VOLUME 30, NUMBER 8 September 1999
Partnerships are key to psychology's relevance
Teaching in isolation, 'we'll dry up and wither as a discipline.'
By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff
Psychologist Irwin Altman, PhD, has what he calls a "delu-sion."
A delusion wherein faculty from different arenas of psychology education guest-lecture in each others' classes. Where high school and community college students help researchers in university labs. Where pre-college and university students work side-by-side on service learning projects.
Hard to imagine maybe, but the award-winning University of Utah professor recently told an audience of more than 100 high school, community college and university psychology faculty, that these ideas must be embraced for an important reason: Psychology needs educational partnerships to stay relevant.
"If we keep teaching in fragmented, isolated ways, we'll dry up and wither as a discipline," Altman said at APA's "National Forum on Psychology Partnerships," held at James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Va., June 17-22. "We need to teach psychology as a science that touches people's lives. And we need each other to do this."
By partnering, Altman said, psychology educators will better illustrate the discipline's connection to pressing social issues--including increasing diversity, shifting family and work structures and human behavior's affect on environment and disease.
And, as he and other conference speakers noted, partnered educators will be better equipped to handle sweeping educational change--burgeoning college enrollment, growing competition from virtual universities and the rise of technology and outcomes assessment.
Altman acknowledged the barriers, among them limited time and money, nay-saying administrators, turf battles and fear of failure. But the charge to participants at the conference--the centerpiece of the "Psycho-logy Partnership Project," or what is affectionately called "P3"--was to overcome obstacles by designing projects that make partnership a reality. The fact that the six-day event, sponsored by JMU and APA, brought together teachers from multiple educational levels made it historic and unprecedented, said organizer Virginia Andreoli Mathie, PhD, of JMU.
She and its other organizers, notably Jill Reich, PhD, formerly APA's executive director for education, and JMU's James Couch, PhD, offer the conference as a model for other disciplines. At its heart was a concern with strengthening the discipline and promoting cohesive teaching that prepares students for the next educational step.
"As a partner, I need to think beyond my own classroom," said Diane Halpern, PhD, of California State University-San Bernardino, also a keynote speaker. "I need to ask, how well will my students be prepared for future coursework and employment? How can I cooperate with others to improve learning outcomes?"
For students' sake
Thinking cooperatively, as Halpern directed, conference participants set themselves ambitious partnership plans. They hope to follow through on those plans during the next year. Among their proposals:
Without standards, it's difficult to know what's taught at different levels, conference participants noted. Up to half of students who take introductory psychology first do so in high school or community college--many of them go on to study psychology in college. And we "don't want to lose them in the transition," said Claire-Ellen Weinstein, PhD, of the University of Texas, also a conference keynote speaker. If educators know what students learned at the previous level, they're better able to gear teaching to students' learning stage, she said.
One way to ease transitions is to forge articulation agreements. Under these, two-year colleges specify the content of their courses and four-year colleges grant transfer credit for those exact courses (see sidebar).
Students can also prepare for the transition to the large-lecture format of freshman college courses by taking a college course or two during their high school or community college years. And for their part, professors could ease the transition to college by rethinking the way college courses are taught, says Weinstein.
"We have a hubris in higher education that we do this better, but as someone interested in teaching I have no such hubris whatsoever," she said. "You take psychology at the community college, you've got a small class, a wonderful instructor and lots of hands-on experience. Take it at university, and you sit in a class of 500. Maybe you'll remember the professor's name. Maybe you won't. It doesn't matter anyway because you can't see from that far back."
She suggests reducing the size of freshman classes to make transitions smoother. Another possibility is to introduce pre-college students to psychological research at universities, said fellow keynote speaker Wilbert McKeachie, PhD, of the University of Michigan. Already, programs with that goal are cropping up around the country.
At Lincoln Southeast High School in Nebraska, for example, students in teacher Rob McEntarffer's psychology club are collecting and analyzing data on their peers' attitudes toward cigarette smoking. They're working on the project with researchers from the University of Nebraska. Other colleges hold day-long psychology fairs during which high school students visit their research labs (see sidebar).
For a stronger discipline
Not only are such inter-level arrangements needed to enhance students' education, but they're essential for the discipline, according to conference speakers. As noted by keynoter Altman, they're needed to teach the next generation that psychology extends well beyond psychotherapy, lending insight into prejudice, AIDS, drug addiction, environmental pollution and other social ills.
High school and college students who don't intend to major in psychology can still become better-informed citizens and voters through introductory courses, said Weinstein, noting that high school faculty teach a large number of non-majors about the field. However, high school teachers are also the most isolated group of psychology instructors, said Mary Spilis, chair-elect of the APA group, Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) and a psychology teacher at Northview High School in Sylvania, Ohio. Often they're the only psychology teachers in their schools, sometimes in their regions.
The P3 project hopes to link those teachers with other psychology educators. Meanwhile, other such efforts are already under way. For years, the National Science Foundation has funded science-oriented workshops for psychology teachers. And individual teachers organize them too.
For example, Patrick Mattimore, a high school psychology teacher at South San Francisco High School has banded with Maureen Hester, PhD, of nearby Holy Names College to hold an annual teacher's workshop. The event features speakers from colleges and high school, and offers teaching tips and scientific demonstrations. It typically attracts 30 teachers.
In a similar effort, Tonja Ringgold organized the Mid-Atlantic Psychology Symposium, held earlier this year at Baltimore City Community College, where she's an associate professor. Using an APA block grant, Ringgold brought together high school, community college and university psychology teachers to discuss improvements to instruction and advising.
Ideally, these initiatives will help educators synchronize their teaching, said Weinstein. High school teachers can benefit from professors' backgrounds in psychological science, and professors can benefit from high school teachers' grasp of active learning--meaning hands-on, participatory demonstrations in class, she said.
Of course there will be barriers to progress, Altman noted.
"Some administrators will say, 'It can't be done. We tried it be-fore and it didn't work.'" he said.
Another hindrance is people's fear that a partnership simply means one group imposing its agenda on another, said Weinstein. "Make it clear that both sides will benefit," she advised.
Because eventually the time and money invested in partnership will educate more students better, according to Weinstein and Altman.
"Even if we make mistakes, we'll still be making progress," Altman said. "So let's climb this mountain. Let's train citizens who are equipped for the real world."
For more information on the conference and its P3 projects, visit the P3 web site at //cep.jmu.edu/p3.
PsychNET®
APA Home Page
.
Search
.
Site Map
Read our privacy statement and Terms of Use
© 1999 American
Psychological Association
|
|
|