Abstract
New Impulses for Teaching and Learning to Overcome Future Challenges
At the time of publication of this PLAT issue, the onset of the pandemic was more than three years ago. We have learned to live with the coronavirus in a new normal, but the effects of the pandemic continue to be felt. This also applies to the teaching and learning of psychology.
Even though we as researchers and instructors greatly appreciate meeting our students face-to-face in the lecture hall and the seminar room again, the past two years leave us with important experiences and impulses. The joint management of this crisis also revealed valuable opportunities for professional networking, interdisciplinary exchange, and accelerated digitalization in education. Once again, this issue of PLAT features articles that explore new digital tools and teaching methods to successfully adapt teaching and learning of psychology to a more digitalized future.
In general, we are facing major challenges in many areas of life right now. In a time of multiple crises and rapid changes, our professional psychological expertise is needed more than ever. Therefore, it is even more important that we as instructors constantly strive to further develop teaching and learning and adapt to these changes.
ESPLAT Conference 2023
Due to the pandemic situation, ESPLAT held its conference in 2021 fully online. Unfortunately, it was not possible for us as a community to meet each other in person in Heidelberg. For this reason, we are particularly pleased that this year's ESPLAT conference will be held face-to-face again. During the past two years, the personal exchange in our community and the social part of our profession was only possible to a very limited extent. However, research thrives on mutual exchange, interaction, and communication and while digital formats can provide a solid alternative, they will never fully replace personal interaction.
We are pleased to invite you all to this year's ESPLAT conference on the topic of “Learning and Teaching Psychology in a Changing World” in Umeå, Sweden. The now fourth meeting of our community takes place from the 14th to the 16th of June 2023 and is organized by Prof. Dr. Michael Gruber and his team at Umeå University. Keynote speakers include Prof. Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, Dr. Kelley Haynes-Mendez, Senior Director of Human Rights Team APA, and Professor Dr. Therése Skoog.
Recent political and social events demonstrate once again how urgently we need evidence-based, innovative, and effective teaching to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The ESPLAT 2023 conference is a great forum for sharing new ideas, innovations, and best practices as well as strategies to overcome future challenges. We are looking forward to a variety of interesting and valuable contributions and a fruitful exchange in Umeå! The presentations will also be streamed and available online. For more detailed information, please visit https://www.esplat.org/esplat-2023.
At this point, we would also like to refer to the last issue of PLAT in November 2022, which was a special issue about the ESPLAT conference 2021 on the very current issue of “Teaching and Learning Psychology in Times of COVID and Beyond.” The issue was guest edited by Veit Kubik, Camilla Hakelind, and Richard Harris and is available online (https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/PLJ/current). Remember that PLAT is open to your submissions on the teaching and learning of psychology at any time. Our PLAT team is looking forward to receiving your latest work!
Changes in Editorial Team
After many years as Associate Editors of PLAT, Stephanie Pieschl and Susan Nolan decided to say farewell. You both have done a lot for PLAT and we thank you for many years of valuable work for our journal. We wish you both all the best for your future. As new members of our team of Associate Editors, we welcome Veit Kubik from Würzburg University, Germany, and Richard Harris from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Both have already done great work in the past as guest editors of special issues. As a result, they bring valuable prior experience, and we are very much looking forward to the upcoming joint work. A warm welcome to our team, Veit and Richard!
The Current Issue
The current issue of PLAT contains five research articles and one report. Moreover, you will find the abstracts of the two latest issues of Teaching of Psychology.
The first research article tackles the question of whether research conducted by undergraduate students meets quality standards that are taught in psychology classes. Wagge, Hurst, Brandt, Lazarevic, Legate, and Grahe found that instructors see many problems in students’ research projects as they are commonly conducted. These authors suggest ways to align the quality of students’ research with the standards taught, for example by employing crowdsourced projects developed for student researchers.
Greisel, Wekerle, Wilkes, Stark, and Kollar address the well-known fact that teachers rarely use scientific knowledge for teaching-related decisions. It investigated whether pre-service teachers’ attitudes, subjective norms, and self-efficacy facilitate the use of scientific theories to analyze teaching problems in case scenarios. Results revealed different predictions depending on whether objectively coded quality of teachers’ evidence-informed reasoning or students’ judgment about it was used as criterion. The authors conclude that pre-service teachers might not be skilled enough to assess their own competency accurately and might be unaware of external conditions facilitating or hindering evidence-informed reasoning.
Graham and Moye raise our attention to the growing need for psychology services for older adults. These authors explored age-related training within psychology doctoral students. Relying on the results that show great heterogeneity and rather low level of training, suggestions for expanding age-related aspects into generalist training are offered.
Hulsbergen, de Jong, and van der Smagt present a virtual simulator called Communicate! for teaching dialogue skills. In two experiments, the effectiveness of the new tool was compared to traditional ways of learning. Based on their results, the authors draw positive conclusions about the potential of Communicate! to improve students’ dialogue skills, their related knowledge, engagement, and motivation to learn.
Deibl and Zumbach investigated how widespread the beliefs in neuromyths are among pre-service teacher students and how confident students were to distinguish myths from facts. Results show that both freshmen and advanced students had difficulties identifying myths correctly, whereas advanced students were better at identifying facts correctly and were more confident about their answers.
Pfost, Kuntner, Goppert, and Hübner report on developing and using a webtool aiming to support students’ self-regulated learning. The webtool contains elements such as performance testings, feedback on test performance and self-evaluations. In examining students’ use of the webtool, substantial variability in willingness and frequency of tool usage was found. Findings are discussed with respect to regulation requirements in open learning environments and implications for implementation.
Please also pay attention to the abstracts from Teaching of Psychology (ToP49(3) and ToP49(4)) that you will find in this issue.
We hope you enjoy reading this issue of PLAT!