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Psychology Course Perspective
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by Alan Feldman
High School Teacher of AP Psychology, AP History and Mathematics
Perth Amboy High School
Perth Amboy, New Jersey
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| | Please note: The official College Board® Course Description is available below in "More."
What do a schizophrenic, a split-brain patient, a preoperational child, a Freudian therapist, and a rat in a Skinner Box have in common? They are among the roles I assume, along with dozens of others, when I am teaching AP Psychology, the course I most love to teach. That's because it gives me an opportunity to discuss in depth topics that are intrinsically fascinating, relevant to students' lives, and have important personal and social consequences.
Many social problems are behaviorally based, including anger, crime, smoking, racism, and child abuse. An AP Psychology course can help students realize the positive outcomes of an authoritative parenting style, the effectiveness and humanity of positive reinforcement to modify behavior, the value of a clinical psychologist as compared to a friend, the effectiveness of reflective listening, and a greater capacity to resist implicit and explicit group pressure through understanding research on conformity and obedience.
An underlying theme of the course is the importance of understanding objective, empirical methods of collecting and interpreting data, including a basic knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics. In addition, students must be able to understand and critique descriptive, predictive, and experimental research methods, and most, if not all, topics should be linked to the type of research methodology that supports or produces them. Students should be aware of the logically permissible appropriate inferences; conclusions, and generalizations that can be made based on the research method used or statistical analysis applied. It is important to encourage students to question and investigate the effect of the research methodology used in the information they acquire.
Students should be inspired by the instructor to make meaningful interconnections between disparate concepts. They should be asked to relate information to the major psychological themes, including nature/nurture, continuity/discontinuity, change/stability, idiographic/nomothetic, mind-body interactions, and homeostatic (opposing process) regulation. Perspectives include psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, biological, and social-cultural. Students should be able to analyze concepts in terms of these themes and perspectives through the use of hierarchical review charts and question maps.
When beginning the course, many students believe in several myths about psychological topics, such as an exaggeration of left-right brain dichotomies, the belief that people use only 10 percent of their brains, the idea that theories are unfounded speculations, and psychic phenomena as valid and supported by replicable, empirical evidence. Demonstrating and highlighting the importance and validity of empirically supported data helps students learn to critically evaluate myths in social science, extravagant claims by advertisers, and the relative value of information based on evidential reasoning.
Another goal of the course is to encourage critical thinking and good writing. Writing should be clear and concise, and demonstrate knowledge of psychological concepts using appropriate terminology. This is accomplished by giving word limits on essay assignments, by crossing off unnecessary words and vague phrases from students' essays, and by having them read well-written papers. The extensive word lists for introductory psychology produced by Alan Boneau and Eugene Zechmeister are particularly helpful.
Once, a bright middle-school student asked me if any scientists were alive! That remark has affected the way I teach, especially AP Psychology. I don't know of any field other than psychology with such potential to generate student interest and excitement about scientific research. With the introduction of each new concept, I make sure to mention the research of current psychologists and try to help students realize that, like other sciences, psychology is a vibrant, continually expanding body of knowledge in which new discoveries are made on a regular basis.
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