Resources for Teachers

Undergraduate Teachers January 13, 2020

One course, two courses, three courses, more? Providing career support throughout the undergraduate curriculum

Scenario One

When Shannon asked for a letter of recommendation from the department chair to support her applications for graduate school, the chair asked why she was applying to clinical programs. Shannon said she did not know what else she could do with her bachelor’s degree.

Scenario Two

Rafael took a required psychology careers course in the fall of his sophomore year. He knew he wanted to be a sport psychologist, so he did not consider other careers at that time. With each new psychology course, Rafael’s interests evolved. By the time he entered his senior year, Rafael knew he wanted to pursue a career that aligned with his new interests but did not know what the options were.

Undergraduate Teachers November 4, 2019

Retooling psych 101

More than 1 million students take introductory psychology each year, making the course a prime opportunity to showcase the value of psychology as a science and draw in future psychologists. Now, a team of psychology educators is working to make better use of this key entry point.

“Intro psych is a spokesperson for our field,” says Bridgette Martin Hard, PhD, who develops the course’s curriculum at Duke University. “For most college students, intro psych is the first and often the only point of contact they have with psychology. It’s so important to get this class right.”

Pre K - 12 Teachers September 9, 2019

Teaching Advice from Exemplary High School Psychology Teachers

The literature on teaching excellence is abundant, and educational scholars have produced a robust body of research on best teaching practices at all educational levels.  While a healthy body of literature exists regarding teaching excellence in both psychology and teaching excellence at the secondary level, few sources are devoted to the combination of improving teaching excellence at the secondary level in psychology. To begin to fill this critical information void, the authors performed a qualitative analysis of each chapter written by a high school teacher who was included in the Society of the Teaching of Psychology’s (STP) series of five e-books titled The Teaching of Psychology in Autobiography: Perspectives from Exemplary Psychology Teachers.

Undergraduate Teachers September 2, 2019

Scientific literacy: It’s not just the textbooks. Psychology students score higher, too

About 10 years ago, a colleague and I compared scientific literacy content in introductory science textbooks(Macias & Macias, 2009). We found that psychology textbooks dedicated an average of about 21 pages to such content; about three times the amount in biology texts and 10 times what was typical for physics and chemistry (see Figure 1). But, as we pointed out elsewhere, this textual advantage may not translate into variations in student knowledge (Macias & Macias, 2018). The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in students’ acquisition of scientific literacy. 

Graduate and Postgraduate Students, Graduate and Postgraduate Teachers, High School Students, Pre K - 12 Teachers, Undergraduate Students August 5, 2019

Best of the APA Style Blog: 2018 Edition

Each fall we put together a “best of” post to highlight blog posts and apastyle.org pages that we think are helpful both for new students and to those who are familiar with APA Style. You can get the full story in our sixth edition Publication Manual (also available as an e-book) and our APA Style Guide to Electronic References, in addition to the pages linked below.

Undergraduate Teachers July 1, 2019

Communicating Psychology: Developing Undergraduate Ambassadors to Share Science

As a semester comes to a close many college instructors take time to reflect. Whether it is through institutional evaluations or our own instructor solicited student feedback, it is important to consider how our courses met designed learning outcomes and the needs of our students.

This past semester I prepped a new course called Communicating Psychology Science. Here is a selection of what my students said they learned:

Graduate and Postgraduate Students June 17, 2019

A guide to lecturing as a grad student

Many universities offer teaching assistantships or require graduate students to teach as part of their training. While lecturing opportunities are an excellent way to build professional skills, they can be daunting for those who lack prior teaching experience or feel nervous about public speaking. Here is some advice on how to prepare for and give a lecture to an undergraduate class, as well as how to set fair course policies.

Graduate and Postgraduate Teachers, Pre K - 12 Teachers, Undergraduate Teachers June 10, 2019

Practicing Mindfulness to Combat Stress in Academia

Academics spend hours sitting at a desk, thinking deep thoughts on specific topic areas. And we are also planners, thinking ahead of our next research paper or lecture. And when we think back to our previous papers and lectures, we ask the questions what went well? What did not go well? Often, we worry. Will we get tenure? Will we get that grant?

For as much thinking as we do, we are rarely self-reflexive in the present. We rarely live in the current moment, which, for many reasons, is problematic.