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468 Undergraduate Education interests: “mental measurement” by James McKeen Cattell at Pennsylvania, “psychological basis of religious faith” by William James at Harvard, and “pedagogical psychology” by HarryKirkeWolfeatNebraska. A common developmental pattern of future psychology curricula was captured by the Pennsylvania catalog of 1890. Unlike other universities, Penn had its own psychology de-partment; it was not a subset of philosophy or some other area. A sequence of courses was listed. Psychology 1 was a lecture course titled Elementary Psychology. Psychology 3 (no Psychology 2 was listed) was titled Experimental Psy-chology with lectures and laboratory work. Psychology 4 was titled Mental Measurement with lectures, reports, and ad-vancedworkinthelaboratory.“Course4isopenonlytothose who have taken course 3, and will be different each year, for a series of years.Advanced Physiological Psychology is pro-posed for 1891–92, and Comparative, Social, and Abnormal Psychology for 1892–3” (University of Pennsylvania Cata-logue and Announcements 1890–1891, p. 96). McGovern (1992b) found that by 1900, at Berkeley, Brown, Cincinnati, Columbia, Cornell, George Washington, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Wellesley, Wis-consin, and Yale, the first course was followed by an “experi-mental psychology” course. Laboratory work was required in either this course or in an additional course sometimes titled “laboratory in psychology.” Courses titled “advanced psy-chology” or “advanced experimental” fostered students’indi-vidual research with faculty supervision. The 1900–1901 Brown catalog stated, “The aim is to make original contribu-tions to scientific knowledge in psychology and to publish the results” (Brown University Catalogue, 1900–1901, p. 57). Courses in abnormal, comparative, genetic, systematic, andpsychologicaltheorybegantoappear,asdidmorespecial Professor Lord. Aparallel course is given by Dr. Thorndike at Teachers College. 1. Introduction to psychology. 2 hours, lectures and demon-strations. Professors Butler, Cattell, Boas, Starr, and Hyslop, Drs. Far-rand and Thorndike, and Mr. Strong. The object of this course is to give a summary view of the subject-matter and methods of modern psychology. The ground covered is as follows: A. Prolegomena to psychology, including a sketch of the history of psychology. Six lectures. Professor Butler. B. Physiological psychology. Eight lectures. Dr. Farrand. C. Experimental psychology. Eight lectures. Professor Cattell. D. Genetic psychology. Seven lectures. Dr. Thorndike. E. Comparative psychology. Seven lectures. Dr. Boas. F. Pathological psychology. Three lectures. Dr. Starr. G. General psychology. Eight lectures. Professor Hyslop. H. Philosophy of mind. Six lectures. Mr. Strong. Requisite: Psychology A, previously or simultaneously. (Columbia University in the City of New York Catalogue, 1900– 1901, p. 176) Rice’s (2000) analysis of reviews of this period by Garvey (1929) and Ruckmich (1912) suggested that five stages of institutional development for psychology departments were evident by 1900. In Stage 1, mental science or mental philos-ophy courses were being taught. In Stage 2, institutions were offering one or more courses labeled “psychology.” Stage 3 had institutions with psychological laboratories. Stage 4 de-partments were offering the PhD in psychology. Stage 5 rep-resented an independent department; Rice suggested that Clark, Columbia, Illinois, and Chicago were the only institu- tions at this level. topics courses. At Nebraska, a course in “race psychology” The APA-sponsored reports by Calkins, Sanford, waslisted.AtWisconsin,therewasacoursein“mentalevolu-tion”; Part I emphasized comparative psychology and Part II emphasized anthropology.AtAmherst, Cornell, andYale, the firstcourseinthephilosophydepartmentwasaninterdiscipli-nary offering that covered psychology, logic, and ethics. One of the most extensive curricula was listed at Colum-bia University in the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, and Education. Fifteen separate “Courses in Psychology” were listed, taught by an interdisciplinary fac-ulty. The following introductory offerings were then fol-lowed by 13 topic courses, laboratory courses, or supervised research courses: A. Elements of psychology—James’s Principles of Psychol-ogy—Discussions, practical exercises, and recitations. 3 hours. First half-year, given in 4 sections. Seashore, and Whipple in 1910, and Henry’s (1938) exami-nation of 157 catalogs will take the reader almost to midcen-tury in describing the courses taught to undergraduate psychology students. Lux and Daniel (1978) consolidated these portraits with a table of the 30 most frequent under-graduate courses offered in 1947, 1961, 1969, and 1975. Perlman and McCann (1999a, p. 179) continued this tradition by identifying the 30 most frequently offered undergraduate courses, and the percentages of colleges requiring them, in their study of 400 catalogs for 1996–1997. Scholars from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-ment of Teaching (1977) aptly described the post–World War II period of curricular expansion as “the academic shop-ping center” (p. 5). Keeping in mindVeysey’s (1973) analysis of the eras of expansion and their external stimuli, psychol- ogy was benefiting from the utilitarian demands from more Teaching 469 and different types of students and from the expansion of sci-entific programs at the graduate level that influenced teachers at the undergraduate level. Whether one looks at catalogs from 1900 or more recently, a common denominator is that new faculty, after a period of apprenticeship at an institution, create new courses that get absorbed into a department’s cur-riculum. For example, F. H. Sanford and Fleishman (1950) found261differentcoursetitlesintheirstudy.LuxandDaniel (1978) found 1,356 different course titles and concluded: “Thus, we have a ‘course title inflation’ of 519%, or about 19% per year on the average, from 1947 to 1975” (p. 178).An expanded breadth of psychology course titles accompanied expansion inAmerican higher education during this time. Nevertheless, a parallel conservative force operates on the curriculumfrominsidetheinstitutionaswell.Rudolph(1977) reminded us of “the academic truism that changing a curricu-lum is harder than moving the graveyard” (p. 3). As a histo-rian, he knew that such resistance is a complex interaction of internal (departmental faculty and institutional priorities) and external forces (disciplinary groups and community/public nals such as the American Psychologist). When departmental psychologists engaged in voluntary or required curriculum review projects, they looked to these reports for guidance (Korn, Sweetman, & Nodine, 1996). At the 14th meeting of the American Psychological Asso-ciation, E. C. Sanford (1906) offered a “sketch of a begin-ner’s course in psychology.” He suggested that we first build on the knowledge that students bring with them into this course; second, that we offer a wide base of psychological facts; third, “a genuine interest in science for its own sake is a late development in knowledge of any kind” (p. 59). He then suggested seven broad topics and an organizational se-quence within which to teach them: Learning and Acquisi-tion; Truth and Error; Emotion; Personality and Character; Facts of the Interdependence of Mind and Body; Psychogen-esis; and Systematic Psychology (pp. 59–60). In 1908, the APA appointed the Committee on Methods of Teaching Psy-chology, which decided to inventory goals and teaching prac-tices for the elementary course (Goodwin, 1992). Synthesizing the responses from 32 universities with constituencies). For psychology, Perlman and McCann laboratories, E. C. Sanford (1910) reported that institutions (1999a) were led to conclude: Many frequently offered courses have been found for decades and 13 such courses first listed by Henry (1938) are in the pre-sent Top 30. Some courses are slowly being replaced. Thus, the curriculum reflects both continuity and slow change, perhaps due to the time it takes for theory, research, and discourse to de-fine new subdiscipline areas or perhaps due to department inertia and resistance to modifying the curriculum. (p. 181) In the next section, we focus on the concepts of conti-nuity and change in the curriculum, but with an eye to the boundary-setting agendas of disciplinary groups. The Discipline: Recommendations from the Experts Discipline-basedcurriculaareasocialconstructiondevelopedby academics. Over time, knowledge has been organized into key terms, concepts, models, and modes of inquiry. Academics add to and test these knowledge constructs using their disciplinary associationsasmeansofverbalandwrittencommunication.Cur-ricularchangeisconditionedbytheroleofthedisciplinesincon-serving and transmitting their organization and representation of what is worth knowing, why, and how. (Ratcliff, 1997, p. 15) In this section, we review various statements made by psy-chologists after World War II about what was “worth know-ing,why,andhow”inthestudyofundergraduatepsychology. Such statements carried added weight by virtue of discipli-nary association (APA) or sponsorship in process (national conferences and studies) and outcome (publication in jour- were teaching the first course in sections of 200, 300, and 400 students; Whipple (1910) reported a mean enrollment of 107 students, according to his 100 normal school respon-dents. In institutions with laboratories, Sanford reported that 25% of the instructors saw the course as a gateway to the study of philosophy; more than 50% wanted students to study science for its own sake and also to appreciate the concrete applications of psychology to life. Calkins (1910) summa-rized the responses she received from 47 institutions with no laboratories in this way: First, teach psychology primarily as you would if it were an end in itself. Second, eschew altogether the method of recitation; lecture in order to sum up and to illustrate different topics of study,butlecturesparingly;andcultivateconstructivediscussion. Third,baroutthepossibilityofmemorizingtext-booksbyrequir-ing students to precede text-book study by the solution of con-crete problems. Finally, do not tolerate inexact thinking. (p. 53) Seashore’s (1910) summary included three aims: teach psy-chology (i.e., not philosophy) as a science with incidental treatment of its application; train students in observation and the explanation of mental facts; offer a balanced survey of all topics that psychologists study with an in-depth examination of a few. He urged that the elementary course be taught to sophomores in a two-semester sequence, preferably preceded by a course in animal biology. More than for any other disci-plineofthatday,theteacherofpsychologyshouldhaveanex-ceptionally thorough preparation (because of the breadth of topics),beoneofthemostmaturemembersofthedepartment 470 Undergraduate Education (becauseofthedirectpersonalinfluencethatpsychologymay haveonitsstudents),andpossessbothpracticalingenuityand philosophical insight (because of the complex pedagogy required for the course). In short, “the teacher is everything” (p. 91). Wolfle (1942) reviewed more than 100 studies on the first course in psychology, published after the 1910 reports, andconcluded:“Now,30-oddyearslater,wearestilldebating many of the same issues and being embarrassed by the same difficulties. Many of the same recommendations considered necessary in 1909 are still necessary in 1942” (p. 686). Intradisciplinary concerns were often matched by interdis-ciplinary conflicts. Wolfe’s (1895) commentary on resource allocation in the sciences for “the new psychology in under-graduate work” (p. 382) predicted this competitive struggle on campuses. Hill (1929) described the conflicts over control of psychology personnel and curricular decisions in state uni-versities. In 1945, James B. Conant, president of Harvard, appointed six psychologists and six nonpsychologists from university faculties, corporations, and research institutes to a University Commission to Advise on the Future of Psychol-ogy at Harvard. Wolfle (1948), as secretary of the APA, reviewed The Place of Psychology in an Ideal University (Gregg et al., 1947/1970) and said: “By all means read this book. . . . Psychologists have been a vigorous, sometimes belligerent, but never well united group. . . . This scattering of psychologists all over the campus is bound to be puzzling” (p. 61). In his presidential address for the APA Division on the Teaching of Psychology, Pressey (1949) juxtaposed the prestige accorded psychology in the Gregg et al. report with an observation about Harvard’s Redbook: “Psychology ap-pears to have no recognized place in the program presented in General Education in a Free Society” (p. 149). Thus, on the eve of the post–World War II boom in higher education, psy-chology was still “getting its act together” on institutional status and curricular coherence. Ratcliff’s (1997) analysis of curricula focused on the con-cept of a discipline: Adiscipline is literally what the term implies. . . . Disciplines can provide a conceptual framework for understanding what knowl-edge is and how it is acquired. Disciplinary learning provides a logical structure to relationships between concepts, propositions, common paradigms, and organizing principles. Disciplines de-velop themes, canons, and grand narratives to join different streams of research in the field and to provide meaningful con-ceptualizations and frameworks for further analysis. (p. 14) Since 1950, psychologists have written several reports about building the discipline and translating its principles and methods into coherent undergraduate educational programs. Lloyd and Brewer (1992) reviewed the national confer-ences and comprehensive reports on undergraduate psychol-ogy: Cornell Conference (Buxton et al., 1952); Michigan Conference (McKeachie & Milholland, 1961); Kulik, 1973; Scheirer and Rogers, 1985; APA/Association of American Colleges Project on Liberal Learning, Study-in-Depth, and the Arts and Sciences Major (McGovern, Furumoto, Halpern, Kimble, & McKeachie, 1991); and the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Conference held in 1991. We will briefly review the Cornell, Michigan, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland conferences’ accomplishments as part of the continuing nar-rative elements for this chapter—courses, discipline, out-comes, assessment, and how service activities delivered these findings to widening circles of psychologists. In 1951, the Carnegie Foundation of New York and the Grant Foundation sponsored a study group of psycholo-gists—six primary authors and 11 consultants—to meet at Cornell University and to conduct “an audit to determine the objectives, examine the content, and appraise the results of the instruction we have been giving. Against the background of such an audit, we can then attempt to build a better cur-riculum” (Buxton et al., 1952, p. v). Their report identified the objectives of undergraduate psychology as: (1)Intellectualdevelopmentandaliberaleducation;(2)aknowl-edge of psychology, its research findings, its major problems, its theoretical integrations, and its contributions; (3) personal growth and an increased ability to meet personal and social adjustment problems adequately; (4) desirable attitudes and habits of thought, such as the stimulation of intellectual curios-ity, respect for others, and a feeling of social responsibility. (pp. 2–3) In an interview with Jane Halonen (1992), McKeachie commented about the conference: We came up with the idea of sequencing, which is why Dael Wolfle really brought us together. He thought we were teaching all of our courses at about one level beyond the intro-ductory and covering the same thing in the advanced course in order to bring people up to some common base so they could go on to the latter part of the course. I think that was important. (pp. 251–252) The study group agreed on one recommended curriculum model. The introductory course was to be followed by five in-termediate or core courses (statistics, motivation, perception, thinking and language, and ability), then advanced courses in specialized areas (e.g., social, learning, comparative, phys-iological, personnel, etc.), and finally capstone courses in personality and history and systems. All courses should be Teaching 471 taught as “experimental psychology” courses. The authors wrote separate chapters on personal adjustment courses, technical training, implementation problems based on institu-tional differences, and the need for a research agenda to mea-sure the effectiveness of undergraduate education. A similar study group approach, the Michigan Confer-ence, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation 10 years later and was reported in McKeachie and Milholland (1961). This group began with data from a survey of 548 de-partments to which 411 responded; 274 had revised their cur-riculum since the earlier Cornell report. They found that 69% of the respondents used the earlier recommendations. An im-portant point to note is that the Michigan group of six psy-chologists framed their recommendations in the context of two critical external forces affecting psychology. First, the demographics of higher education were changing both in terms of increased numbers and increased diversity (specifi-cally in age and vocational goals). Second, “more serious than the problem of sheer numbers is the fact that teaching is not a prestigeful occupation in psychology these days. The research man is the status figure” (p. 6). to the discipline and to campuses—would play an even more important role in setting the timetables and parameters for changes in the curriculum. The 1991 St. Mary’s College of Maryland Conference had a long history in development, an ambitious agenda, and di-versity in its participants. Its processes and outcomes reflect the continuing evolution of the discipline’s attention to un-dergraduate education. A resolution introduced to the APA Council of Representatives by the Massachusetts Psycho-logical Association asked the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) to examine (1) the role and purpose of the undergraduate psychology major in relation to traditional liberal arts education (and prepara-tion for graduate school in psychology) and preparation for a bachelor-degree-level job in a psychology-related field, and (2) whether APAshould set forth guidelines for curriculum mod-els in undergraduate psychology (with an accompanying ratio-nale). (As cited in Lloyd & Brewer, 1992, pp. 272–273) The CUE formulated a response, approved by the Council of A compelling integration of Veysey’s (1973) three Representatives in August 1985, that reaffirmed the psychol- forces—utilitarian demands, scientific advances, and values of a liberal education—form a subtext for this entire report. McKeachie and Milholland (1961) asserted that the psychol-ogy curriculum “would be firmly anchored in the liberal arts, rejecting undergraduate vocational training as a pri-mary goal” (p. 33). This principle is operationalized in great detail in two chapters: “The Beginning Course” and “The Experimental-Statistical Area.” The greatest value lay in “teaching psychology as an organized body of scientific knowledge and method with its own internal structure for de-termining the admissibility of materials to be taught” (p. 59). The authors were unequivocal in their commitment to teaching psychology as a continually advancing science, reaffirming the Cornell group’s objectives: content knowl-edge, rigorous habits of thought, and values and attitudes. They expanded these general goals with a set of 16 objec-tives, many of which are similar to statements about “critical thinking” that emerged as part of identifying liberal arts out-comes when assessment initiatives became so influential in the mid-1980s and after. The Michigan authors sketched three different curricular models because they could not agree on a single one. In what was a utilitarian and prescient comment, they concluded, “What is ideal, we now believe, depends on the staff, the students, the total college curricu-lum, and other factors” (p. 103). Into the 1990s, “staff,” “stu- dents,” and the “total college curriculum” would play an in- ogy baccalaureate as a liberal arts degree, that no prescribed curriculum should be developed, but that guidelines or mod-els could be considered based on continuing, periodic sur-veys of undergraduate education. Continuing discussion led to a conference proposal. Sixty psychologists met for one week in a highly structured group dynamic designed to pro-duce draft chapters of a handbook on seven topics: assess-ment, advising, recruitment and retention of ethnic minority faculty and students, faculty development, faculty networks, curriculum, and active learning practices. Among the 60 par-ticipants at St. Mary’s, 28 (47%) were women and 11 (18%) were ethnic minority persons (neither the 1951 nor the 1960 conference had such representation). In addition to partici-pants from liberal arts colleges and universities, there were five faculty members from community colleges, two from high school psychology programs, and two representatives from Canada and Puerto Rico. As planned, a comprehensive handbook was produced (McGovern, 1993); at the urging of Ludy T. Benjamin, a Quality Principles document was also produced by the steering committee and eventually approved as APApolicy by the Council of Representatives (McGovern & Reich, 1996). In their chapter on the curriculum, Brewer et al. (1993) reaffirmed the importance of psychology as a liberal arts dis-cipline. “The fundamental goal of education in psychology, from which all the others follow, is to teach students to creasing role in shaping how individual institutions think as scientists about behavior” (p. 168). They amplified communicated the discipline. “Other factors”—all external this statement with six specific goals: attention to human 472 Undergraduate Education diversity, breadth and depth of knowledge, methodological competence, practical experience and applications, commu-nications skills, and sensitivity to ethical issues. To accom-plish these goals, a sequence of four levels of courses was recommended: introductory course, methodology courses, content courses, and an integrative or capstone experience. Content courses should be balanced between the natural sci-ence and social science knowledge bases of an increasingly complex discipline. Aspecial section was devoted to the inte-gration of the community college curriculum with upper-division courses in the major taken at another institution. Perlman and McCann’s (1999b) review of the structures of the undergraduate curriculum in 500 catalogs indicated that the St. Mary’s Conference, like its predecessors, had some intended consequences and specific areas of minimal influence. Although a senior capstone experience has been advocated since the Cornell Conference, this recommenda-tion has gone unheeded, particularly in doctoral institutions. The same is true for the teaching of psychometric methods as part of a core methodology trio of courses with statistics and experimental psychology. Fiscal, staffing, and space prob-lems were often cited as obstacles to the development and maintenance of laboratory facilities. These authors drew the following overall conclusions about the status of the curricu-lum at the end of the twentieth century: The Cornell report’s (Buxton et al., 1952) emphasis on teaching psychology as a scientific discipline in the liberal arts tradition remains current. The required core as recommended by the St. Mary’s report (Brewer et al., 1993) as implemented by de-partments seems to cover “both natural science and social sci-ence aspects of psychology.” (p. 439, pp. 175–176) We now turn to the ways in which psychologists evaluated the effectiveness of their undergraduate programs. SCHOLARSHIP Ratcliff (1997) labeled a second curricular model as analyti-cal. Variables in the curriculum that affect student develop-ment are identified, measured, and evaluated to determine their effectiveness. McGovern (1993) described an analytical model for psychology as: What kind of outcomes can be achieved with What kind of students taught by What kind of faculty using What kind of teaching methods as part of What kind of curriculum? (p. 218, emphases in original) In this section on scholarship, we first focus on faculty efforts to identify common outcomes from the earliest days of a single course to the contemporary “Top 30” described by Perlman and McCann (1999a). Second, we focus on the as-sessment of these outcomes by the faculty, but more often mandated by external constituencies in the interests of ac-creditation or public accountability. Defining the Outcomes of Undergraduate Psychology In response to E. C. Sanford’s (1906) description of an ideal beginner’s course, Walter T. Marvin (1906) suggested the following: The chief problem in any course is: What precisely does the teacher wish the student to learn, as distinguished from all the illustration, exposition, etc. that may be found helpful? In short, every course should include a body of definite and precise information to be thoroughly learned, hard as it may be to secure such information in psychology as compared with the exact sciences. . . . Perhaps one of the special habits we can form in the brightest pupils is reading interesting books on psychology. (p. 61) Calkins (1910) was more specific: Psychology is psychology whatever the use to be made of it. First courses in psychology should therefore be essentially the same in content and in method, whether they introduce the student to advanced work in psychology or to the different prob-lems of pedagogy, of ethics or of metaphysics. The [sic] imme-diate purpose of every course in psychology is to make the student expert in the study of himself: to lead him to isolate, an-alyze, to classify, and (in the scientific, not in the metaphysical sense) to explain his own perceiving, remembering, thinking, feeling, and willing. (p. 45, emphasis in original) These two psychologists’perspectives must be understood in historical context—the field was still in the process of distin-guishing its content and methods from its philosophical an-tecedents. Wolfle (1942), in his review of the literature on the first course since the 1910 studies, identified four prevailing objectives: teach facts and principles, develop scientific method or habits of critical thought, prepare students for later courses or interest in psychology, and eliminate popular su-perstition. However, his evaluation of more than 100 studies suggested to him the following synthesis of major objectives: The first is to acquaint the student with the most important and most generally accepted facts, principles, and hypotheses of psy-chology. The attainment of this objective will contribute to the student’s general cultural education and will increase his ability to recognize and to deal intelligently with the psychological problems of modern society. The second objective to be stressed ... - tailieumienphi.vn
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