Sample Chapter - Volume 1
Chapter 7
Twenty Tips for Teaching Introductory Psychology
Robert J. Sternberg
Yale University
with the Authors of the Teaching Introductory Psychology Project*
No matter how much experience one has teaching introductory psychology, there is always more to learn about teaching this challenging course. One can learn not only from one's own experience, but from the experience of others. Realizing the value of this collective experience I asked a set of individuals who would be particularly knowledgeable about teaching introductory psychology-some authors of major introductory-psychology texts-to collaborate with me in a project to pool our collective experience.
The result was an edited book, Teaching Introductory Psychology (Sternberg, 1997b). This article summarizes 20 of the main tips for teaching introductory psychology that emerged from our shared effort.
What You Cover
1) Be selective
There is always one more fact, theory, or experiment you could include in your lecture, but teaching time does not expand to fit additional material. Therefore you must be selective and avoid the temptation to try to include everything. An expert teacher knows not only what to include but what not to include. Leave it to the textbook to include what you do not have time to cover.
2) Emphasize the core
Given that you cannot cover everything, decide carefully in advance what you believe to be the core of psychology. That's one decision where your expertise as a teacher is critical. There is always the textbook and, if students wish, upper level courses they can take to learn about what you did not cover.
3) Balance classic and contemporary studies
By teaching students about contemporary theory and research, you show students that psychology is a rapidly evolving science. But psychology is not reinvented in the two to four years that constitute the typical cycle of new editions of textbooks, so it is important to balance new material with the classic studies that constitute our core knowledge about psychology.
How You Cover It
4) Help students organize their knowledge base
Research shows that people develop expertise not only by acquiring knowledge, but by organizing it effectively (e.g., Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988). Help students organize their knowledge base by using introductory outlines, integrative summaries, tree diagrams, maps showing interconnections among ideas, or any other useful organizing aids.
5) Take into account students' starting points
Chances are good that you are teaching primarily freshmen and sophomores. Consider where they are in their lives, and that their study skills, knowledge base, and motivation for psychology may all be at relatively modest levels. Teach to where they are, not where you might hope they would be.
6) Be patient
Because of where students are in their lives, you have to be especially patient with them. They often do not have the maturity to respond in the ways you might hope. You also need to be patient with yourself in your attempts to reach them.
7) Teach students to think like psychologists
The facts that constitute an introductory psychology course will change greatly over the years, but the tools for thinking critically and creatively about psychology will not. In a good introductory psychology course, students think to learn as they learn to think. Research shows that students who are taught in a way that emphasizes critical and creative-as well as practical-thinking not only learn to think better, but even learn the facts better (Sternberg, Torff, & Grigorenko, 1998). Students emerge from the course more knowledgeable and critical consumers of psychology with less susceptibility to the inflated and sometimes patently ridiculous claims of pop psychology.
8) Teach to diverse styles of learning and thinking
Not all students learn the same way. Some prefer auditory presentation, others, visual. Some prefer to analyze material, others to go beyond the material, and still others apply it. By teaching the material in a variety of ways, you motivate students as you help them to capitalize on their cognitive strengths and to ameliorate their cognitive weaknesses. Research shows that students learn better when you teach to their diverse styles of learning and thinking (Sternberg, 1994, 1997a, 1997c).
9) Show students how to apply what they learn to their lives
When you hear a lecture that has nothing to do with your life, chances are you tune out. So do students. By relating the material directly to their lives and showing them how they can use it, you increase their attention and improve their learning.
10) Encourage active learning and thinking
Large lecture courses can foment passive learning and thinking, as students sit quietly waiting for instructors to spoon-feed them information. Encourage active learning through in-class demonstrations, oral participation, brief writing exercises, or any other techniques you can formulate.
11) Match assessments to instruction
Encourage critical, creative, and practical thinking not only in the classroom, but in your assessments. Occasionally, teachers foster higher order thinking in the learning process, and then assess students in ways that measure little more than rote recall. Students quickly come to perceive higher order thinking as a useless and even cruel game. Equally bad is to teach for rote and then assess achievement for critical thinking. It is important that your assessments reflect what you value and implement in your teaching.
How You Communicate It
12) Have a clear vision for your course and communicate it to your students
What do you want your students to get out of your course? How do you want it to change their lives? Formulate a clear vision of your course objectives and intended outcomes and then communicate this vision so that students know explicitly both what you hope to accomplish and what you want them to accomplish.
13) Communicate your expectations clearly and early
Students early in their college careers often have only the foggiest idea of what teachers expect. Are they expected to memorize names? How about dates of studies? What level of detail in the book or lectures are they supposed to absorb? If there are essay examinations or papers, how are these products evaluated? Students always appreciate clarity regarding your expectations for them. Try to give a quiz, exam, and/or writing assignment relatively early in the semester so that students have feedback on how they are doing.
14) Teach with passion, energy, and enthusiasm
Nothing is quite so contagious as passion and enthusiasm. If you want your students to be enthusiastic about the subject matter, communicate your own enthusiasm to them. Students will enjoy your course more in all its aspects (Ceci & Williams, 1998).
15) Use lots of relevant concrete examples
Psychology encompasses so many wonderful ideas that it is easy for you to get lost in abstractions, and for students just plain to get lost. Using many relevant concrete examples to illustrate ideas helps students to remain grounded and to follow your lectures.
16) Allow students to ask questions
Allowing students to ask questions means at least two things. First, it means encouraging students not just to answer questions, but to formulate them. Second, it means setting aside the time to allow students to ask questions, even in large classes. Otherwise, the confusions of the moment are more likely to become permanent confusions in their minds.
How You Put It Together
17) Portray psychology as a unified and integrated discipline
Students can complete an introductory psychology course believing that psychology constitutes the 15 to 20 relatively distinct subdisciplines that may happen to correspond to the chapters of their text. Don't let this happen. Show them that different subdisciplines merely represent different pathways toward a common goal: the understanding of the mind and behavior in all its diversity.
18) Show students how psychological ideas evolve
Ideas in psychology evolve, and it is important for students to learn how these ideas evolve. It is for this reason that those early lectures on history are so important-not for students to learn about discarded ideas from the dusty past, but to learn how the ideas of today build on the ideas of the past, as the ideas of the future will build on the ideas of today. Show the connections between past and present ideas not just in one or two early lectures, but throughout the course.
19) Emphasize that psychological thought evolves within a sociocultural context
Psychological thought, no matter how scientific, evolves within a sociocultural context, and you need to encourage students to be both aware of and critical of the assumptions of all traditions and schools of psychological thought. The psychologies of diverse countries, such as Russia, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States, have evolved in quite different ways. Too often, we teach our own psychological tradition as though it were the only one, which of course it's not.
20) Encourage students to be sensitive to issues of human unity and diversity
Humans all have sets of values; they all think; and they all seek self-esteem. But their values, ways of thinking, and means to attain self-esteem differ widely. It is important to emphasize both the unity and diversity that characterizes all human beings.
The teaching tips in this article are all relatively easy to implement and, for the most part, are things you already know how to do. The trick is to remember to do them. All you need do is get started, and there is no time like the present. Try them, and chances are both you and your students will see a difference.
[Preparation of this article was supported in part under the Javits Act Program (grant number R206R50001), as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The article does not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.]
Recommended Readings and References
Benjamin, L. T. Jr., Daniel, R. S., & Brewer, C. L. (Eds.). (1985). Handbook for teaching
introductory psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ceci, S. J., & Williams, W. M. (1998). "How'm I doing?": Problems with student ratings of
instructors and courses. Change, 29(5), 12-23.
Chi, M. T. H., Glaser, R., & Farr, M. (Eds.). (1988). The nature of expertise. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Flores, R. L. (1997). Teaching psychology from a cross-cultural perspective. APS
Observer, 10(6), 20-22.
Galliano, G. (1997). Enhancing student learning through exemplary examples. APS
Observer, 10(4), 28-30, 37.
McKeachie, W. J. (1994). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college
and university teachers (9th ed.). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.
Sternberg, R. J. (1994). A triarchic model for teaching and assessing students in general
psychology. General Psychologist, 30(2), 42-48.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997a). Successful intelligence. New York: Plume.
Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.) (1997b). Teaching introductory psychology. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997c). Thinking styles. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997d). What does it mean to be smart? Educational Leadership, 54,
20-24.
Sternberg, R. J., & Spear-Swerling, L. (1996). Teaching for thinking. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Sternberg, R. J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. L. (1998). Teaching triarchically improves
student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 374-384.
This article first appeared in the January 1999 APS Observer.
* The chapter authors in the Teaching Introductory Psychology project (Sternberg, 1997b) are Douglas A. Bernstein, Peter Gray, Lester A. Lefton, Margaret W. Matlin, Charles G. Morris, David G. Myers, Rod Plotnik, Robert J. Sternberg, Carole E. Wade, Camille B. Wortman (with collaborator Joshua Smyth), and Philip G. Zimbardo. Commentaries are by Charles L. Brewer and Richard A. Griggs. The suggestions in this article are based on this collaborative project. I am grateful to the American Psychological Association for permission to summarize the main ideas of the book in this article.