Abstract
Teaching in Times of a Pandemic
During the last months, teaching has undergone a probably unprecedentedly rapid change. Many psychology instructors were forced to introduce new teaching methods that were either online or had little personal contact between students and teachers. Psychology Learning and Teaching offers a platform for sharing experiences with such new teaching and learning formats. Our submission format “Reports” is the right category if you want to describe how you managed the crisis in your teaching. Usually reports include a small-scale evaluation, but because of this special situation and the need to share information quickly, the evaluation part is not mandatory. We will try to give all submissions related to the pandemic a quick review and publish the contributions online first as soon as possible.
European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching (ESPLAT)
Despite the crisis, activities of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching (ESPLAT) have continued. The latest result is a new website that will be available when this editorial is published (https://www.esplat.org/). You will find a lot of information about the society, its members, and their activities. Among others, you will find information regarding ESPLAT’s 2021 conference in Heidelberg, Germany. If you are not yet an ESPLAT member, please make sure to become one!
The Current Issue
The current issue of PLAT contains two reviews, one research article, and one report. Moreover, you will find the abstracts of the current issues of Psychology Teaching Review and Teaching of Psychology.
Ethics has always been an import part of psychology teaching, but has become even more important in the face of reproducibility debates. Ruiz, Warchal, and You review evidence of ethics in psychology curricula, instructional strategies, and faculty issues related to teaching ethics to undergraduates. Based on this, the authors provide recommendations for both teaching and researching ethics education.
Phares leads our attention to memoirs and autobiographies as resources for psychology teaching. While such documents have been used in adult abnormal psychology classes, this review explores the possibilities to enrich teaching in abnormal child psychology by their inclusion. Among others, the author provides a list of memoirs and autobiographies that instructors can use as resources.
The Testing Effect is not only one of the best-investigated effects in learning psychology but has inspired many applications in psychology classrooms. Francis, Wieth, Zabel, and Carr investigated the role of students’ prior knowledge in the Testing Effect. Both college students with high and low prior psychology knowledge had higher scores on examination material that was practiced in class with retrieval-based concept mapping compared with traditional multiple-choice quizzes and no organized in-class retrieval activity at all. Only students with high prior psychology knowledge had higher scores on quizzed material. These results give reason to reconsider who benefits from certain kinds of practice.
Another omnipresent issue is incorrect information spread through social media. Riser, Clarke, and Stallworth designed a scientific writing assignment to convey correct information on human development through the creation and sharing of material on social media. The assignment is meant to help students develop critical thinking and scientific literacy as well as their ability to apply course concepts to everyday life and share those applications with others.
Please also pay attention to the abstracts from Psychology Teaching Review (PTR26(1)) as well as Teaching of Psychology (ToP47(3)) that you will also find in this issue.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of PLAT!