Principles for quality undergraduate education in psychology

The principles for undergraduate education in psychology presented here are designed for creating a world-class educational system that provides students with the workplace skills needed in this information age; a solid academic background that prepares them for advanced study in a wide range of fields; and the knowledge, skills, and abilities that will enhance their personal lives. A quality undergraduate education is designed to produce psychologically literate citizens who apply the principles of psychological science at work and at home. The American Psychological Association (APA) urges all stakeholders in undergraduate education in psychology to incorporate these principles in establishing goals and objectives that fit their specific institutional needs and missions.     

Multitâche numérique et compréhension : une revue de la littérature

IntroductionIn recent years, many Anglo-Saxon studies in psychology have focused on the effects of digital technologies on learning, when they are used during study time in class or at home. Such uses have been called media multitasking. The purpose of this article is to report on these recent advances.Literature findingsThrough a literature review of 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2020, we first report information's on learners’ uses demonstrating the prevalence of media multitasking and its effect on academic achievement. We then show that these uses can interfere with the retention of learning content, as well as with comprehension, under certain conditions and in a non-systematic way.Discussion–conclusionFinally, we discuss some recommendations that can be drawn from these studies: considering technologies and including their uses during learning or limiting their uses, depending on educational choices.     

Intellectual ability, learning style, personality, achievement motivation and academic success of psychology students in higher education

This study is directed towards an integration of intellectual ability, learning style, personality and achievement motivation as predictors of academic success in higher education. Correlational analyses partly confirmed and partly disconfirmed our expectations in a sample of 409 first-year psychology students. Consistent with the literature, intellectual ability and achievement motivation were associated positively with academic success. For the meaning directed, reproduction directed and application directed learning style, no positive association with academic success could be detected. The undirected learning style, however, appeared to be a consistent negative predictor. For the Big Five personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience), a consistent, positive association for conscientiousness with academic success was found. The very first examination at the university came out as the most important predictor for academic success, even after two and three years of study. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to the literature and the policy of the Dutch Ministry of Education.     

Men Pursuing an Undergraduate Psychology Degree: What’s Masculinity Got to Do with It?

Using discursive psychology as its theoretical and methodological framework, the present study explored male Canadian undergraduate students’ accounts of their reasons for studying psychology, their experiences of being male undergraduate psychology students, and their anticipated future careers. Ten men (19–29 years-old) who were at least in their second year of study in the psychology major program were interviewed. Contrary to survey research concluding that men who make gender-atypical vocational choices conform less to masculine norms than do men who make typical academic and career choices, our participants produced contradictory accounts. On the one hand, in talking about their experiences as psychology students in the context of the gender gap, they argued that gender does not matter. On the other hand, they showed that gender does matter in brief “boy moments” when they shared tacit gender knowledge with the interviewer and in justifying their academic paths toward futures that involved leaving psychology for a male-concentrated field. Thus, gender-does-not matter was the preferred argument when gender was an explicit topic of conversation, and the doing of gender occurred in unacknowledged ways.

     

Access to psychoanalytic ideas in American undergraduate institutions

To determine the prevalence of teaching about psychoanalytic ideas in the undergraduate curricula of 150 highly ranked colleges and universities, a software-based search was conducted to find references to psychoanalytic content in published course catalogues. Results showed that psychoanalytic ideas were represented somewhere in the curricula of most (though not all) of these schools, and that overall there were many times more courses featuring psychoanalytic ideas outside psychology departments than within them. The data also suggest that there are regional differences in the likelihood an undergraduate will encounter psychoanalytic ideas at these schools. Though psychoanalytic ideas are available in some form in most of these schools' psychology departments, the average number of courses per school is small. At the same time, psychoanalytic ideas have found applications in many areas of the humanities and social sciences. The nature of the presentation of psychoanalytic ideas in these areas, however, may often be unfamiliar to clinically oriented analysts, as seen in examples of the courses that were found. Challenges and opportunities of the current academic climate vis-à-vis organized psychoanalysis are described and various suggestions made regarding how analysts can engage the academic world to its benefit.     

The Effects of Minimal and Maximal Peer Tutoring Systems on the Academic Performance of College Students

The effects of two levels of peer tutoring on the academic performance of 193 college students enrolled in two sections of introductory psychology were investigated. In Section 1,10 groups of 3 men and 3 women randomly assigned to 10 undergraduate peer tutors participated in Experimental Condition 1 (E-1). In Section 2, two groups of 20 and 21 students randomly assigned to two undergraduate peer tutors participated in Experimental Condition 2 (E-2). Students not participating in an experimental condition comprised the control groups for each section (C-1 and C-2). The treatment analysis of E1 vs. C-1 and E-2 vs. C-2 revealed significant differences where E-1 and E-2 were clearly superior in academic performance. These data demonstrate that undergraduate peer tutors can enhance the academic performance of college students. Positive ratings by the participating students and peer tutors provide further evidence of the positive program effects.

     

Existential, theological, and psychological concepts of death: a personal retrospective

Before Freud, the study of death belonged strictly in the contexts of religion and philosophy, but in the 20th Century, death and dying began to enter into dialogue with the social sciences of psychology and sociology. The existentialists began to portray death differently in their literary-based philosophy, and by the end of the century four major American writers had dealt squarely with death in a theological framework. The author's own personal experiences and academic endeavors frame this evolution in theories about death and dying, beginning with a Master's thesis in college and ending with a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education in a shock trauma hospital. In this article the mystery of death is examined from three distinct points of view: literary (including existentialism, a philosophy as literature), theological and psychological, based upon the author's career as a professor of literature, as seminary student, and as a recent participant in Clinical Pastoral Education. An attempt at a synthesis of these three strands of inquiry is made at the end of this personal and academic journey.     

A citation network analysis of career mentoring across disciplines: A roadmap for mentoring research in sport

ObjectiveGiven our limited understanding of mentoring in sport, reviewing research from other disciplines has the potential to advance knowledge in this context. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to synthesize and evaluate the mentoring literature across disciplines in order to bridge existing knowledge and to situate the mentoring in sport literature.DesignA citation network analysis.MethodA comprehensive literature search was conducted to locate influential career mentoring articles, books, and book chapters across all disciplines. Subsequently, this body of literature was evaluated using citation network to (a) identify the major career mentoring disciplines, (b) locate the most influential career mentoring texts, (c) evaluate the transfer of knowledge across disciplines, and (d) situate and evaluate the mentoring in sport literature.ResultsThe literature search resulted in a mentoring network of 1,819 texts and 10,951 citation links. Five major mentoring disciplines emerged: academic medicine, industrial and organizational psychology, education, nursing, and psychology. The industrial and organizational psychology and academic medicine disciplines were the most substantial mentoring disciplines. Further, the findings suggest the literature is relatively disconnected within and across disciplines. In regard to sport, the mentoring research represented 1.47% of the full-network (29 texts and 50 citation relations) and is interwoven into the industrial and organizational psychology literature.ConclusionGiven the limited sport texts uncovered in the citation network analysis, sport scholars can stand to benefit from the wealth of existing career mentoring literature in other disciplines. Accordingly, the identification of seminal career mentoring disciplines and texts serves to provide sport mentoring scholars with a roadmap to further promote the advancement and dissemination of mentoring knowledge and research.     

The Unheard Cry of a Successful Asian Psychologist

Abstract

This paper addresses the important issues of making it as an Asian psychologist in an overwhelmingly white academic field. Based on my professional and personal struggle to achieve success as a psychologist in both academia and clinical practice, I want to (a) expose the naked truth of being an Asian psychologist within a white academic field with regard to racial trauma, careerism, and expediency; (b) chart a course of maintaining personal and ethnic authenticity in truth-seeking in spite of all the visible and invisible obstacles in a foreign country; and (c) propose ways to fully recognize indigenous psychology and integrate Asian minorities in mainstream psychology.     

MINORITY WOMEN IN ACADEMIA Access and Barriers to Professional Participation

The experiences that women, especially minority-status women (African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American), have in educational advancement in psychology is limited. This limited power was examined in two ways: (a) by reviewing the inclusion of minority women within academic psychology at undergraduate, graduate, job entry, and senior level positions within the profession and (b) by reviewing economic and social-psychological processes that unjustly serve as barriers to women.     

Development and Implementation of a Sport Psychology Program in an Urban High School

SUMMARY

This article is based on a dissertation of the author that was centered on the process of developing a sport psychology program at the high school level. The program was developed to address academic, mental, social, and emotional needs of student-athletes and coaches. This sport psychology program, which was developed in the Linden Public School District, a large urban district in New Jersey, may be the first such program documented on a national level. In this dissertation, the author, who was a school psychologist in the district, utilized a particular program planning and evaluation framework, with attention to the first two phases-clarification and designto develop and implement a sport psychology program.     

Mental health teaching to UK psychology undergraduates: report of a survey

One of the limitations on developing more progressive applied psychology training is the teaching received by students at undergraduate level. In this study, we focus on the provision of teaching about mental health or its equivalents (e.g. abnormal psychology and clinical psychology) on UK undergraduate psychology programmes. Most students who go on to train as clinical psychologists will have received teaching on modules like these. A survey questionnaire was sent to 109 university departments which might offer a module in mental health mental health module and 348 individuals who might be involved in such modules. The majority of programmes responding offered a mental health module, which was available each year as an optional subject. A number of findings on the content and delivery of the modules are reported and a number of recommendations are made including more involvement from practitioners and service users. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reflections of an eclectic skeptic

Following primary and secondary education in Europe, I came to the United States for further education. After majoring in engineering, I shifted to liberal arts and social sciences. I minored in mathematics, philosophy, and education at the undergraduate level and physiology at the graduate level, ultimately obtaining a PhD in personality psychology. My interests were primarily academic, but I did not neglect the emerging field of clinical psychology. After working in hospitals for 9 years, I joined the faculty of Michigan State University where I established the psychological clinic and served as its director for 13 years. Subsequently, during 2 sabbaticals in Israel, I researched personality development in unconventional family settings (the kibbutz). I also studied such diverse issues as motivation for parenthood, time perception and time perspective, and cognition in psychopathology. After editing several textbooks on assessment techniques, I initiated the series of triennial Murray lectures that highlighted the dynamic approach to the study of personality.     

Determinants of expectancy of examination results

Abstract.— In a group of undergraduate psychology students, expectancy of examination results was found to be positively related to experienced effort (work put out for the exam) and estimated importance of success for future career, both for men and women. The assumptions that men consider success to be more important for self esteem and future career than women do, and that women consider success to be more important in connection with social acceptance than men do, were not supported. Women were found to have a lower expectancy level than men in spite of there being no sex difference as to experienced effort. It was suggested that women perceive their ability to be lower than men do. In a group of persons who were homogenous as to the importance of success for future career, incentive value of success for social acceptance correlated positively with expectancy for men, but negatively for women.     

The relationship of academic self-efficacy to class participation and exam performance

This study examined the relationship of academic self-efficacy to engagement in class discussion and performance on major course exams among students (N = 165) in an undergraduate human development course. Cluster analysis was used to identify three levels of academic self-efficacy: high (n = 34), medium (n = 91), and low (n = 40). Results indicated that high, medium, and low academic self-efficacy all significantly predicted levels of student participation and exam performance, but the directionality of group placement on the academic measures was different for students at the high self-efficacy level versus those at the low and mid self-efficacy levels. Cluster analysis was also used to divide students into high, medium, and low grade-point average (GPA). These groups did not differ significantly on either self-efficacy or class participation but did differ on exam performance. Within GPA levels, self-efficacy was most strongly related to class participation and exam performance at the highest level of GPA and least related at the lowest level of GPA.     

Mental budgeting versus marginal decision making: training,experience and justification effects on decisions involving sunk costs

Many studies have shown that individuals make economically irrational decisions by using, rather than ignoring, sunk cost information. In this study, the effects of relevant academic training, financial experience and decision justification on investment decisions involving sunk costs were examined. Data on both the process (strategy) and outcome of the decisions were collected. The results indicate that practicing Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), Masters of Business Administration students (MBAs) and undergraduate accounting students perform better than undergraduate psychology students. The level of training, as measured by the number of college courses in managerial accounting, was found to be positively correlated with performance, while the level of experience, as measured by years of financially‐related work, was not. Justification was found to improve decisions only for those participants with significant work experience (MBAs and CPAs). Strategies used in this type of decision were examined with the surprising finding that economically rational decisions can be made even if sunk costs are not ignored. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Survey of Ethics Training in Undergraduate Psychology Programs at Jesuit Universities

Training in ethics is fundamental in higher education among both faith-based and secular colleges and universities, regardless of one’s academic major or field of study. Catholic colleges and universities have included moral philosophy, theology, and applied ethics in their undergraduate curricula for generations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine what, if anything, Jesuit college psychology departments are doing to educate psychology majors regarding ethical issues. A survey method was used to assess the psychology departments of all 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the United States. A total of 21 of the 28 schools responded and completed the survey. Five schools (23%) reported that they offered a course specifically on ethics in psychology, and three (14%) additional schools offered related courses. Of the eight (38%) that offered ethics-related courses, only one required its majors to take it, and only if they were enrolled in the mental health or forensic psychology tracks. For two (10%) of the schools, the ethics in psychology course counted as a university core ethics requirement; for two others (10%), the class met an elective university ethics requirement for psychology majors.     

Community Disadvantage and Academic Achievement among Hispanic Adolescents: The Role of Familism

Hispanic adolescents experience disproportionately higher dropout rates at the secondary level, and their efforts tend to be further compounded by economic adversity. In considering how to meet the challenges facing this bolstering population, prior research suggests that parental investment, or familism, may increase their academic success. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to examine the association between community disadvantage, measured at the community level, and Hispanic adolescents' academic achievement, in addition to identifying the underlying mechanisms and interactive effects of familism on this association. Based on theories and previous literature, the following hypotheses were tested: (1) that community-level community disadvantage will negatively impact Hispanic adolescents' academic achievement, (2) that familism will mediate the association between community disadvantage and Hispanic adolescents' academic achievement and (3) that familism will also moderate the association between community disadvantage and Hispanic adolescents' academic achievement. Results supported the proposed hypotheses and shed light on the importance of considering the unique needs of Hispanic adolescents in the classroom. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Getting Everybody Involved

Abstract

This paper describes a creative approach for training counselor and counselor educators that provides collaborative interactions among students and faculty in several university training programs. Structured around a problem-solving activity and self-reflection questionnaires, undergraduate teachers-in-training were given an opportunity to receive one-to-one consultative counseling from the master's level counselors-in-training, who in turn received structured problem-solving supervision from the doctoral level students. Finally, the doctoral level students received faculty support to facilitate the development of their supervisory skills. The goal of this training approach is to provide students at all three levels with experiences similar to those they will encounter as professionals following graduation from the university, but within the context of scaffolding from faculty and more advanced students.