Teaching of Psychology

In 2011, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology commissioned a presidential task force to document teaching criteria for model psychology teachers in undergraduate education. The resulting list of criteria reflects activities related to face-to-face course interaction and online teaching, training, and education; course design; implementation of learning experiences; and the assessment process. Specifically, the model encompasses six broad areas, namely training, instructional methods, assessment process, syllabi, content, and student evaluations of teaching. As a developmental tool, the model can serve as a self-guided course for self-assessment of educational practices and can help identify areas of potential development. It can prompt reflection about teaching strengths and weaknesses. The model can also be useful as a guiding structure for tenure and promotion.

Herein, we describe the implementation of, and responses to, a structured writing workshop in the form of an academic boot camp. Participants were 42 undergraduate psychology students from a medium-sized Australian university who were completing their major assignment for the semester. A majority of the students expressed satisfaction with the boot camp program. The use of structured and specific prompts elicited appropriate content for the different sections of their psychology research report. They also appreciated the distraction-free environment created during through the boot camp protocols. These findings have implications for more effective instruction and skill development in the writing of psychology research reports.

This study evaluated brief, in-class write-to-learn assignments as a tool for promoting learning and retention in large, introductory psychology courses. A within-subjects (student) design was used with assignment of concepts to write-to-learn and copy (control) conditions counterbalanced across sections for each instructor. Students performed better on exam questions that pertained to concepts they actively wrote about than those that pertained to conceptual information they copied from an instructor’s slide. On a retention test taken approximately 8.5 weeks after the course, students continued to perform better on write-to-learn concepts than on copied concepts. The findings suggest that write-to-learn assignments facilitate active processing of lecture material, which produces modest benefits for learning and retention of key, conceptual knowledge.

Inaccuracies, especially concerning the stimulus generalization findings, in textbook descriptions of the Little Albert study have been well documented since the 1970s. However, there has not been a systematic examination of introductory psychology textbooks since the 1980s to determine whether such inaccuracies still persist. This study filled this gap by examining 23 current introductory texts for accuracy in their coverage of the Little Albert story. In addition, it checked for coverage of recent unsettled issues in the story—the claimed identification of Albert, discovery of his neurological impairment, and early death at 6 years of age. Inaccuracies, especially concerning generalization, are still present in some texts, and coverage of recent developments is rather limited. Resource information for remediation is provided.

This study is concerned with the nature of the coverage in introductory social psychology textbooks of the Stanford prison experiment (SPE), given the many criticisms, especially recently, of the SPE. These criticisms concern both the study’s methodology and the situationist explanation of the outcome. Ten textbooks were analyzed for coverage of the SPE and its ensuing criticisms. Coverage of the SPE was found to be slightly less than that in introductory psychology textbooks, and the majority of the texts providing coverage either provided no or minimal coverage of the criticisms. Contributing factors to and possible explanations for such coverage are discussed. One explanation is applied to textbook coverage of the Kitty Genovese story and a critique exposing its inaccuracies.

Although a number of studies suggest that interteaching is an effective alternative to traditional teaching methods, no studies have systematically examined whether interteaching improves long-term memory. In this study, we assigned students to different teaching conditions—interteaching, lecture, or control—and then gave them a multiple-choice quiz immediately after exposure to the material and again after 1 week and 1 month. We found that students in the interteaching condition had significantly higher quiz scores than students in the lecture and control conditions after every session. Although additional research is necessary to determine whether our findings generalize to classroom settings and to different testing formats, these results suggest that interteaching may enhance long-term recognition memory better than lecture-based teaching methods.

This study assessed the nature of psychology and its consensus regarding core content. We hypothesized that psychology possesses little agreement regarding its core content areas and thus may “envy” more canonical sciences, such as physics. Using a global sample, we compared psychologists’ and physicists’ perceptions regarding the nature of their field and consensus of core content areas within their respective disciplines. Results revealed that psychologists perceive their field as less theoretically and empirically grounded, and its major findings less agreed upon than physics. Psychologists also generated little consensus regarding its most important, core content areas. Discussion focuses on the importance of psychology establishing a core knowledge base and strategies to overcome “physics envy” in the classroom.

Montepare suggested the use of a self-correcting approach to multiple-choice tests: Students first take the exam as usual, but are allowed to hand in a self-corrected version afterwards. The idea of this approach is that the additional interaction with the material may foster further learning. To examine whether such an approach actually improves learning, we compared two large sections in psychology: one section used traditional exams and the other section used self-correcting midterm exams. Indeed, compared to the traditional approach, students using the self-correcting approach performed better on the final exam. Moreover, students who self-corrected more items performed better on the final exam above and beyond students’ original performance. As a tool to foster students’ engagement and learning, the self-correcting approach might be especially useful in large classroom settings.

Two versions of a senior-level capstone course with differing note-taking strategies were compared. In one semester, a traditional student note-taking format was used; in another semester, student note-taking was rendered unnecessary by providing students with complete instructor notes. Student performance in the course as well as student opinions of the course itself and the new no-notes format were assessed. The nature of students’ in-class participation increased significantly with the no–note-taking format, and final grades exhibited a modest improvement as well. Students were overwhelmingly positive in their reactions to the approach. Recommendations regarding the potential benefits of reducing the divided attention demands of note-taking in the classroom are discussed.

This study examined extended influences of peer helping courses on graduates’ self-reported experiences of interpersonal relationships, communication skills, and ongoing engagement with the training. The 109 participants included 49 college graduates who completed a peer counseling theory course, 47 graduated psychology concentrators who took a peer practicum that included both theory and supervised practice, and a comparison group of 13 graduated psychology concentrators who took neither peer counseling course. Participants in both peer training courses reported continuing effects on their interpersonal relationships, communication skills, and engagement with the training, with greatest effects reported by the psychology concentrators in both peer training courses. The small comparison group provided additional perspective on these findings. Suggestions for future research are offered, including potential benefits of more widespread utilization of college peer counselor training and the need for further follow-up studies on those who have been trained as peer counselors.

This study investigates the effects of formality of dress on ratings of classroom presentations. Participants (N = 65, 66% women) from a Midwestern university in the United States rated three female students giving a presentation designed for a health psychology class in one of four outfits: casual, party, business casual, or business formal. Participants rated the business formal–dressed presenters higher than both casual and party–dressed presenters on overall presentation quality but not higher than business casual–dressed participants. Our results provide strong empirical evidence that dressing formally not only influences presentation scores but also suggest that students do not completely recognize how clothing differs in appropriateness for presentations.

The purpose of this study was to describe the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) undergraduate psychology students were able to articulate while engaging in a career preparation seminar with an embedded service-learning internship. Results from the students’ reflective journals indicated students were able to describe a wide range of KSAs used and gained in their service-learning internship: communication skills, interpersonal skills, and working effectively with diverse populations. Although students were initially apprehensive about the time commitment, ultimately they found it was manageable and worthwhile; they reported enjoying helping others, gaining necessary workplace skills, increasing their knowledge of diversity, and learning more about the value of their psychology degree.

Students often inquire about which psychology courses to complete in preparation for graduate school. This study provides data that enable students and their advisors to make research-informed decisions. We surveyed the directors of the 304 American Psychological Association-accredited doctoral programs in clinical and counseling psychology (97% response rate) regarding prerequisites for doctoral study: the psychology courses, number of psychology credits, undergraduate psychology major, or some combination thereof. About 20% of the doctoral programs required the psychology major for entry, and 8% of the doctoral programs (virtually all in counseling psychology) required a master’s degree. The remaining doctoral programs required either specific courses or specific courses and a minimum number of credits. In clinical psychology, PsyD programs were far more likely to require abnormal psychology, personality, and psychological testing as prerequisites, whereas PhD programs were more likely to require a laboratory course and research experience.

In this article, I review how people organize values and goals in their minds and I suggest teaching demonstrations, exercises, and assignments to help students learn this material. I pay special attention to circumplex models, which represent the extent of conflict or compatibility between values and goals, and to the well-researched distinction between intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance and community feeling) and extrinsic (e.g., financial success and image) goals. I also provide a brief overview of the literature regarding how both a dispositional focus on goals and the momentary activation of goals relate to people’s personal well-being and to their prosocial and proenvironmental attitudes and behavior. Finally, I discuss implications for students’ experiences with advertising messages in their day-to-day lives.