There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal at no cost. If you wish to have color figures in the printed version, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.

Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access.

For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.

Open access fees do not cover page or color charges and are charged separately.

Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.

The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.

Psychology courses are among the most popular classes on college campuses and a rapidly growing addition to high school curriculums. Teaching of Psychology (ToP) is devoted to improving the teaching and learning processes in psychology at all educational levels, from high school through undergraduate- and graduate-level. ToP is indispensable as a source book for teaching methods and as a forum for new ideas. Dedicated to improving the learning and teaching process at all educational levels, this journal has established itself as a leading source of information and inspiration for all who teach psychology. Coverage includes empirical research on teaching and learning; studies of teacher or student characteristics; subject matter or content reviews for class use; investigations of student, course, or teacher assessment; professional problems of teachers; essays on teaching; innovative course descriptions and evaluations; curriculum designs; bibliographic material; demonstrations and laboratory projects; and news items.  

Article types

Teaching of Psychology is devoted to improvement of the teaching and learning processes at all educational levels from secondary school through college and graduate school to continuing education. The journal includes empirical research on teaching and learning of psychological concepts and theories; studies of teacher or student characteristics subject matter or content reviews for the psychology class; investigations of psychology student, course, or teacher assessment; professional problems of psychology teachers; innovative psychology course descriptions and evaluation; curriculum designs; and demonstrations and laboratory projects. For most submissions, authors should ideally include empirical assessment of the contribution. The empirical assessment should primarily and directly measure the impact of the technique on the student learning rather than focus predominantly on student self-report of learning. All submissions should explicitly demonstrate how the research is relevant to psychology educators and/or students.

The journal includes four major types of articles: (1) pilot and small-scale studies, (2) conceptual and methodological empirical replications, (3) full-length empirical studies and integrative pieces, and (4) evidence-based strategies for teaching of psychology.

If a paper is not suitable for publication in Teaching of Psychology, we will inform the authors as soon as possible (usually within about 1 week after their submission). If the paper is generally suitable for Teaching of Psychology, we aim to provide an editor’s report based on at least two sets of reviewers’ comments within 12 weeks after their submission. Teaching of Psychology is published four times per year, and authors should not expect their paper to appear in the forthcoming issue subsequent to their submission being received.  

Here are specific details on each of the four major types of articles the journal will consider. For guidance about which section your paper best fits, please contact the editor Aaron S. Richmond at top@teachpsych.org.

Power Analysis. For all data-driven manuscripts, we prefer a priori power analysis but will accept post-hoc power analysis. Please include these in your manuscript, either as a footnote or in the main body of the manuscript. Sample sizes that are below the minimal standard for inferential statistics (e.g., 20 per cell; see Simmons et al., 2011) must justify their sample using power analysis based on effect sizes from previous research.

Reference:

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417632

Proof of Concept Corner: This section will house promising pilot studies or small-scale studies. Submissions to this Corner should be shorter articles that provide quantitative evidence for teaching and learning related interventions, establish associations between variables related to the teaching of psychology, and/or present descriptive data to propose problems to solve. It is highly encouraged that they contain OSF Materials, Data, and/or Preregistration. They must be:

1. The manuscript should be no more than 4,500 words. This includes the title page, abstract, main body of the manuscript, references, tables, figures, and appendices. 
2. Data-driven.
3. Novel.

Previously published ToP examples:

Rogers, S. L., Hollett, R., Li, Y. R., & Speelman, C. P. (2022). An evaluation of virtual reality role-play experiences for helping-profession courses. Teaching of Psychology, 49(1), 78-84. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628321995431

Ober, T. M. (2021). The use of a digital pedagogical tool to support writing instruction in the social sciences. Teaching of Psychology, 48(4), 300-307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320979900

The Replication Corner:As there is a growing concern for replication of studies in psychology, and ToP is committed to improving our science in this regard. Therefore, ToP encourages the publication of replication studies. In this section, we encourage authors to not only replicate findings from previously published studies, but also to include some novel aspect to their study (e.g., different type of institution, psychology subject matter, class size, additional measures, etc.). Submissions in this section must:

1. Be data driven.
2. Be small- or large-scale studies.
3. Be no more than a total of 4,500 words or commensurate with the original article. This includes the title page, abstract, main body of the manuscript, references, tables, figures, and appendices.
4. Attempt to replicate previously published work on any subject, population, or outlet (e.g., PLAT, SOTLP, TEPP, SoTL journal).
5. Have implications for practical teaching, curricular, programmatic, or advising responsibilities.

Previously published ToP examples:

Friedrich, J., Childress, J., & Cheng, D. (2018). Replicating a national survey on statistical training in undergraduate psychology programs: Are there “new statistics” in the new millennium? Teaching of Psychology, 45, 312–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628318796414

Reich, C. M., LaCaille, L. J., Axford, K. E., & Slaughter, N. R. (2022). Empathic communication skills across applied undergraduate psychology courses: A replication study. Teaching of Psychology, 49(1), 49-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628321995431

The Science of Teaching and Learning Corner:Submissions to this corner should be full-length articles that are data- or theory-driven, meta-analytic investigations, or conceptual position articles. Submissions to this section are meant to illuminate teaching of psychology topics with broad implications or importance to SoTL researchers. They may be:

1. The manuscript should be no more than a total of 8,500 words. This includes the title page, abstract, main body of the manuscript, references, tables, figures, and appendices. 
2. Integrative literature reviews.
3. Full studies (i.e., not short pilot studies), multiple experiment manuscripts, large meta-analytic reviews, etc.
4. Op-ed articles. For example, pros and cons of moving a psych major from BA to BS, changing the experimental sequence, how to get students more interested in research, career advice, etc.

Previously published ToP examples:

Nusbaum, A. T., Swindell, S., & Plemons, A. (2021). Kindness at first sight: The role of syllabi in impression formation. Teaching of Psychology, 48(2), 130-143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320959953

Wei, Y., Spencer-Rodgers, J., Anderson, E., & Peng, K. (2021). The effects of a cross-cultural psychology course on perceived intercultural competence. Teaching of Psychology, 48(3), 221-227 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320977273

The Scholarly Teacher Corner:This corner is meant to provide a forum for shorter articles that provide practical reviews, activities, small-scale studies and/or resources for teachers of psychology to directly use in their classroom or teaching responsibilities. They can be small-scale studies, reflective essays, practical activities, nondata driven emerging ideas, subject specific (e.g., abnormal, developmental, etc.) papers, ideas on how to incorporate a book into your course, research reviews that illuminate findings for teachers of psychology, translations of new research, major issues to consider, etc. Articles in this corner should:

1. Provide practical hands on advice for teachers.
2. Be based on past research or evidence.
3. The manuscript should be no more than 4,000 words. This includes the title page, abstract, main body of the manuscript, references, tables, figures, and appendices. 
4. Include instructional materials on Open Science Framework (OSF) Materials or Figshare. Possible Appendices (for online materials or OSF) that provide the actual activities or course materials. SAGE is a partner of Figshare, the industry leading open repository of research data. This helps us improve the discoverability of supplementary data we publish, as well as support the visualization of this data online. There’s no limit to each article’s accompanying supplementary data, and it’s free to access on SAGE Journals as well as on the Figshare platform. Here are some related links: https://www.sagepub.com/press/sage-publishing-partners-with-figshare-to-support-wider-access-to-article-supplemental or https://sage.figshare.com/ 

Previously published ToP examples:

Garlington, T., Ryan, V. M., Nolty, C., Ilagan, H., & Kunicki, Z. J. (2021). Bringing social justice into the statistics classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 48(3), 269-274. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320979879

Koch, M. K., & Mendle, J. (2021). Real-world skills in a virtual world: An innovative activity for teaching developmental Psychopathology. Teaching of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00986283211042309

Preregistration, Transparency, and Open Science

Teaching of Psychology is committed to promoting transparent, open, rigorous research. The following procedures are part of the submission process: 

Disclosures. As part of the submission procedures, authors will be asked to confirm the following (even though not all apply to all types of research designs): 

You included a clear statement of how the sample size was determined 

You included a statement of a priori statistical power based on reasonable effect size (quantitative studies) or how you ensured saturation of depth and breadth of themes (qualitative studies) 

You included a description of all data exclusions (e.g., outliers), how the decisions about exclusions were made, and have conducted all analyses with and without the exclusions 

You included a description of all data transformations, how the decisions about transformations were made, and have conducted all analyses with both the transformed and raw data 

You included a rationale for including covariates and tested all models with and without covariates included 

All measures and questions relevant to the research question contained in the project were included in the manuscript 

You included a clear statement of the amount, type, and method of handling missing data 

You included effect sizes for all statistical tests 

All research questions and hypotheses are clearly and accurately labeled as either exploratory or confirmatory 

You included rationale for any deviations from standard scoring procedures of measures 

You included, as an appendix or supplement, a detailed description of the interview questions asked 

You included a detailed description of your qualitative coding/analysis process 

You included an assessment of coding trustworthiness, either quantitative or qualitative 

These items are presented as a checklist in the submission portal, with authors actively confirming adherence to each practice. A separate statement for disclosures is not required but authors can choose to include one in the manuscript if they wish (e.g., the 21-word solution; Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2012). 

Transparency and Open Science Statement. As part of the submission process, authors must include a Transparency and Open Science Statement. This statement will be included as part of the peer-review process and will ultimately appear in the Author Note section of accepted manuscripts. The Transparency and Openness Statement must indicate the following: 

Are the raw data contained in this manuscript openly available for download? 

If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript? 

For quantitative analyses, is the analysis code/syntax used for the analyses openly available for download? 

If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript? 

For qualitative analyses, are the list of questions and coding manuals openly available for download? 

If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript? 

Are all materials used in the study openly available for download? 

If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript? 

Did this study include a pre-registration plan for data collection and/or analysis? 

If yes, did you include a link to the pre-registration plan in the manuscript? 

If yes, were deviations from the pre-registration plan clearly indicated in the manuscript? 

The statement should appear on a separate page, and all links should direct to active and anonymized websites. All of the aforementioned questions must be addressed in the statement (1, 2 and/or 3, 4, and 5), whether the answers are yes or no. Additional information may also be provided to explain specific conditions or circumstances. Example statements are as follows: 

The analysis code (doi.xxxx) and materials (doi.xxxx) used in this manuscript are openly available. The raw data contained in this manuscript are not openly available due to privacy restrictions set forth by the institutional ethics board but can be obtained from the corresponding author following the completion of a privacy and fair use agreement. No aspects of the study were pre-registered. 

The raw data, analysis code, and materials used in this study are not openly available but are available upon request to the corresponding author. The data collection and analysis were pre-registered (link to URL of pre-registration plan), and all deviations from the pre-registration plan were clearly indicated in the manuscript. 

These are just examples, and authors are free to tailor the statements to their particular situation so long as they addressed criteria 1-5 listed above. 

The content of the Transparency and Open Science Statement will not be used as a basis for acceptance or rejection of your manuscript. 

Open Science Badges. Accepted manuscripts that answer in affirmative to #1, #4, or #5 above will be eligible to receive a corresponding Open Science Badge (see https://osf.io/tvyxz/). Open Science Badges will be affixed to the to the final version of the accepted article to signify the use of open and transparent practices. The following badges will be available: 

 Open Data – The raw data used in the manuscript are freely available via a DOI or other persistent identifier. 

 Open Materials – All study materials used in the manuscript are freely available via a DOI or other persistent identifier. 

 Pre-registered + analysis – The study design and target analyses were pre-registered and the manuscript contains a link to a permanent, time-stamped, and uneditable pre-registration plan housed on an open science repository. The Open Science Framework (https://osf.io) is the preferred site for housing pre-registration plans, but authors are free to use similar alternatives. Importantly, use of pre-registered analysis plans does not preclude the inclusion of exploratory analyses, but rather formalizes the distinction between confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Emerging Adulthood only issues pre-registration badges for manuscripts that contain pre-registered analyses. 

Authors will complete an Open Practices Disclosure Form upon acceptance of their manuscript for publication. Eligible badges will then be affixed to the final type-set version of the article. 

Teaching of Psychology welcomes Special Issues. Special Issues in ToP should be concentrated on one topic or issue. For example, in 2018, we published a special issue devoted to professional development in undergraduate psychology majors (see Volume 45, Issue 1). For each Special Issue, there will be at least one guest editor who is in charge of soliciting manuscripts, editing manuscripts, and submitting the Special Issue to the ToP Editor. Once the issue has been formed, each article will go under the double-blind peer review process. The Editor and Associate Editors will provide guidance to the guest editor during he process. Guest editor(s) must select and advertise solicitation of manuscripts publicly and in an open manner (e.g., soliciting manuscripts via the Society of Teaching of Psychology’s list serv).

To submit a proposal (no more than two pages) for a special issue, guest editors must:

• Provide a description of the topic of the special issue, how it adds value to the teaching of psychology, including its importance to teachers.
• A description of how the guest editor(s) will solicit manuscripts. For example, how will the solicitation of manuscripts be publicized, and to whom?
• Timeline of the special issue. Ideally, we would want a targeted volume and issue number for the special issue. This includes when manuscripts will be solicited, reviewed, revised, edited, and submitted to ToP.
• A list of at least 10 potential peer reviewers.
• Submit the proposal to the Editor, Aaron S. Richmond at top@teachpsych.org

As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Submission site

Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.

Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Authorship

Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Files

• Title Page with all required identifying information as laid out in Preparing your manuscript for submission (above). This will not be sent to the peer reviewers.
• Your manuscript, properly formatted and anonymized according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal. Any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) should be removed or anonymized and included on the Title Page instead. See above for more information on anonymization. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
• Figures and images.
• All figures must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text – they will appear in the published article in the order they are numbered.
• Figure resolution is 300dpi. More information on figure/image preparation can be found here.
• Supplemental material. This journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images, etc) alongside the full-text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

• Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
• The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
• The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
• All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
• All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
• All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
• Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
• The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
• Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
• You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.

• If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: Double anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: None

Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.

After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.

Teaching of Psychology adheres to a rigorous double-anonymized reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. Two independent reviews are required for a manuscript to reach a Revise or Accept decision.

To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.

All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

The journal has an Editorial Board who serve the journal as external peer reviewers. Each member of the Editorial Board are active researchers in the field and selected based on strict criteria, ensuring they possess the necessary expertise and experience. The Editor may use an Editorial Board member as a reviewer for a manuscript and will reach beyond this pool to include additional reviewers to meet the required number before a decision can be made. This ensures a comprehensive and robust peer review process, aligning with our commitment to publish the most credible and valid research. Care is taken not to invite any Editorial Board Member that has any potential conflict of interest with any author of the paper.

As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.

You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.

Read Sage's complete peer review policy.

Plagiarism

The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.

Publication

OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.

Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.

The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.

You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.

SoTL Writing Workshop

The STP SoTL Workshop is designed to support faculty/graduate student members in receiving guidance on SoTL research from an experienced mentor and consult with both statistical and publication experts. Each participant is placed with a mentor and a team of 3-4 peers. Participants are supported in designing studies, analyzing learning data, and writing/revising a complete manuscript. Mentors work virtually with their teams starting in June and the experience culminates at the SoTL Workshop during the ACT Conference. Please refer to the STP website for more details http://teachpsych.org/SoTLWorkshop. 

Contact Us

You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:

top@teachpsych.org