Teaching Psychology's History through a Comparative Analysis of Introductory Psychology Texts

Abstract

Students in a history of psychology course participated in a classroom exercise designed to encourage active learning while minimizing the importance of a testing-lecture format. Teams of students received an introductory psychology text from a different decade spanning the 1880s to 1970s. They also each received a 1990s introductory psychology text. Each team assumed responsibility for two class presentations in which they compared and contrasted the historical text with the contemporary text. Students' evaluations of the exercise suggested that it facilitated their overall understanding of the history of psychology and enhanced their abilities to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information pertaining to psychology's development as a scientific discipline.