Task force equips educators with hands-on teaching tools

An APA group helps teachers incorporate more issues of diversity into their classrooms.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

An inventory of readings and references gathered by an APA task force gives teachers practical guidance on how to talk about such issues as sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, culture, gender and the elderly in their introductory psychology classes.

'When it comes to including diversity in classes, teachers sometimes don?t know where to start,' says Carole Wade, PhD, the task force chair and a faculty member at Dominican College of San Rafael in California. 'We wanted to provide a practical and positive approach to supporting teachers in the trenches.'

APA?s Task Force on Diversity Issues at the Precollege and Undergraduate Levels of Education in Psychology, born of APA?s Board of Educational Affairs and overseen by APA?s Education Directorate, says that there?s no one way to teach diversity.

But its members agree that issues of ethnicity, gender and culture, shouldn?t be separated from the rest of curricula and tacked onto the end of courses. Diversity is best woven into the course in lectures, experimental exercises and examples of study samples, the task force members say.

'Diversity must be included across the curriculum in order for psychology to be a more rigorous science that takes into account the whole population,' says Wade.

With that in mind, the task force members, all experts on various diversity matters, have generated teaching tips, resource guides and other support for handling class discussions of diversity and inclusiveness. They?ve met with textbook publishers and surveyed APA division leaders to hear their thoughts on diversity.

They?ve gathered a host of diversity-related references and materials to guide teachers? lesson plans. And together they?ve written a series of Monitor articles on teaching about diversity. The nine-month series concluded last month. (The task force completes its work at the end of this year.)

Raising awareness

A major task force initiative was bolstering the diversity focus among psychology?s trend-setters. For example, the group conducted focus groups with 15 introductory textbook authors to explore their diversity coverage. They solicited authors? ideas about the challenges of weaving diversity issues into the explanation of traditional psychological theory, where to include discussion of differences in the psychology text and whether to call attention to diversity in stand-alone boxes and chapters.

The focus groups revealed that textbook authors have very different diversity-related goals and approaches. Some authors, for instance, call more attention to similarities, while others emphasize differences. Some sprinkle diversity references throughout the text, while others concentrate their coverage.

The task force plans to publish the information from authors, 'so that teachers can think about the issues involved in incorporating diversity and make thoughtful textbook selections that fit their needs and goals,' says Wade.

In another research project, the group surveyed APA?s divisions to find out whether they emphasize diversity in the teaching excellence awards they distribute. The results revealed that many divisions don?t, but many were willing to consider doing so.

Collecting resources

Besides awareness-raising, another major task force project was developing diversity-related products for teachers. Its members submitted teaching tips, syllabi, demonstrations and articles in the areas of ethnicity, culture and nationality, gender, disability and sexual orientation. APA?s Education Directorate has compiled the submissions into a resource inventory, from which materials are available on request (see box).

In another project, led by task force member A. Toy Caldwell-Colbert, PhD, of the University of Illinois, task force members collaborated with APA?s Div. 2 (Society for the Teaching of Psychology) on developing an annotated bibliography of teaching references. Organized by course topic, the bibliography lists journals and books to aid psychology teachers as they select readings. The bibliography will be available late this fall through the Div. 2 Office of Teaching Resources for Psychology at Georgia Southern University. Visit the OTRP web site at www.lemoyne.edu./OTRP/ for ordering information about this and other diversity-related bibliographies.

Offering practical advice

In an effort to provide easy-access teaching support, the group took turns writing a series of Monitor articles that offer teaching tips on diversity. The series began in December 1997 with an article on how to determine whether you?re including enough diversity in your classes. It concluded in the August issue with an article on teaching about aging issues. Other articles in the series spotlighted prejudice, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and cultural differences.

The complete series of Monitor articles are accessible through APA?s web site. APA?s Education Directorate also plans to send a booklet version of the series to APA affiliates who teach in high schools and 1,000 psychology instructors at two-year colleges.

'One of our main concerns with this task force was to communicate that, while race and ethnicity are critical, diversity is much more than that,' says task force member Ruth Fassinger, PhD, of the University of Maryland, who brought a perspective on gay and lesbian issues to the group.

There are many other types of diversity to represent, like sexual orientation, gender and disability, she says. In particular, task force members note psychology courses? under-representation of disability issues?a category encompassing physical disabilities as well as more 'hidden' developmental and learning disabilities, says task force member Linda Mona, PhD.

The task force?s effort to strengthen teaching about diversity culminated in the symposium 'Teaching psychology as a more inclusive science' at APA?s Annual Convention last month. The task force members noted that instructors shouldn?t feel they have to be experts on diversity to teach it.

'All it takes is a little imagination and courage to bring up these issues in class, to encourage back-and-forth exchange among students,' says Fassinger.

'It all goes back to the old educational adage that a child is not a vessel to be filled, but a lamp to be lighted.'

Further Reading

To receive materials from the Education Directorate?s inventory of teaching resources on diversity, call Peter Petrossian at (202) 336-6076.

To request bibliographies of diversity-related readings for psychology courses, visit the web page of the Div. 2 Office of Teaching Resources for Psychology at www.lemoyne.edu./OTRP/.

To access the series of Monitor articles offering teaching tips on diversity, visit the APA Education Directorate page web site at www.apa.org/ed/divhscollege.html.

To read more about diversity in teaching, consult the following article:

Parameswaran, G. 'Incorporating multicultural issues in educational psychology classes using field experiences.' Journal of Instructional Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 9?13, 1998.