Psychology curricula for non-psychologists? A framework recommended by the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations' Board of Educational Affairs

Abstract

This paper argues that teaching psychology for non-psychologists influences psychology's public image and the basis of collaboration between psychologists and non-psychologists. Therefore, designing psychology curricula for non-psychology students and professionals is an important task of psychology departments that deserves attention. For guiding the design process, we propose considering five criteria. Curricula for non-psychologists should be (a) specific to the profession of the target group, (b) specific to the needs and (c) work processes of the target group and (d) limited to the professional field of the target group. Although psychology curricula for non-psychology students need to be limited regarding its breadth, they should (e) maintain the depth and multi-perspectivity required for understanding psychological phenomena. Discussing these criteria should help raise awareness for the role of teaching psychology to students of academic disciplines and professions other than psychology.

Why psychology curricula for non-psychologists?

To a substantial extent, psychology's public image is formed by how psychology is taught to students of other academic disciplines and to professionals of fields other than psychology. Partially, this is a quantitative argument. Especially in countries in which the access to psychology study programmes is limited, students getting into contact with psychology in the context of a minor subject, selected modules or single courses outnumber students studying psychology as the major subject. Although the latter have broader and deeper knowledge of psychological theories, methods and practice, the large number of non-psychology students who are familiarized with small segments of psychology may have a large public impact. These students spread their knowledge of and their attitudes towards psychology into diverse parts of society – as future physicians, social workers, teachers, educators, judges, engineers or economists. For example, in Germany, the number of teacher candidates who graduated in 2016 was more than 10 times higher than the number of psychology graduates, and the medicine graduates (who also take psychology courses) outnumbered the psychology graduates by a factor of 2.3 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017). Although reliable numbers are difficult to obtain, the situation seems to be similar in other European countries. In the Czech Republic, for example, in 2017 the number of students enrolled in secondary school teacher education programmes (master's phase) was nearly 12 times higher than the number of psychology master students (The Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2018). In Slovakia, the number of students enrolled in teacher education programmes in 2017 (all school types, Bachelor's and Master's phases) was about six times higher than the number of psychology students (Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information, 2018). The argument, however, has also a qualitative aspect. Non-psychologists develop their own professional identity (e.g., as a teacher, judge or physician) and, in the worst case, they deem psychology irrelevant to their respective professional context. In the positive case, however, they expect psychology to support them in attaining their professional goals (e.g., doing good teaching, correctly evaluating witness testimonies or efficiently communicating with patients). If the psychology teaching received disappoints their expectations, this might be harmful to psychology's public image.

Moreover, non-psychologists educated in psychology often co-operate with psychologists in their field of practice. This collaboration benefits from non-psychologists having an adequate picture of how psychology is generating its knowledge and how this knowledge can be applied. Trust and mutual understanding, however, might be impaired if psychology teaching fails to meet non-psychologists' expectations.

In summer 2013, the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations' (EFPA) Board of Educational Affairs conducted an online survey among psychology departments in Europe concerning their study programmes for non-psychologists. The results demonstrated that psychology departments spend a substantial amount of their resources on teaching target groups other than students of psychology (Dutke & Epler, 2014; Dutke, Epler, & Zani, 2014). This is positive with regard to psychology's responsibility for society, but the results also suggest critical aspects. For example, the authors found an inconsistent pattern of responses when they compared the departments' opinions about the usefulness of psychology for students of other disciplines with the actual supply of psychology courses. For example, no department mentioned that students of humanities would benefit from psychology and only 1.5% of the departments answered that psychology would be important for those who study sciences. The actual teaching co-operations, however, showed a different situation: about 20% of the departments offered psychology courses to the aforementioned faculties. Another example: whereas only 22.4% of the departments evaluated psychology as useful for students of medical and health sciences, over 40% of the departments offered psychology to these students. Thus, offering psychology courses to students of other disciplines could not be predicted from the departments' opinions about the usefulness of psychology as a minor subject for these disciplines. Moreover, in most departments, psychology and non-psychology students attended the same courses, meaning that these courses were not target-group specific. Most departments (70%) did not co-operate with national or international groups or institutions when they developed curricula for non-psychology students. These results suggest that psychology curricula for non-psychologists rarely have a reliable conceptual framework, often seem to be inspired by a local demand–supply rationale and are often composed ad hoc without international or interdisciplinary collaboration. Albeit this study has its limitations, the picture of teaching psychology to non-psychologists that emerges from this data is dissatisfactory.

This situation calls for initiatives to systematically construct psychology curricula for non-psychologists in different academic fields. Psychology as an academic discipline is responsible for offering psychological knowledge to other disciplines and professions and for outlining perspectives for applying this knowledge. Thus, the EFPA Board of Educational Affairs discussed the possibility of proposing specific psychological topics to be included in curricula for different target groups (for an example related to teacher education, see Lohse-Bossenz, Kunina-Habenicht, & Kunter, 2013). In fact, however, this is an extremely laborious, time-consuming and risky task. Firstly, the number of professional fields to which psychology can contribute is high and these fields are (partially) badly defined. Psychologists often lack the expertise to thoroughly understand the necessities, constraints and opportunities in these fields, a necessary pre-requisite for deciding which psychological knowledge might be relevant for which target group. Secondly, psychological knowledge is not always “ready to use”. Often, expertise is needed to transform psychological knowledge before it can be used in a specific professional field. In a paper outlining a historical perspective from the USA on psychology and medical education, Pickren (2007) noted the early failure of psychology to be included in medical curricula as a result of not articulating a version of psychological science that was appealing enough. The formal inclusion of psychology in medical education was achieved much later in the 20th century, after the development of psychological expertise in health care and after the usefulness of applying psychological approaches to issues of significant concern to the medical profession was established (e.g., by an explication of normal mental processes to facilitate recognition of deviations from the norm, doctor–patient relationships, etc.). In the UK, recent attempts to develop an evidence-based behavioural sciences curriculum for undergraduate medical education (Cordingley et al., 2013) recognized the importance of utilizing the knowledge and expertise of the key stakeholders (medicine, medical education and behavioural sciences). Thus, it is not advisable to propose specific psychological content for a curriculum in the form of a general guideline, independently of the local teaching personnel who design the translation process into the intended domain of application.

The Board of Educational Affairs concluded that, in this situation, it is not advisable to recommend specific psychological content to be included in concrete curricula for specific academic disciplines and professions. Instead, we propose a clarification of psychology's basic goals and limits in contributing to curricula for non-psychology students. Therefore, the Board of Educational Affairs presents a framework within which psychology curricula for non-psychologists can be developed.

In recent decades, psychology's research productivity has dramatically increased. Thus, a huge amount of information has accumulated that can be related to diverse other academic disciplines and professional fields. Therefore, a prevalent question is how to select psychological contents for a curriculum addressing non-psychologists in different domains – considering that the portion of the study programme that can be spent on psychological topics is limited (e.g., Upton, 2010). In the following, we propose five criteria supporting the selection of psychological content for non-psychology students.

1. Psychology curricula for non-psychologists should be specific to a field of study or profession

Psychological content should be selected with regard to the academic or professional field of the target group. This is a most general postulate that, at first sight, may seem evident. Often, however, psychology curricula for non-psychologists are designed according to the rule “one fits all” – usually as a miniaturized representation of the curriculum for psychology bachelor students. This is not regarded as an adequate strategy because it neglects students' profession-specific expectations regarding the type of psychological content and does not take profession- or domain-specific levels of aspiration into account (e.g., Taylor, 2008). In the worst case, a target group is presented with psychological contents without a clear relationship to their academic or professional field or the students are unable to reconstruct its relevance. Consequently, curricula of this type can impair psychology's public image, as these students' initially positive expectations are disappointed in that their newly acquired psychological knowledge does not support them in attaining their academic or professional goals.

For example, learning how pre-school children develop an achievement motive might be relevant for future pre-school educators or paediatricians, but is probably less relevant for students of economics. In other cases, specific psychological topics might be relevant for the respective target group although, at first glance, this might not be transparent to this audience. For example, psychological aspects of intercultural diversity might be highly relevant for future economists working in globally acting companies, although students of economics might expect completely different psychological topics to be relevant to their later professional tasks. If the relevance of the presented topic is not explicitly explained and the potential application situations are not outlined, the acceptance might remain low.

We are aware of the fact that, in some situations, it might be difficult to meet this criterion. For example, small university courses often could not be split up according to the majors of the participants. One option might be to group students from closely related disciplines. At least, it should be possible to organize the curriculum in a way that it touches on some issues relevant to each of the disciplines of the students in that particular class. It should be noted that this problem does not occur in all countries. In the Czech Republic, for example, it is quite unusual to offer psychology courses to students from different faculties. In the Netherlands, especially, programmes at universities for applied sciences (e.g., teacher education or nursing) are organized as separate, mono-disciplinary programmes. In summary, we do not consider adverse circumstances in applying the principle of profession-specific curricula as reasons to question it in general.

2. Psychology curricula for non-psychologists should be need-oriented

Psychological content selected specifically for the target profession or a field of study is a necessary but surely no sufficient condition for successful psychology education. Curricula for non-psychology students should also be geared towards the professional needs of the target group. Need-orientation requires an analysis of the central epistemic or practical problems the target group is facing. In the second step, psychological theories and empirical results need to be investigated with regard to their potential for satisfying the target group's needs before they are included in the curriculum. Often, psychological knowledge presented to other professional groups is related to their professional field so that it is profession-specific (see Criterion 1), although it does not support the target group in solving their primary problems or coping with central challenges (e.g., Taylor, 2008). In this case, acceptance of psychological expertise may be compromised.

For example, most physicians are motivated to communicate effectively with their patients. They know that an effective treatment relies on the patient's compliance and motivation to co-operate. Co-operation is more probable when the patient has a clear picture of the medical problem and the treatment options. Therefore, students of medicine are highly interested in learning to communicate clearly, to avoid misconceptions on the side of the patient and to increase the patient's commitment. However, psychological models of communication – even models of expert–layperson communication – do not necessarily support them in attaining this goal. Often, psychological models need to be decomposed and transferred to such a specific application. A curriculum presenting relevant psychological content without scaffolding this transfer process might be disappointing for the respective target group and thereby reduce its acceptance.

An indicative example of a need-oriented approach can be found in Taylor et al. (2017). In discussing teaching psychological principles to cybersecurity students, the authors identified key areas of psychology that cater for the needs of the profession, such as an understanding of cognitive processes, social psychology and individual differences. They conclude that knowledge in these psychological topics would enable students to consider the potential capabilities and limitations of computer users and help in the design of more user-friendly computer systems.

3. Psychology curricula for non-psychologists should be process-oriented

Psychology as a science has developed an internal organization of sub-disciplines, families of theories, fields of research and classes of research methods. This internal organization helps psychologists to allocate and structure their research questions. It is also useful for structuring study programmes for students studying psychology as a major subject. These students spend a substantial portion of their study time familiarizing themselves with these structures and the need them for their orientation. Students from other academic disciplines, however, approach psychology in a more problem- or process-oriented way. Usually, they can describe the problem to be solved and know the procedures usually employed in their field of expertise to solve problems of this type. They are interested in understanding how psychological considerations affect, enrich or question these procedures. Often, however, students from other disciplines are instructed how psychology is internally structured and how different psychological sub-disciplines would frame their question. In contrast, these students are interested in learning how psychological knowledge contributes to the professional procedures they already use. Therefore, there remains a gap between psychological content and the processes to which this content should be applied. Psychological content taught to non-psychology students should have the smallest possible distance to the work processes to which psychology is expected to contribute.

For example, discussing attributional processes and their impact on achievement motivation is relevant for prospective teachers (Criterion 1) and meets teacher students' needs (Criterion 2), as most of them are interested in options to influence student motivation. However, presenting attributional theories and related research results might subjectively still have a large distance to a teacher's work processes. Unless students understand how attributional processes can be addressed, for example, in giving feedback upon student performance, in reacting to student statements during a lesson or generally in classroom management, acceptance and learning success might be low.

4. Psychology curricula for non-psychologists should be limited to the professional field or the field of study of the respective target group

Non-psychology students should be familiarized with psychological knowledge that is specifically related to their field of study or professional practice (Criterion 1), oriented towards the needs of professionals in the non-psychology field (Criterion 2) and the processes that should be psychologically supported (Criterion 3). However, students from other disciplines need not acquire genuinely psychological competences. Psychology should support them in the development of their own professional competences and identity. They are not educated to become psychologists or to use genuinely psychological methods (but see, e.g., Brown & Bollinger, 1985; Dryden, 1985; Yule, 1975).

For example, teachers should be supported to become more attentive teachers by learning which psychological problems their students might develop. However, it is not psychology's role to train them in diagnosing and therapeutically treating these problems. Therefore, we recommend not training teachers on diagnostic methods or therapeutic procedures. However, it might be helpful to them to know about the existence of potential psychological disorders and potential treatments so that their awareness of potentially maladaptive behaviour of their students increases. Teachers may also benefit from developing a capacity for life-long learning, by increasing their knowledge of how humans learn, as well as by reflecting on their own processes of learning, that is, gaining metacognitive knowledge for classroom learning and teaching (Nezhad & Vahedi, 2011). However, we do not expect teachers to construct and evaluate psychological training for fostering the development of metacognitive skills. Therefore, we propose not to include this type of psychological content in a psychological teacher education programme.

Judges, to give another example, should understand the mechanisms of false memory. They should not only develop a critical distance to eye-witness testimony but should also be able to build a theory- and evidence-based anticipation of the reliability of an eye-witness testimony. However, judges need not be trained in the diagnostic procedures that finally provide evidence of witness' trustworthiness, as this is part of psychological professional competences.

5. Psychology curricula for non-psychologists should be internally consistent and systematic enough to enable understanding of the relevant psychological phenomena

The aforementioned criteria are all restrictive in nature. They aim at confining curriculum contents to the needs and work processes of professionals in a given field. However, strictly reducing psychological contents according to the criteria explicated earlier might result in an overly reductionist approach focusing on isolated and piece-meal information. This risk is counteracted by the postulate that the curriculum, despite its limitations, needs to be consistent and systematic enough to allow a deep understanding of the relevant phenomena. Understanding a particular problem, phenomenon and/or processes from a psychological perspective often requires a combination of knowledge and skills form diverse fields of psychology. Yet, it is important to include all these necessary pieces into the curriculum to ensure that, in its whole, it will provide enough complex and elaborated coverage.

For example, when teachers are aiming to use formative assessment, they will probably consider the educational psychology perspective of this process. Still, it is equally important to consider also the developmental context, the personality context and even organizational psychology contexts to reach a proper level of understanding. Once some important pieces of the necessary knowledge are missing, and the students reach only superficial understanding of important issues, their ability to take psychologically informed actions is weakened and thereby their prospective expectations and valuing of psychology. Therefore, limiting the breadth of a psychology curriculum should have priority over limiting its depth and multi-perspectivity view.

To attain this goal, the curriculum needs to be research-based. That means content should be selected that is theoretically well grounded and empirically investigated. The research process should be made transparent in that students learn to relate theoretical propositions, research methods, empirical results and potential applications. Knowledge about how psychology generates its contents is an important ingredient for successfully applying this knowledge. However, the required depth of methodological insight into the research process might vary. While students studying psychology as a major subject are educated to develop skills enabling them to conduct research actively, students studying psychology as a minor subject should primarily be able to comprehend the research process and understand research reports. In other cases, it might be even sufficient to have an idea of the basic research argumentation. In any of these cases, establishing a relation between teaching contents and related research processes is essential.

Beyond criteria

The criteria described above may help one to select psychological content for different target groups. For this purpose, the criteria are formulated within a rationale of functionality: which type of content is expected to increase curriculum acceptance as it is evaluated as relevant and need- and process-oriented?

This rationale does not take into account that psychological issues might also be intrinsically attractive to non-psychologists, because they relate to personal experience and interesting societal phenomena, or contribute to individual development and growth. All of these aspects might be unrelated to an individual's field of study, professional tasks, goals or challenges. Curricula additionally addressing these aspects might even be more successful. However, the fundamental challenge is to satisfy the relevance criteria.

Deciding about relevance, need- and process-orientation requires expertise beyond the field of psychology. A psychologist cannot recommend psychological knowledge or methods in a responsible way before the requirements, problems, or challenges of the non-psychology target field are understood. Thus, the successful application of the criteria outlined above requires the collaboration of psychologists and experts from the non-psychology field. This collaboration may appear in the format of an informal exchange of information but may also give rise to systematic research about work processes, learning demands, or motivational needs of professionals and how psychology can contribute to improving their potentials. In rare cases, the non-psychology field itself develops a picture of the competences that are needed for successful practice and thereby address psychology directly. An interesting example is the CANMEDS framework (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 2015), outlining a system of desirable competences of physicians. Some of the competences listed address psychology and might serve as an orientation for selecting relevant psychological contents. In many other cases, however, balancing what psychology can offer and what a target domain needs requires intensive interdisciplinary interaction.