Mental health and wellness is a concern, not only for students, but for instructors in higher education as well. Course design can have a positive or negative impact on both student and instructor wellness, especially around stress and anxiety with assessments, workload, and due dates. Factors of course design such as policies and values, academic…

Foundations are the forces that influence the minds of curriculum developers, which affect the content and structure of the curriculum. These forces are beliefs and orientations as well as conceptions of learning and the needs of society. Foundation of curriculum is rooted with the foundation of education. Historically, modern curriculum and…

Starting with Woodworth and Thorndike's classical experiment published in 1901, major periods in mathematics education throughout 20th century and on into the current century are reviewed in terms of competing epistemological and psychological paradigms that were operating within as well as across the major periods. The periods were marked by…

Early adolescents, particularly from underrepresented or marginalized communities, may feel disconnected from school science leading to a lack of engagement. The lack of connection between their out of school experiences and school science may lead them to devalue science. This study examines interviews with 56 middle school students and 12…

Practically every teacher preparation institution offers a course in educational psychology, and it is often the initial education course taken by preservice teachers. Problems with such courses are that they are usually taught by several instructors with no standardization of course content, and the strategies used to teach these courses often do…

A model of human information processing is summarized and discussed in terms of the implications of the model and its associated technologies for curriculum research and development. Description of the model focuses on its input and output systems and its memory systems, i.e., long-term memory (LTM). Semantic networks are described as a…

Examines the effects of middle school organizational structure on students' interracial and cross-sex communication patterns emphasizing Allport's contact theory, i.e., does structure affect the frequency with which students talk to other-race classmates? Indicates schools can structure curricula to improve majority-minority interactions.…

The development of a modularized program for secondary educational psychology students at the University of Colorado is reviewed. The beginning stages and prototype produced are described, but emphasis is on the revision of the first system. Changes in the course, covering both educational and adolescent psychology, include expansion of the number…

The new core curriculum at Moravian College, in Pennsylvania, utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, integrating topics of psychology into three of the seven core courses: "Microcosm/Macrocosm"; "Quantitative Problem Solving"; and the seminar "Gender, Ethnicity, and Race." The course "Microcosm/Macrocosm"…

Although a history and systems course in psychology should provide a valuable forum for organizing the discipline, no current texts consistently provide enough coverage of the context in which the discipline emerged to anchor developments throughout the history of psychology. To test the validity of this observation, 10 undergraduate history and…

The almost total neglect of philosophical psychology as an area of curricular focus in undergraduate programs for the psychology major is examined. Three perspectives from which philosophical psychology may be addressed are surveyed and include: (1) the philosophy of mind; (2) problems indigenous to both philosophy and psychology; and (3) the…

More is being written about the need for psychology to address the diversity that exists in the population today. One way to do this is by incorporating diversity into general psychology courses. That would help prepare majors early on for client diversity. It would also insure that multiple perspectives are represented in class, which could…

This paper proposes embedding various positive psychology themes in the context of an undergraduate course on the psychology of personal adjustment. The specific positive psychology constructs considered include those of hope, optimism, perseverance, humility, forgiveness, and spirituality. These themes are related to appropriate course content…

The creation of a new undergraduate curriculum in psychology is discussed. It is suggested that the undergraduate psychology curriculum is valuable as an end in itself rather than solely as preparation for a career in the field. The new curriculum would be structured principally around a program of intensive study of the practical, personal…

This paper presents information on the development, over a 3-year period, of a computer literacy curriculum for the psychology master's program of Pepperdine University. The discussion is organized under three topics: curriculum, faculty development, and resources. A chronological flow chart is provided in Table 1, describing progress in…