Psychology Curriculum Research Articles

Review of The Core Curriculum in Professional Psychology.

Review of The Core Curriculum in Professional Psychology.

Integrating Neuropsychological Training Into a Counseling Psychology Curriculum

This article presents a rationale for the integration of training in neuropsychology into a counseling psychology curriculum. This rationale is discussed against the historical development of the counseling psychology specialty and the current practice of counseling psychologists. A means of integrating training in neuropsychology is proposed that allows this training to serve as a potential means of providing a unifying focus for various didactic and clinical components of the doctoral curriculum. Finally, attention is given to representative issues of professional identity as well as ethical considerations in neuropsychology training and practice.

“A Thousand Points of Light” Illuminate the Psychology Curriculum: Volunteering as a Learning Experience

Most psychology departments offer field placements that allow undergraduates to learn practical skills and test career options. The psychology curriculum should encourage community service placements because they are consistent with psychology's values, good for students, and beneficial to the community. To close the acknowledged gap between good intentions and volunteer action, our department has developed two models of community service: elementary school tutoring within a child psychology course and credit for individual placements in a variety of settings. We describe procedures followed, decisions made, and lessons learned in setting up these courses. Student testimony about the value of these experiences is offered. Encouraging volunteerism is well worth the effort of psychology departments.

Vocational Preparation within a Liberal Arts Framework: Suggested Directions for Undergraduate Psychology Programs

The issue of vocational preparation in liberal arts programs is contentious, and undergraduate psychology curricula are no exception. Although some educators seek to maintain the traditional focus of the curriculum, others advocate an emphasis on career relevant skills and knowledge. This article addresses the issue of whether change in favor of vocational preparation compromises liberal arts values. Finding existing strategies flawed, I propose a new liberal skills model and recommend curriculum changes that can improve career relevance without sacrificing breadth of preparation.

Integrating Scholarship on Ethnicity into the Psychology of Women Course

This article presents the argument that instructors of courses in the psychology of women need to integrate the scholarship on ethnicity into their curriculum. We offer a possible structure for including this content by organizing the course discussions around major themes. The course consists of presentations based on these themes. Examples of films, topics, exercises, and popular books to be used are presented. Implications of incorporating the contents for other courses in the psychology curriculum are discussed.

One world, one psychology: ‘Relevance’ and ethnopsychology

Intellectual and political separatism have propagated two ideas deeply damaging to psychology in the developing countries, and in Africa in particular. One is that the working class of the developing countries — the poor, the ill-educated, and the rural — inhabit a third world that is at a lower evolutionary level than the glittering first world of psychologists and other professionals. The second is that until an indigenous third world (or African) psychology has been developed, psychology and its practitioners will remain irrelevant to the people and problems of the developing countries. In this article the author argues that both the world and psychology are unitary, and that this one psychology is indeed relevant to the developing countries, and that psychology's curriculum in these settings can be enriched not by ‘relevance’, but by human welfare applications derived from psychology as it now exists.

Evaluation of an Undergraduate Psychology Program: Occupational and Personal Benefits

A 30-item questionnaire completed by 272 psychology graduates from Marquette University, between May 1973 and May 1983, provided an updated evaluation of the undergraduate program. This study investigated: (a) differences between male and female graduates, (b) graduates' evaluation of the psychology curriculum and faculty, and (c) occupational benefits of the psychology major for those who pursued graduate work in psychology or professional fields and for those who sought employment with the terminal bachelor's degree. Results of this study are compared with those of other alumni surveys published between 1961 and 1987.

Migraine and defense mechanisms: Psychophysiological relationships in young females

Two psychological defense mechanisms, repression and self aggression, were studied in 23 young female migraine patients who had not been receiving treatment for their complaints and in 23 relatively headache free matched controls. All subjects were psychology students. Each subject was classified as high or low on repression and self aggression using the defense mechanism inventory. During three separate sessions: adaptation, intelligence test and real-life stress (an examination which was part of the psychology curriculum) pulse amplitudes of the temporal and digital arteries, frontal, temporal and corrugator EMGs, forehead temperature, skin conductance, and heart and respiration rate were measured. The migraine patients showed a trend towards more repression of their emotions and significantly more self aggression than the controls. Self aggression appeared to be positively associated with the headache frequency in the migraine group. With regard to the physiological measurements, in both groups repressors showed a modest tendency to enhanced sympathetic activity. Self aggression was not found to be related to any physiological measure of sympathetic activity, but, instead, related to less temporal blood flow. In general, associations were found between psychological defense mechanisms and physiological activity, which is suggestive of the existence of physiological pathways along which emotional inhibition might contribute to an attack of migraine after a stressful situation.

“The Psychology of Mass Communication” Course

Psychology curricula rarely include issues concerning the effects of television and other media. In response to this deficiency, the rationale for, and description of, a new undergraduate course, “The Psychology of Mass Communication,” are discussed. The reading materials, course topics, class format, and requirements are described. The course has sustained considerable interest and a large enrollment for several years.

Interpersonal Skills Questionnaire: Review of Readers’ Replies

‘Experiential interpersonal skills in the psychology curriculum’ (Shillito-Clarke, 1987) appeared in the January edition of the Counselling Psychology SectionReview. It was written as an exploration of the issues surrounding the inclusion of practical skills training in psychology courses and included a short questionnaire designed to elicit readers’ experiences of their psychology training and its relevance to their professional needs. One hundred and sixteen questionnaires were returned representing about 20 per cent of theReview’scirculation and the findings are as follows.

Interpersonal Skills Training in A Psychology Curriculum: Account of an Experiment and A Compromise

In the previous edition of the Counselling Psychology Section Review Carol Shillito-Clarke (19&7) expresses the vision of a psychology curriculum in which interpersonal skills training and self-awareness development are an integral part. Her rationale is based on the reflexive nature of psychology and its concern with human behaviour and experience, and on the role of degree-level study in promoting personal development. Her enthusiasm is fuelled by her positive experience of offering an optional course on counselling skills within the psychology degree at Leeds University. The present paper documents how a component of interpersonal skills training and self-development has been incorporated within the Master's degree courses run by the Department of Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck College, tracing the metamorphosis of a first-term, core course in Personal and Professional Competence into a second-year option in Counselling at Work. The paper is written from a position of support for the ideals expressed in Shilli to-Clarke's paper. My hope is that it will contribute to debate concerning the implications - intended or otherwise - of attempts to implement such a vision.

Experiential Interpersonal Skills in the Psychology Curriculum ‘An Ounce of Practice is Worth a Pound of Theory’

The quotation used in the title of this paper was offered to me as evaluation of a short course on basic counselling skills. The participant was one of 14 undergraduates from the second and third years of the Psychology Department at Leeds University who had elected to do the course as one of the practical work options. Several-other students offered similar comments valuing the practical experiential approach to skill learning. They also welcomed the belated opportunity for getting to know each other and regretted that the course had not been available to them much earlier in the three-year programme.

Teaching the Practical Research Course

Practical research courses are an important component of the psychology curriculum. This article presents an approach to teaching one such course that emphasizes an experiential orientation to learning to do research. Course assignments are of two types. One is a series of specific exercises designed to teach a range of skills important for research practitioners; the other uses research projects to provide research experience. Several group-based projects furnish experience with different research strategies, and an individual project promotes application and generalization of the skills and knowledge gained. The advantages of the experiential approach to research courses are discussed. It is concluded that courses of this type are valuable, even in light of the heavy demands on the teacher.

A training program for family psychology: Evaluation, prevention and therapy

Abstract Family psychology differs from family therapy on a variety of dimensions. Philosophically, family psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual to the family rather than considering the family as a system, deemphasizing the individual, as in systems family therapy. In addition, family psychology is interested in the whole spectrum of functionality-dysfunctionality, while family therapy is interested mainly in dysfunctional families. Substantively, in terms of differences in training, family psychology stresses the importance of theory testing, evaluation of process and outcome of interventions, and prevention with functional or at-risk families. An academic curriculum in family psychology, which has been operational at Georgia State University for the last 10 years, is presented. Clinical training follows a gradual approach, starting with relatively simple Structured Enrichment, progressing to more complex training in Covenant Contracting and Systematic Homework Assignments, and finall...

A model for courseware development in psychology

Many behavioral scientists are aware of the advantages of a systematic approach to research and the development of software used in research. However, coordinated and systematic efforts to develop instructional materials in the behavioral sciences are relatively rare. This paper and the symposium of which it is a part describe a systematic effort funded by FIPSE to assess the needs for microcomputer tools and courseware in the undergraduate curriculum in psychology and to stimulate the development of high-quality materials. The conceptual bases for development of materials are vertical and horizontal integration-the development of courseware that spans the curriculum from introductory to advanced, specialized, courses, and the systematic use of materials within a course and across courses and subject areas. The activities of the project, as well as implications for other computer-based development projects, are discussed.

The Role of Practicum in the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

The Role of Practicum in the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

Incorporating Law into the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

Incorporating Law into the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

A Multiplan Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

(1983). A Multiplan Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum. Teaching of Psychology: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 120-120.

Overcoming Fragmentation in the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

Fragmentation, all too apparent to students, has the unsettling effect of obscuring underlying problems that are really common to sub-areas.

The history course as the capstone of the psychology curriculum.

The teaching of psychology's history provides a unifying framework that pulls together the subdisciplines of psychology. It not only provides a prologue to the present but also aids in the clarification and validation of contemporary issues. History also provides a realistic illustration of how behavior results from the interaction of person and situation (Zeitgeist).