Abstract
Target Articles in Psychology Learning & Teaching (PLAT)
In this issue, you will find the first target article being published under my editorship. Dutke, Bakker, Sokolová, Stuchlikova, Salvatore, and Papageorgi (2019)—all members of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations’ Board of Educational Affairs—pose the question: “Psychology curricula for non-psychologists?” and suggest a framework for such curricula. As you can see from the comments, the authors are applauded for their advance, but in detail, the commentators also point to critical issues that need to be considered. I hope that this will be the beginning of a fruitful debate on curricula development.
Target articles are a special publication format that is offered by very few scholarly journals. Different from research articles and reports, target articles offer the opportunity to draw attention to current topics of high relevance that can be viewed from different perspectives and, thus, are debatable. To inspire debate, scholars representing different groups of stakeholders are invited to provide comments to the target article. I am convinced that the learning and teaching of psychology needs more debate and I hope that we will see more target articles in PLAT in the future. If you are not sure whether a topic is suitable for a target article, please contact me.
News from the European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching (ESPLAT)
Sally Wiggins, the designated founding president of European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching (ESPLAT), sends her greetings to the readers of PLAT along with the following message: The last few months have been an important time for psychology learning and teaching in Europe, as the newly established European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching (ESPLAT) was officially recognized as a European Society in Brussels. Our website (https://esplatorg.weebly.com/) now also has a new logo as well as news about our board members, our history and upcoming events. Most importantly, Helen Bakker will be hosting the first of our biannual conferences in Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 25th to 27th September 2019. More details can be found at the conference website: https://esplat2019.org/. The conference theme focuses on how we can foster the psychologists of the future through our teaching and learning practices. As we all face challenges in our working lives and within higher education, now is the time to identify ways in which our teaching can most effectively contribute to this landscape. Our psychology students will be more valuable than ever, and we play an essential part in their journey toward their professional lives. The ESPLAT team are very much looking forward to welcoming delegates to the conference in September, and to being part of the future of European psychology learning and teaching.
The Current Issue
The current issue of PLAT contains one target article including eight comments and the target authors’ reply, three research articles, and one report. Moreover, you will find the abstracts of the current issue of Teaching of Psychology (ToP46(1)).
As already mentioned above, Dutke et al. (2019) introduce suggestions for a framework for psychology curricula for non-psychologists. You will find comments by Douglas Bernstein (Chairman of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology), Christopher Arnold (Principal Psychologist for Psychological Services GB), Tobias Richter (Speaker of the Educational Psychology Division of the German Psychological Society), Christoph Steinebach (Vice President of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) and treasurer of ESPLAT), Julie Hulme (Chair of the British Psychological Society Division of Academics, Researchers, and Teachers in Psychology), Bruna Zani (member of the Executive Council of EFPA), Susanne Narciss (Vice President of ESPLAT) as well as a team of authors representing the American Society for the Teaching of Psychology (Thomas Pusateri, Eric Landrum, Regan Gurung, & Jane Halonen). To sum things up, the authors of the target article provide a reply to the comments.
The first article in this issue is by Ritzer and Sleigh. These authors asked college students to rate the importance of workplace skills from different views (as themselves, as their parents, and as future employers). The results showed that college students focus more on skills required to succeed in their studies than in their future careers and, thus, might underestimate the importance of certain skills and behaviors that employers expect.
Paltoglou, Morys-Carter, and Davies deal with the prevalent issue of statistics anxiety and aim at shifting the focus from anxiety to confidence. To this end, the authors developed and tested a scale asking about students’ statistics confidence instead of their statistics anxiety. This new look on an ever-present issue provides a promising fresh approach to diagnosing and dealing with statistics anxiety.
Zucchero and Gibson investigated outcomes of students participating in a semester-long, intergenerational service-learning course compared to a traditional pedagogy course. Different than shown by some previous studies, service-learning was not as such superior to traditional courses when comparing students’ outcomes. Only in one dimension, that is, self-efficacy, were service-learning students found to score higher than students from traditional courses.
In their report, Busby Grant and Grace give insight into a process of designing content- and context-specific materials that can be used to implement authentic learning experiences in methods and statistics courses. Psychology graduates working in different occupational fields were identified and interviewed to gather content for case studies. Student feedback showed that the implementation of these case studies in courses was perceived as motivating and supporting students’ learning.
Please also pay attention to the abstracts from Teaching of Psychology 46(1) that you will find in this issue.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of PLAT and I hope to see you all in Utrecht in September!