Hi Annette:
ASU will begin a new general education program this Fall that
aims to answer many of Bok's criticisms. I can assure you that
this move has been very controversial. Here are a sample of
complaints here about the approach.
1. This approach to critical thinking (teaching critical
thinking in the intro course) puts the cart in front of the
horse. You can't think critically about an issue without knowing
the definition of the words. You need to understand basic
terminology, definitions, and concepts (monism vs. dualism,
correlation vs. causation, experiment vs. descriptive study,
reinforcement vs. punishment, etc.) before you can teach critical
thinking about how to evaluate a claim.
These people claim the function of the intro psych course should
be to introduce students to key terminology of the field so that
they are never trapped in pseudo-dilemmas like the question of
how could people be "reinforced" by "painful events."
"Critical Thinking" cannot be taught as a first course in the
freshman year or in the intro courses according to this view. It
must be taught later when people know the meaning of the words
that are being used and then "critical thinking" can be taught to
spot those ideas that are based on misunderstandings or poor
application of concepts.
2. A truly different major and non-major intro psych course
leads to a practical problem. Suppose a freshman takes a
cafeteria approach to intro courses because they really do not
know what ideas and topics constitute a major. The student takes
a non-major version of biology, psychology, and political science
and decides that he/she likes psychology best of the 3. Should
this student be required to retake the intro psych course that is
intended for majors because that course is the introduction to
the discipline?
We have several examples here at ASU of major vs. non-major
intro courses (e.g., discrete math vs calculus) where non-major
courses will not count towards the major.
If one says that both should count, then the question raised is
what is the fundamental difference between the two courses? Is
the non-major course still only an introduction to the discipline
in a "lite" version?
Does a "lite" version satisfy Bok's criticism?
3. Students generally do not know what constitutes a discipline
(e.g., thinking that all psychologists are clinical
psychologists). Isn't more fair to the student to let them know
what is covered by that discipline? Therefore, the duty of the
intro course is to describe a discipline fairly. The argument is
that *the fair deal to the student* is to provide a cafeteria of
courses that accurately describe the contents of disciplines so
that they know the words "Swiss cheese" and "Swiss chard" mean
both specific and very different things when thinking about food
choices.
I could continue here with the litany of complaints.
Finally, I should mention that we have been working on a new
approach to our curriculum in the psych department here that
involves a systematic distinction between major and non-major
courses. The idea here is that *our majors are being hurt*
(hence, underachieving) because many sophomore/junior-level
courses (e.g., Abnormal, Social, Personality, Developmental)
contains a variable number of non-majors and basic terminology
must be retaught in every course. We want non-majors taking
courses on these topics to learn about the approach to issues by
psychologists but we want to have similar courses for majors with
whom we can take further into the issues because we don't have to
spend a lecture on the distinction between a correlational and
experimental study. Our idea is that in-depth study leads to more
opportunities for critical thinking.
Ken
[email protected] wrote:
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.
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]
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Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected]
Professor and Assistant Chairperson
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
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