Perspectives column by John Colombo: Steps toward a coordinated curriculum and increased student engagement in the psychology major
According to the KU Office of Institutional Research and Planning, the Department of Psychology currently has about 1250 undergraduate majors. This large number represents an enormous responsibility, but it also represents a privilege. The fact that psychology faculty consistently receive high student ratings and are often recipients of university teaching or mentoring awards speaks to the fact that our faculty do not take this responsibility lightly and that they greatly respect this privilege.
At the same time, as I looked upon these numbers in my role as Acting Chair of psychology during 2005-06, I realized that the presence of these majors provides the department with a significant opportunity … the chance to do something different and perhaps something special within the realm of undergraduate education. It presented a chance to build from being very good at undergraduate teaching to being exceptional. Although individual faculty members were exceptional teachers in their own right, I wondered how we might elevate this very large major to another level. After informal discussion with several faculty members about this issue, it appeared all of them were interested in seeking a set of goals for educating our students that would make the major cohere better.
I thought that the development of such goals and the specification of a means through which to attain them would require some degree of thoughtful and proactive attention. Such attention would be unlikely to be attained under the normal course of events in a semester (faculty meetings, colloquia, etc.). Therefore, I asked faculty for their participation in a discussion of educational issues in the major on the day before the start of the Spring 2006 semester. At that discussion, I requested that the faculty consider what (at minimum) psychology majors should know about the discipline and whether faculty might be interested in striving to instill more comprehensive characteristics or qualities in our majors as a result of students’ exposure to the discipline or to the psychology curriculum. Time was parsed into three divisions and represented specific points for discussion:
1. What characteristics or skills would the faculty like majors to have when they complete their training in psychology at KU?
2. What changes to the curriculum or methods of teaching might need to occur to achieve the characteristics and skills desired in psychology majors?
3. How might the faculty best evaluate whether they are achieving these goals (with the added premise that such evaluation should not incur extra workload for the faculty)?
It occurred to us that the resolution of such steps might address a number of common issues in undergraduate education:
• Improvements in the quality of undergraduate education.
• A systemic means for faculty members to assess their teaching and develop teaching portfolios, which will be particularly salient for those who will be subject to changes in how committees on promotion and tenure evaluate teaching.
• Positive byproducts in graduate training; GTAs working within such a system would have the experience of teaching within a coherent framework.
Twenty-two faculty members, more than half of our regular faculty, attended the retreat.
At the end of our discussion, the faculty reached considerable consensus on potential changes in the curriculum. Seven were considered explicitly or implicitly. Of these, two were specific to the psychology curriculum and involved making the major more rigorous and comprehensive. Five other changes reflected positive steps toward a more coherent and thoughtful major. These included:
1. Encouraging student writing throughout the curriculum as a means of improving critical thinking and expression, providing venues for self-reflection and self-evaluation by students, and allowing opportunities for the department to evaluate its performance in the major.
2. Having the department take a more active and visible role in brokering research and service activities to help students develop credentials for graduate study and maximize opportunities for early development of professional skills.
3. Adopting an explicit model both within courses and across the curriculum. Bloom’s taxonomy was found to be helpful as a model for both instruction and the normal developmental course of learning in the major.
4. Designing venues for students to think proactively about issues that span the curriculum in an effort to promote coherence in content and thought.
5. Creating a culture of evidence within the major as a focal feature toward the improvement of critical thinking in psychology majors. This includes the concept of use of evidence as a value, as well as a practical skill.
The coming years will be devoted to the harder task of implementing these changes. However, discussion of these issues provided a very positive and generally enjoyable venue for a heterogeneous group of faculty—all of whom are passionately devoted to the craft of teaching—to find common ground in their avocation and to move toward making the whole major more than the sum of its parts.
