know how important this skill is, I can start nurturing this level of understanding.

Technically, I am already nurturing these skills because I know how critical they are as an aspiring educational psychologist. For example, as a baby step in the right direction, I really focused on some online training this week on Martyn's Law in the United Kingdom. This is a new law that focuses on terrorism prevention and it means all schools (and other venues) have to legally have a plan in place and staff must be trained on how to respond quickly and effectively in the event of a terrorist attack. Schools come directly under the law so I made sure to focus on this learning so I can nurture my legal understanding of the UK educational system.

Another example is today, because I am a Type 1 Diabetic nurse in all but name at my school, I needed to assimilate a lot of information, make clinical decisions and communicate them quickly and concisely with the other Type 1 diabetic trained person verbally. Then I had to write down my clinical thinking in a journal and in a note to parents. This shows I am starting to become able to explain my clinical decisions in written and verbal form and for different audiences with different levels of knowledge of clinical practice. 

In addition, I want to mention here that originally on my action plan, I was only going to be looking at 3 websites. Yet when I saw some websites had no information and others had a lot. I decided to adapt my plan and look at a lot of websites to give me as much information as possible. I'm mentioning this, because it highlights the importance of your action plan being flexible. 

Why I Wanted To Conduct Two Educational Psychology Research Projects?

After my MSc in Clinical Psychology at the University of Kent, my research skills in mental health settings were very good. I had conducted three additional mental health studies that went beyond my course requirements, so I had experience conducting, planning and analysing the results of four mental health studies. As great as this is for a career in clinical psychology, these four mental health studies only go so far in an aspiring educational psychology career. Mainly, because these mental health studies did not take place in educational settings. They technically did because they used a university sample, but the studies didn't focus on educational outcomes at all.

Therefore, in 2026, I want to conduct two educational psychology research projects. These would be small-scale, easy-to-run and they would be manageable. Partly, I wanted them to be small-scale because of my limited time, I no longer have access to university resources and I strongly believe that small-scale projects are easy to sell to the Senior Leadership Team compared to massive, complex and more time-consuming research.

Why Did I Want To Run A Staff Confidence Research Project For Educational Psychology?

As a result, my first research project that I wrote and submitted a proposal for focused on staff confidence levels. At first, you might not think that this applies to educational psychology, but investigating staff confidence levels about supporting different SEN children involves looking at systems thinking, capacity building as well as evidence-informed improvement. All these concepts sit at the heart of modern educational psychology. Also, a project involving staff confidence would help me understand how an educational psychologist can be an effective agent for change because increasingly educational psychologists aren't only working on their caseload. They are getting involved in supporting strategic planning, staff capability and whole-school development. 

Most importantly, SEN support is inconsistent across schools and even within schools depending on staff training, resource allocation and staff confidence. Then this has a knock-on effect for the SEN children's academic performance, learning and motivation. 

I am keeping this research-focused section somewhat brief, because in my proposal and my project planning, there are a lot of other reasons why this project is useful to aspiring educational psychologists. 

Another benefit of this project is that it gets me thinking about organisation-level factors and it impacts a child's learning and development. For example, the vast majority of schools struggle with SEN funding and resource allocation, so this is probably one of the reasons why SEN training is so bad, ineffective and it doesn't prepare you for the real working environment of a SEN school in the slightest. Yet my project can help the school to deliver a cost-effective Continued Professional Development programme because they will have evidence from the teaching staff about the areas they are least confident in. This means the school can focus on developing training in these areas to improve confidence. 

Furthermore, even though I proposed this research project just before I fell ill with the flu over New Year, I learnt a few days later that there was another team of teaching assistants already doing a similar research project. Granted, I heard during the staff briefing just how badly their data collection was going, and I already have a lot of ideas about how to improve their recruitment process. Even though SLT said they would put me in contact with this research team, they haven't done so already. They are really busy so I don't blame them and I am too busy being a teaching assistant, managing diabetes and all my other projects to be able to chase it up myself. 

Why Did I Want To Run A Pupil Voice Research Project For My Educational Psychology Journey?

Honestly, there are two different research projects that I might do at some point in 2026 to boost my educational psychology application. One investigates the communications between teachers and parents, what they like and don't like and I am really interested in the teacher-parent relationship because of my own experiences. Yet I talk about this more in a future podcast episode.

Anyway, the original second research project I was planning is a "Pupil Voice" project that centres on researching on what the SEN children I work with like and dislike about the adult interactions they have. For example, they might like when an adult uses humour, but they might not like when an adult stands over them when they need help, because it might be scary for the SEN child. 

This is a useful project for an educational psychology application because it shows clear commitment to co-production and participation, and this is critical in modern educational psychology and personally, it is a major factor for me. I will always support putting the children themselves in the heart of our decisions and making sure that their voice is heard, because traditionally, SEN children are very underrepresented in decision-making.

Moreover, research shows that pupil voice is critical to help us understand lived experience, improved inclusion, design provisions that actually reflect on students' needs, as well as pupil voice challenges the assumptions that adults make about what students want. 

As a result of me wanting to keep these research sections on the shorter side, one final reason why this project is useful to an aspiring educational psychologist is because it focuses on communication. Communication is a major focus of educational psychology because communication is fundamental in forming relationships between the child, teachers and peers, and it's important in learning and their behaviour. Especially, because an adult's communication style can either improve independence, support engagement and regulation, or it can trigger distress, anxiety or withdrawal. Also, the project shows how verbal communication, like an adult's pace, tone, use of praise, instructions and clarity, and their non-verbal communication, like body language, gestures, facial expressions and proximity, can make a child feel at ease or distressed.  

On a personal note, that's why when I'm having a casual conversation with a SEN child, I tend to do one or two things. If the child is sitting down then I either sit on the chair next to them or if that's occupied then I kneel down a little if the classroom isn't too busy and I wouldn't be in the way. I do this because I think it's friendlier for the child if an adult isn't towering over them. As well as if I'm standing in front of or next to a child when we're talking, I'm mindful of my body language. I make it relaxed, I'm not tense and my knees are slightly bent as part of something I learnt on a training course, and it helps to make me more approachable to the child. 

Careers In Psychology Conclusion

At the end of this psychology podcast episode, my main takeaway for you is think about how I’ve researched my focus areas, how I’ve created an action plan and look at everything that I’ve done and pick and choose what you want to adopt into your own action plan. This has actually been a lot of fun to put together, because now I have a visual action plan, the task of developing my educational psychology knowledge is a lot less overwhelming.

Here are some questions to help you create your psychology action plan:

·       what is your dream psychology job or goal?

·       What are your focus areas for 2026?

·       What university or professional websites could you look at to further develop your understanding of how to reach your goal?

·       What research projects could you conduct to further develop your skills?

I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Have a great day.

Educational Psychology References and Further Reading

Beaver, L. (2016). Inclusion: Using Pupil Voice to Explore and Improve the Experience of Pupils with SEN, University of Reading  

Borich, G. D., & Tombari, M. L. (2021). Educational psychology: A contemporary approach.

Earl, K. (2025). Neurodiversity: Using Pupil Voice to Explore the Experience of Pupils in a Primary School, University of Winchester  

Hockey, A. & Dawkins, D. (2025). Capturing an Authentic Pupil Voice from Pupils with Moderate and Severe SEN, Support for Learning  

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/programmes/list/06781/dedchpsy-educational-and-child-psychology/programme-details/

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/course/research/psychology-applied-educational-psychology-doctorate-dappedpsy

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate/research-degrees/professional-educational-child-and-adolescent-psychology-dedpsy

https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/prof-doc-educational-child-psychology

O'Donnell, A. M., Dobozy, E., Nagel, M. C., Bartlett, B., Smala, S., Wormald, C., ... & Smith, J. K. (2024). Educational psychology. John Wiley & Sons.

Ormrod, J. E., Anderman, E. M., & Anderman, L. H. (2023). Educational psychology: Developing learners. Pearson. One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458.

Pupil Voice: Children with Speech, Language & Communication Needs, InclusiveTeach.com  

Santrock, J. W. (2024). Educational psychology.

 SEN Support: Findings from a Qualitative Study, GOV.UK  

 SENCO as a Leader Toolkit: Gathering Voices, SensibleSENCO  

Slavin, R. E., Madden, N., & Ross, S. (2025). Educational psychology: Theory and practice.

Pearson. One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458.

 Teacher Awareness, Teaching Confidence and Facilitation of Learning for Children with SEN, ResearchGate  

 Vivash & Morgan (2019). The Role of Educational Psychologists in Fuelling the Narrative of the “Velcro TA”, Frontiers in Education  

 Wang (2026). Socio‑Pedagogical Support for Students with SEN in Inclusive Mainstream Schools: A Systematic Review, PRBM  

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