On April 5, 1999, I (Jeff Ricker) wrote:
>As I sat here reading through yet another detailed discussion of an important
>theory in psychology so that I could explain it better to my intro students,
>the following thought occurred to me:
>
>Teaching introduction to psychology is a nearly impossible feat for any one
>person to accomplish properly: there is so much one must know, and know in a
>very deep way, if one is to explain it accurately and in an understandable
>way.
This post was written out of a temporary feeling of extreme frustration. I
didn't even know if I was making an observation or asking a question! The
frustration was due to the fact that survey courses are very difficult to teach
for many reasons: the instructor should know about and understand a broad range
of topics, the instructor has to decide between depth and breadth, the material
(which is often very difficult) has to be made understandable and interesting
for students who are at the beginning of their college careers, and the
interest of students is often low (most are taking the course to meet general-
education requirements).
Jim Clark summarized the approach I take and considered most important the
attitude that has always given me the most trouble:
>The best that we can do is...[leaving out much material here]...be realistic
>and not perfectionistic about how much new material we can acquire and
>incorporate into our classes each year and persist with the gradual
>accumulation year by year (i.e., good classroom content evolves, sometimes
>over a considerable period of time).
I think that this is very sage advice, and the parenthetical comment is very
important to remember: in survey courses, it takes many years before one begins
to feel somewhat comfortable with one's level of knowledge (at least, one
eventually no longer flinches when students raise their hands to ask questions)
Louis Schmier stated the following:
>Maybe part of the solution is not a drink, but to focus on the
>"introduction" part rather than the "psychology" part, to accept the fact
>that no course covers the entire subject, to understand no one acquires a
>mastery of the subject, and to realize that the vast majority of those
>students you are teaching in those intro courses are not future
>pscyologists, professors, researchers, scholars, or teachers anymore than
>the students who are in my intro history courses.
Actually, heroin is my drug of choice (";>()--damned emoticons, I always have
trouble with them. In reality, I don't smoke, drink, or do anything else
generally thought of as fun (I am addicted to TIPS, however--am I having fun?),
I was simply indicating a feeling of frustration. Suzi Shapiro agreed with
Louis:
>Page through an introductory text and think about the things that you would
>like the person on the street to know about psychology.
>Our department has developed a set of objectives that respond to this goal.
>We don't try to teach everything.
>We give the objectives to the students to focus their learning and then we
>make the class as active and interesting as we can.
>I trust my colleagues who write texts and who present material at
>conferences to make sure that I don't miss anything new and important.
I do realize that not everything can be taught. In fact, not since my first
semester out of grad school have I ever taught more than half of a textbook
(that first semester, however, was quite a ride for my students in human
genetics). My very cursory post did not outline the most fundamental source of
my frustration: to be able to teach a course like this effectively, one must
have a very broad AND CONTINUING education in one's field. Only in this way,
will one be able to:
(a) choose those topics that will be most beneficial for the average type of
student in the class;
(b) explain those topics in an understandable manner; and
(c) integrate the topics in meaningful ways so that the entire course has a
COHERENT theme.
The last, it seems to me, is especially important in intro psych given the very
divergent approaches within the discipline of psychology: students come out
very confused if one does not try to make sense of the near chaos that is
modern psychology.
Thus, my frustration was not due to my attempts to get my students to
understand the vast enterprise known as psychology, it was due to my attempts
to get ME to understand it. Perhaps I am especially bothered by it because I am
trying to complete a textbook for my intro classes, but I think that it is more
general concern than that, for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Again, I am not sure if I am making an observation or asking a question!
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
