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Teaching Resources for High School Psychology Teachers on Skills

Three sets of materials for teachers and students on metacognitive, transferable, and well-being skills.

Flourishing and well-being skills are important for allowing students to connect the science of psychology to students’ everyday lives. This website provides three sets of materials for teachers and students on metacognitive, transferable and well-being skills. Each tab below includes an overview of each skill set, links to teaching resources and a description of where each resource fits in the psychology class. These resources are also categorized by National Standards for High School Psychology Curricula pillar and skills type.

These materials were developed by a Working Group on Skills that Promote Well-Being and Flourishing from the APA Summit on High School Psychology Education (July 2017): Randy Ernst, co-chair, Elizabeth Yost Hammer, co-chair, Drew Appleby, Lindsey Herting, Garth Neufeld, Scott Reed, Sejal Schullo, Jeanne Turner, and Virginia Welle.  The authors thank Stephen Chew, Nancy Diehl, Blake Harvard, Chris Jones-Cage, Riki Koenigsburg, Melanie Lanz, Jaclyn Parslow, Aaron Richmond, and Stacie Spencer for their reviews of these materials.

Metacognitive Skills

Metacognition is the ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate one's own mental processes, which is an important skill for academic success. Metacognitive skills include skills such as students' ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning processes.

Students are often unaware of what they know and what they don't know. As a result, they spend study time reviewing material they have already mastered instead of the material they need to learn. Then, they are genuinely surprised when they don't get a solid A on the test. These students have not developed the metacognitive skills necessary for academic success (see Lang, 2012). They have not developed the ability to think about their own thinking ("Do I understand this material?") or to be consciously aware of themselves as problem solvers ("How could I test myself to see if I understand?"). As a result, they cannot accurately judge their own level of learning ("Do I really know this well enough to earn an A?").

Psychology teachers are in the unique position to teach these skills to students while covering course content (e.g., learning, memory, human development, cognition). In our courses, we can provide students with metacognitive skills that will serve them well beyond our classrooms.

In this website we present lessons on introducing and enhancing metacognition. Some of these are stand-alone lessons, while others are embedded in course content. In addition, we present a metacognitive revision tool that you can use with any assignment to strengthen these skills.

If you are examining these materials, you are already a dedicated teacher interested in improving your practice. We hope that you take advantage of the lessons we suggest to enhance the metacognitive skills that are crucial to academic success.

Teaching Resources

Reference

Lang, J. M. (2012, January 17). Metacognition and Student Learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 
Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/MetacognitionStudent/130327opens in new window

Transferable Skills

Transferable skills refer to a "broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are believed—by educators, school reformers, college professors, employers, and others—to be critically important to success in today's world, particularly in collegiate programs and contemporary careers and workplaces" (Abbott, 2014, para. 1). The purpose of these resources is to introduce high school psychology teachers to the concept of transferable skills and to provide them with strategies to enable their students to identify, understand, value, and develop these skills within the high school psychology classroom. Within the field of Positive Psychology, there is empirical evidence that demonstrates knowledge and possession of transferable skills promotes wellness and success. Psychology courses are a natural place to focus on these skills as they can be developed in conjunction with much of the content that is taught in such a course. Teachers could embed activities which build transferable skills within content areas already taught or could use stand-alone lessons. These skills make a Psychology course relevant, applicable and significant to a student's experiences in high school.

Teaching Resources

Reference

Abbot, S. (Ed.). (2014). 21st century skills. The Glossary of Education Reform. 
Retrieved from https://www.edglossary.org/21st-century-skills/opens in new window


Well-being Skills

In a July 2016 interview, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthey called emotional well-being his signature issue. He went on to explain that emotional well-being "allows us to reach ever closer to our full potential and to be resilient in the face of adversity." He concluded his thoughts by calling emotional well-being "the fuel that makes everything else possible" (Diamond, 2016).

The Surgeon General's thoughts are reflected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which is often referred to as "The Nation's Report Card." NAEP assesses what students in the United States know and can do in various subject areas, including mathematics, reading, and writing. In 2017, items regarding how student motivation, mindset, and grit affect learning were added.

The interest in emotional well-being and non-cognitive skills at the federal level likely stems from the research initially published in the January 2000 American Psychologist special issue on positive psychology. Positive psychology-related research continues to grow and the results of researchers such as Barbara Fredrickson (positive emotions), Martin Seligman (optimism), Bob Emmons (gratitude), Angela Duckworth (grit) and Shane Lopez (hope) continue to become more and more mainstream. Psychologists such as Tal Ben-Shahar have taught and embedded the skills of well-being (e.g., gratitude, resilience, optimism) in middle and high school classrooms with notable outcomes such as a decrease in symptoms of anxiety and depression, an increase in self efficacy, and an increase in pro-social behavior.

The high school psychology course is a perfect fit for teaching students how to be more resilient and the importance of expressing gratitude.

Teaching Resources

All resources may be used when teaching Health (Mental and Physical Health Pillar).

Reference

Diamond, M. (2016). Why Mental Health Is A Top Priority For The U.S. Surgeon General.  
Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-emotional-well-being-is-a-top-priority-for-the-us-surgeon-general_us_57866486e4b08608d3327828opens in new window 


By National Standards

Applicable to all content standards/pillars

Scientific Inquiry and Research Methods Foundation

Biological Bases of Behavior (Biological Pillar)

Memory (Cognition Pillar)

Life Span Development (Development and Learning Pillar)

Learning (Development and Learning Pillar)

Social (Social and Personality Pillar)

Health (Mental and Physical Health Pillar)

Last updated: April 2024Date created: 2018

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