Teaching Social Psychology Effectively

Abstract

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another – a subfield of psychology that began more than a century ago with experiments on social facilitation and social loafing. In the aftermath of World War II, social psychology subsequently broadened to tackle pressing social issues such as prejudice, genocide, obedience to authority, and school desegregation. In this chapter, we provide a practical guide on how to teach social psychology to undergraduate students, including “action teaching” – a relatively new educational approach in which students take action on social issues as part of the learning process. After discussing the curricular goals of social psychology, the chapter outlines six core ideas that emerge from research and theories in social psychology. Next, it describes several teaching, learning, and assessment strategies, beginning with “backward course design” (a design method in which instructors first identify learning objectives and then work backward to create course content, learning activities, and student assessments to achieve the objectives). The chapter also offers advice on how to address some of the most common challenges and questions that social psychology teachers face: (1) What if class members vary widely in psychology training? (2) Do the results of social psychology research generalize? (3) Are social psychology findings replicable? (4) How should research ethics be discussed? (5) What’s the best way to teach about difficult or controversial topics? (6) How can social psychology be taught effectively online? Finally, the chapter ends with an annotated list of published and online resources related to teaching, learning, and assessment, all of which should be useful to both new and veteran social psychology instructors.KeywordsSocial psychologyTeachingAction teachingOnlineMOOCUndergraduateAssessment