Scientist–Practitioner Model

The scientist–practitioner model casts psychologists in two separate but overlapping lights: practitioners, or working professionals who apply scientific knowledge, and scientists, or students and researchers whose professional role is to generate new scientific knowledge and refine the old. Each has a keen need and respect for the other. The scientist–practitioner model has become an aspirational goal for psychologists, and a prescription for how psychologists should be trained.

Its origins can be traced to the end of World War II, when the Veterans Administration (VA) and the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) encouraged the training of mental health professionals to work with returning veterans. At the same time, and in unprecedented numbers, students were seeking graduate education in psychology to meet this need. This put an ...