Book review: The World of Psychology, 3rd Canadian Edition.

Abstract

SAMUEL E. WOOD, ELLEN R. GREEN WOOD, EILEEN WOOD, and SERGE DESMARAIS The World of Psychology, 3rd Canadian Edition Toronto, ON: Pearson Education Canada Inc, 2002, 592 pages (ISBN 0-205-36456-X, $67.95, Softcover) Reviewed by GIRA BHATT The task of teaching an introductory course in psychology can be quite challenging. The discipline has been growing rapidly and there is a continual influx of new research findings that need to be sifted through, summarized, organized, and incorporated into the course while making it palatable and interesting to the eager minds of the first year of psychology. The challenge is equally daunting for the writers of textbooks who must not only keep pace with the latest developments, but also ensure that the content as well as the style meets the pedagogical demands in the competitive world of textbook publication. Keeping pace with the latest research trends and media technology, writers and publishers have met these challenges quite well. Today's introductory psychology textbooks are multicoloured, filled with colour-coded boxes, tables, diagrams, pictures, photographs, quotations, cartoons, and more (Bhatt & Chan, 1996). Also, almost all introductory textbooks that arrive in the instructors' offices today come as a package loaded with instructors' resources, hundreds of colour transparencies, test-banks, video-tapes, video-discs, CDs, and even the on-line versions of the course with simulated exercises, quizzes, etc. These are now standard features of most introductory psychology textbooks. In fact, that introductory textbooks all look almost alike has made the task of textbook selection quite arduous. Canadian instructors face an additional challenge. A large majority of these textbooks are published in the U.S., written by U.S. authors, and aimed for use of U.S. students. As such, the focus of the textbook content has remained on the U.S. context. The examples illustrating core concepts are replete with American themes such as American demographics, American presidents, American TV shows, American news stories, American baseball, and so on. Canadian do not necessarily relate to these contents and instructors often have to search for Canadian equivalents. It is, therefore, heartening to note an emerging trend of introductory textbooks being published as Canadian. The main issue, however, is what makes an introductory textbook Canadian? Is there any pedagogical value in Canadianizing an introductory psychology textbook? On the surface, it may appear that differences between the U.S. and Canada are only geographical. Yet, if one searches for unique features of life in Canada, one is likely to find plenty. Our political system is different from that of the U.S.. Our multicultural mosaic ideal stands in contrast to the melting pot ideal of the U.S. We have strict gun controls. We have a universal health care system. We do not have a large black population. We tend to be fanatic about ice hockey, and so on. In fact, that we are not like the Americans is a salient feature of our identity as Canadians (Tonks & Bhatt, 1991). Moreover, the differences between life in the U.S. and life in Canada do have significant implications for our academic programs (Bowman, 2000). Wood, Wood, Wood, and Desmarais' The World of Psychology: Third Canadian Edition acknowledges at the outset that students learn best when materials are relevant to their lives (p. xxi). Consequently, they have integrated Canadian content throughout the text, including Canadian demographics, Canadian illustrations, Canadian historical events, and media references. Six of the 14 chapters have opening vignettes that are interesting and relevant to life in Canada. For example, one chapter opens with a story about the youth gang of Spadina girls in Toronto and the Reena Virk tragedy in Victoria, which highlight the violence among young women in Canada. Another chapter opens with an interesting news story about conjoined twins from Pakistan who were flown to Toronto's Hospital for the Sick Children to undergo a surgery to separate their heads. …