Background: Critical thinking is an important student learning outcome in all psychology courses and included in the American Psychological Association's (APA's) goals for the undergraduate major. Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of integrating a general model of critical thinking into the instruction,…

Identifying effective and time-efficient approaches to teaching students how to write from scholarly sources benefits students and instructors. Students in a general psychology course learned a concrete method to improve this type of synthesis writing. The intervention was brief, consisting of viewing an online tutorial outside of class and…

Background: Literature on undergraduate multicultural psychology instruction is limited. Prior research has included primarily White samples, yielded mixed results, and largely ignored assessment of learning in skills-based domains such as ethnic identity development. Objective: We aimed to replicate and extend prior research by examining growth…

Social constructivist principles and ideas are among those most cited in both educational and psychological circles today, and many current scholars and reformers ground their work in social constructivist theories. Yet the basic principles of social constructivism are notoriously difficult for students to understand and grapple with. This article…

Introduction: Research suggests benefits for incorporating popular press books into courses to encourage critical thinking and student-instructor interactions about concepts. Objective: This article offers a summary and critique of "7 ½ Lessons about the Brain" by Lisa Feldman-Barrett along with pedagogical strategies for integrating the…

What an instructor does on the first day of a course can impact students' motivation in the course. To build upon these prior research findings, we implemented a first-day intervention to influence students' motivation by increasing their perceptions of course interest, course usefulness, and instructor caring. The participants were undergraduate…

The authors describe a demonstration of stereotype use in everyday language that focuses on common phrases reflecting stereotypic beliefs about ethnic groups or nationalities. The exercise encourages students' discussion of stereotype use. Students read 13 common phrases from the English language and stated whether they had used each phrase and…

To determine the effectiveness of 20- to 30-min workshops on recognition of errors in American Psychological Association-style writing, 58 introductory psychology students attended one of the three workshops (on grammar, mechanics, or references) and completed error recognition tests (pretest, initial posttest, and three follow-up tests). As a…

This article details a multi-modal active learning experience to help students understand elements of social categorization. Each student in a group dynamics course observed two groups in conflict and identified examples of in-group bias, double-standard thinking, out-group homogeneity bias, law of small numbers, group attribution error, ultimate…

Two discussion methods used in an introductory psychology course by undergraduate teaching assistants are compared for effectiveness. (DE)

Presents data related to student involvement in biweekly student-led discussion groups in an undergraduate abnormal psychology course. Evaluates the degree to which students felt they benefited from discussion groups composed of similar and dissimilar students. (Author/AV)

A study investigated student participation in class discussion in a college psychology course. Findings indicated that the quality of participation is related to personality. Teachers are cautioned to avoid one-sided discussions by dividing students into discussion groups which include intuitive, extroverted, judging, thinking, and perceptive…

Describes a conceptual framework for training college-level instructors of psychology in teaching skills. Discusses five basic processes: (1) informing; (2) modeling; (3) experiencing; (4) discussing; and (5) feedback. (Author/CK)

This classroom activity demonstrates the importance of question wording on surveys. In the activity, students compared data from 2 versions of a short questionnaire that differed only in the wording of the questions and the response scales. Class discussion focused on how wording affected the data and, consequently, how difficult it would be to…

Explores the benefits of structuring a research class with weekly alternation between one whole-group meeting (20 students and three professors) and three part-group meetings (six or seven students and one professor). Students participated more actively in part-group sessions. (Author/AV)