Sorry for the cross-posting I have been reading Derek Bok's wonderful book, Our Underachieveing Colleges. I think this is a MUST READ for all faculty and administrators. Lots and lots of food for thought.
Here is a question I have, based on my reading of Chapter 10: Acquiring Broader Interests, which regards general education/core curricula: How many of your institutions offer an introductory course in psychology for nonmajors. Here is why I ask based on the take away points I have from my reading of Bok's book, as it fits my university. We (at our university) have a distribution model of general education: the cafeteria plan. You take an appetizer (e.g., a science course), an entree (e.g., a social science course) and a dessert (e.g., a humanities course) of your choice from an array of approved courses. These generally tend to be a course designed to be an introduction to the discipline, for the potential new major, with all the attendant factoids and details--the type of information cognitive psychologists know well, is soon forgotten. In fact, if anything, research clearly shows consistently and repeatedly since the 1920's that students tend to come into their introductory psychology course with a wealth of misconceptions, and leave with them pleasantly intact. Even when there is short term conceptual change, over several years time, students who only take the one course in psychology, revert back to their prior misconceptions. So, what Bok argues for is that courses for the core, or GE, should be developed specifically to convey the types of thinking skills (not necessarily lots and lots of detailed content knowledge) that would best suit the student over the course of a lifetime, were they never to take another course in that area. Of course, there are times then nonmajors may decide to change to that major on the basis of the introductory course, and I'm going to leave that alone for now. Having said all of this, I wonder if there are many, if any, universities that offer an introductory course in psychology, for nonmajors, that would focus on the skills one would need to be a savvy user of psychological information for their life times, along with some core basic content. If so, could you please describe the course a little bit? Thanks Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
