>
> At 03:01 PM 9/28/00 -0400, Renner, Michael wrote:
> >I want to throw out a question and then sit back and be simultaneously
> >amazed and enlightened.
> >
> >An alternate model would be to put the course at a lower level, encourage
> >students to take it as soon as possible after Intro psych. With this model
> >you could use the historical overview to provide a framework for later
> >courses.
> >
> >Have any TIPsters had experience with the "Take History Early" model, and if
> >so, what are their thoughts about the relative merits of the two models?
> >
I took History & Systems as my second course in psychology in
my second-semester freshman year. The first day of class we
were supposed to pick a famous psychologist/school of psychology
for an end-of-semester paper. I had to go to the instructor
(Burton Rosner--the chair of the department at that time) and
admit that I had only taken introductory psych. He made dire
predictions but allowed me to stay (and assigned me to write
about Piaget--a name I had never encountered).
It was a hard class, but (as Michael suggested) it turned out to
be a wonderful experience because I had a general framework that
allowed me to appreciate specific-area classes. I was amazed at
the connections between some currently-hot research topic and a
similar historical issue (e.g., "mechanistic explanations of
behavior" and language-use by chimpanzees).
I am not sure that a History & Systems course, at the level
presented as a capstone course, would be the best model to
follow. Instead, I would suggest (and have wanted to develop)
a much easier version to be used as the introductory course,
itself.
My N=1...
Ken
----------------------
Kenneth M. Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Psychology
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
