Critical thinking is a valued educational outcome; however, little is known about whether psychology courses, especially ones such as research methods courses that might be expected to promote critical thinking skills, actually improve them. We compared the acquisition of critical thinking skills for analyzing psychological arguments in 3 groups…

Describes an assignment in a history and systems of psychology course where students traced the genealogy of psychologists in terms of their academic roots. Explains that the students learned about bibliographic resources during the project. Discusses assignment outcomes as discovered through a student survey. (CMK)

Highlights an interviewing techniques course that facilitates professional skills likely to contribute to success in fieldwork. Provides a description of the course including the role of the instructor, course activities, and evaluating skill development. Describes the course assessment and discusses the survey results. (CMK)

Focuses on the value of a multicultural counseling prepracticum course for counselors in training at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond). States that the course helps students develop their skills in multicultural counseling. Offers suggestions for teaching the course and discusses course objectives, course content, and student responses.…

Highlights an activity from an introductory psychology class in which students applied concepts learned in the course toward learning a new skill (juggling). Explains the procedure and discusses the activity evaluation. Provides suggestions for improvement. (CMK)

How classroom debates can be used in a developmental psychology course to teach students about controversial issues and to help them improve their thinking and oral communications skills is described. Evaluations indicate that students consider debates to be a positive learning experience. (Author/RM)

The rapid generation of information today constitutes an imperative for change in the way undergraduate psychology courses are taught. Psychology instructors must carefully select material for their courses, structure courses to maximize student performance, emphasize information retrieval skills, and contribute to the development of general…