Psychology teachers can serve an important role as mentors to their students in ways that can help students make a successful transition to college. By sharing information about the differences between the high school and college experiences, teachers can help students understand they will be adjusting to many changes, particularly in terms of expectations.
In addition to thoughtfully delineating learning outcomes in individual courses, psychology teachers should consider what their ultimate goals are for students at the conclusion of formal education. The “psychologically literate citizen” metaphor has been proposed to describe the ideal graduate educated in psychology: “Psychologically literate citizenship describes a way of being, a type of problem solving, and a sustained ethical and socially responsive stance towards others” (Halpern, 2010, p. 21).
To respond to recommendations related to the report “Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture,” APA’s Board of Directors developed a list of recommended actions. Among other actions, the board recommended the Education Directorate “promote a focus on human rights and ethics as a core element of psychology education and training from high school through continuing education offerings.” The following article by Jovan Hernandez, PhD, is the third of a series of articles related to human rights and ethics.
As a result of recommendations related to the Report of the Independent Review (IR), the APA Board of Directors developed a list of recommended actions that should be taken in response. Among other actions, the board recommended that the Education Directorate “promote a focus on human rights and ethics as a core element of psychology education and training from high school through continuing education offerings.”
The following article by Sam G. McFarland, PhD, is the second of a series of articles related to human rights and ethics.
Late one night in the winter in 1940, in the small French village of Le Chambon, a shivering Jewish woman knocked on the door of André and Magda Trocmé, the local Lutheran minister and his wife. The woman was fleeing from the Nazis and desperate for food and shelter. Magda quickly took her in, fed her and started thinking how to help her. The woman needed false identification papers and a place to hide. Over the next few weeks, Magda and André talked with their parishioners and neighbors and soon the entire village was providing refuge for fleeing Jews. Some were smuggled to safety in Switzerland. Others were given false identities and hidden on nearby farms. Many were children. Despite a murderous Gestapo raid that killed several members of the community, over the next four desperate years, Magda and André led Le Chambon in saving about 3,500 Jews from the Holocaust. When André was arrested and pressed to name all the Jews he had helped, he responded, “We do not know what a Jew is; we only know human beings” (Trocmé, 2007, p. vii).
A goal of education should be to help us transcend our natural egocentrism and ethnocentrism. The Trocmés had clearly transcended both. They were able to value the lives of the Jews they saved as strongly as they valued their own, and they saw them simply as fellow human beings. As Gandhi said, they believed that, “All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.” Martin Luther King, a follower of Gandhi’s philosophy, added, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
I want our students to embrace the Gandhi and King philosophies. I want them to learn to think about issues, not in terms of how they affect themselves, or members of their own religion, ethnic group or country, but in terms of how they affect all humanity.
When students learn to view themselves and the world as did the Trocmés, Gandhi and King, they will care about human rights. If they do not, they won’t. It really is that simple.
During the last few years, my students and I developed a measure of Gandhi’s belief, called the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH; McFarland, Webb, & Brown, 2012; McFarland, Brown, & Webb, 2013). A sample item reads:
How much do you identify with (that is, feel a part of, feel love toward, have concern for) each of the following?
We have tried to study the roots and effects of caring about human rights, and how Gandhi’s belief in the single human family might be expanded. Among other findings, those scoring high on the IWAH seek to understand the broader world, value American and non-American lives more equally, support human rights more strongly and give more to international charities.
How can the sense of humanity as one family be expanded, and with it, concern for human rights? I suggest three methods that can be used in high school and college psychology classes.
In one study, we asked students to complete the IWAH. Then, we asked them to complete it again as the “most mature and moral person you could imagine anyone being.” For 86 percent of the students, the scores as the “most mature and moral person” were higher than the scores for themselves: The students’ own IWAH item average was about 3 (labeled “somewhat”) on the 5-point scale, but their item average for the “most mature and moral person” was above 4, a full point higher. Many students, it seems, can envision identifying with all humanity as a moral ideal, even if they don’t yet identify with all of humanity.
From that finding, Dewall and Myers (2013) created a valuable classroom exercise: Students complete the IWAH first as themselves, then as an ideal romantic partner and finally as the “most mature and moral person.” The students compare their own three scores, then reflect on the differences, often in small groups. Because students can now grasp identifying with all humanity as an ethical ideal, they can next brainstorm in small groups how their view can be expanded and present their ideas to the class. After a week or two have passed, students complete the IWAH again and observe and reflect on any changes in their scores. A colleague who used this exercise wrote to me that “completing the scale based on how the most mature and moral person would respond was an “aha moment” for many students. This assignment really helped them grasp the point of identifying with all humanity and why it matters.”
We learn so much through stories, and we tend to become like those we admire. There are many people like André and Magda Trocmé, and students who are told their stories (and shown their pictures) are often inspired. Many, like the Trocmés or Paul Rusesabagina, who sheltered and saved more than 1,200 from the Rwandan genocide, risked their own lives. Others risked their fortune, as did Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,200 of his Jewish employees from the Holocaust. Others devoted their lives to advancing human rights law. In London in 1765, Granville Sharp saw a slave child brutally beaten by his owner and then started the movement that led to outlawing the slave trade. In 1859, Henry Dunant witnessed Europe’s bloodiest battle in a half century and then led in creating both the International Red Cross and the First Geneva Convention to reduce the suffering caused by war. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who fled the Holocaust, coined the word “genocide” in 1944 and then helped write the Genocide Convention that made genocide an international crime. In 1961, after Peter Benenson read about two Portuguese students who were jailed for drinking a toast to freedom, he started Amnesty International, the most influential human rights organization in the modern world. Learn and share human rights heroes’ stories. Many of your students will develop new and worthy heroes and become more like them.
We can’t care about what we don’t know about. So I encourage teachers to devote one day of their course to having students read and discuss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You may wonder what teaching human rights has to do with psychology, but this could well be the most important day in your course, one that your students won’t forget.
The Universal Declaration, adopted in December 1948 by the new United Nations, is the foundation for all modern human rights developments. Nevertheless, few students know it. A survey on our campus found only 10 percent of our students could identify it in a multiple-choice quiz. Far fewer know its contents, that it proclaims in bold terms that human rights belong to every human being “without distinction of any kind” (Art. 2). Few know it includes civil and political rights, such as the right to a fair and public trial (Art. 10) and “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Art. 18), but it also declares economic and social rights, such as the right to education (Art. 25) and “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care … in circumstances beyond his control” (Art. 25).
For 20 years, while teaching psychology, I also taught a university honors course on human rights. These high-achieving students usually entered with virtually no prior knowledge of human rights. “I never knew any of that!” was a common reaction to the course. Because I regard human rights as the most important untaught subject in American education, both at the high school and college levels, and knowledge is so low, I recently wrote Human Rights 101: A Brief College-Level Overview (PDF, 483KB) (McFarland, 2015). This 16-page overview of modern human rights, available as a free download, is a resource for teachers and a one- or two-day reading and discussion in any class. A search of its title will lead the viewer to its location on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Human Rights Coalition. Links offer detailed information on every topic.
To conclude, I encourage teachers to try these three methods to encourage their students to expand their concern for all humanity and for human rights.
Dewall, C.N., & Myers, D. (2013). The hidden key to virtuous behavior: We’re all on the same side. APS Observer. Available online athttp://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/ publications/ observer/2013/september-13/teaching-current-directions-in-psychological-science-5.html.
McFarland, S.G. (2015). Human rights 101: A brief college level overview. Available online athttp://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/content_files/AAAS%20Coalition%20Human%20Rights%20101_0.pdf (PDF, 483KB).
McFarland, S, Brown, D., & Webb, M. (2013). “Identification with all humanity” as a moral concept and psychological construct. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 192-196. doi: 10.1177/0963721412471346.
McFarland, S.G., Webb, M., & Brown, D. (2012). All humanity is my ingroup: A measure and studies of identification with all humanity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 830-853. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0028724.
Trocmé, A. (2007/1971). Jesus and the nonviolent revolution. Farmington, Pennsylvania: Plough Publishing House.
Many instructors of psychology are looking for methods of incorporating outside resources into their daily psychology classrooms. Students of psychology may also be looking for books related to their areas of interest in the field and may be looking for recommended readings that add to what their textbook or class resources have provided. This book blog seeks to address these concerns and bring current research and information from recently published books in the field of psychology into the classroom.
For the very first time, the Society for Teaching Psychology (STP) is sponsoring a Twitter poster conference. Inspired by a Twitter poster conference in chemistry, STP leadership decided to sponsor a Twitter poster conference around the theme of teaching psychology.
When I was a kid, I guess I often stared off into the middle distances. My parents would bring me back to reality with the comment “A penny for your thoughts”. This was a simple gentle prod to the fact that I was daydreaming. Years later, I look out at my classes and am tempted to use the same prod. Not for the occasional student texting, but for those who minds seem anywhere but on the material I am covering.
After 30 years of working for the Lincoln Public Schools (LPS; Nebraska) as a high school teacher and a curriculum developer, I recently made the jump to higher education. My professional identity during my time with LPS was centered around the teaching of psychology. This change from secondary school education to a university has given me time to pause and reflect on those 30 years. Often overlooked in importance, reflection is a good practice for all teachers. During the past three decades, the teaching of high school psychology has come a long way.
Thirty years ago, we didn’t have the APA Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS), and we certainly didn’t have standards for teaching high school psychology.
There was no Advanced Placement (AP) psychology test and many wondered if there would be enough demand for AP psych to support it.
It was common to hear of high school psychology as a “touchy-feely” elective. A biology teacher teased me about psychology being a “pseudo-science”.
Thanks to the formation of TOPSS and the work of dozens of teachers and psychologists connected to APA, we have high school psychology standards. In fact, we’re on our third revision of the standards and a fourth is planned.
According to data from the College Board, the AP Psychology course is wildly popular. More students take this exam than the economics test, the geography test, or the world history test. In fact, more students take AP psychology than AP Biology. The International Baccalaureate (IB) psychology exam also ranks high among IB tests in terms of exam volume.
High school psychology students learn about hypothesis testing, the central nervous system, and how to use statistics when conducting research. That’s not touchy-feely, and it’s no surprise some states are considering making psychology a science credit.
Not everything has changed. Despite the huge number of on-level and AP psychology high school students nationwide, despite the relevance of psychology courses to students’ lives, and despite the many benefits of studying psychology, psychology courses are still not widely seen in K-12 education as important, serious courses of study. It is common for school principals to assign psychology courses to teachers with little (and sometimes no) background knowledge in psychology. There is much work still to be done to promote a greater understanding of high school psychology’s value, reach, and the way it’s delivered and assessed.
The recently announced APA Summit on High School Psychology Education should be just the vehicle for developing the materials necessary to help school administrators, state boards of education, parents, and other external groups and stakeholders better understand the value and reach of high school psychology. My guess is that most who work outside the discipline of psychology are unaware of high school psychology’s growth over the past 25 years. These outside groups are not alone; who among us has reflected on how the teaching of high school psychology has been transformed during the past three decades? With the Summit on the horizon it is also time to ponder and reflect not just on how far we’ve come as high school psychology teachers, but where we should go in the near future. What would make for an even better high school psychology class? An APA steering committee composed of high school psychology teachers and college professors has been meeting to prepare for the Summit that will address this and many more questions related to the ideal high school psychology. For instance:
If you are interested in helping answer these questions, please consider submitting an application to participate in the week-long Summit held next July at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. We’re looking for participants who can help us reflect on how we currently teach high school psychology and craft a vision for improving high school psychology education the future. Think about our challenge. We hope you will apply to join us next summer at this historic event.
