TEXTS AND TEACHING

This page describes the teaching strategy that I used in all my classes as well as the books that I have co-authored to facilitate that teaching. I intend this to be of most interest to other teachers, but it is here for anyone to read. Much of the material presented here is shamelessly lifted from the introductions to the books and their support materials. The philosophy as well as the detailed mechanics owe a great deal to many people, including Josh Duntley, Matt Merrens, Mat Broderick, Gerry Tan, John Nindl and the many students who made suggestions over the years.

The Basics

Although there is more detail below, the object of the texts and the teaching strategy is to teach students to be active in using scientific psychology to critically assess assertions about behavior.

The History

The first big change in my teaching came as the result of discussion with former student, now College Professor, Josh Duntley. He was an undergraduate student in my human development course and during a long series of conversations, he and I decided that the course was driven too much by the material found in standard texts. Josh was also initially responsible for the idea of a student-centered human development course in which students did most of the talking and, as a result, did a lot of learning. He has always been unafraid to point out fluff and foolishness in seemingly scientific sources. His work on four editions of a custom-published human development reprint book, and the course in which it was used, have been formative in my thinking. My colleague Matt Merrens and I created detailed mechanics to adapt this strategy to Introductory Psychology and wrote a book for the course. Later, I wrote a similar book for life span developmental psychology with then undergraduate student Alan Morrison.

Problems with Standard Textbooks

Often, textbooks spend pages trying to explain some intricate theory, only to later state, usually in one sentence or so, that the theory has not been supported by current research. One reason for this is that standard textbooks are commercial products. Publishers are in business and in order to stay in business they need to sell books. Many publishers seem to feel that they must include as many perspectives and theories as possible in order to try to attract sales from the widest possible public. They also have to be careful not to take sides on any particular issue, lest they offend some potential purchaser. With some books, this has reached an absurd state in which viewpoints that have little or no value and that have not been supported by research are included and discussed. The texts excuse themselves by calling these viewpoints "approaches." Other fields do not do this. To make an analogy, an astronomy course would not spend time in detailed consideration of the view that the earth is the center of the solar system--the "geocentric approach" to the universe. For the past 400 years, all evidence has pointed to the contrary. The flat earth "approach" is not given much consideration either.

Books That Are Different, Really different

The books I have co-authored are much more critical about psychology than most standard texts. The books have one overarching bias: science. Scientific practice is the standard against which methods and findings are judged. Sometimes students find that the books are sarcastic about things in psychology that we consider to be muddle-headed and useless. That is what happens when a book has an attitude. Psychology, as we know it, is a relatively young science, and like any other scientific field, psychology is constantly evolving. New ideas about behavior are being formulated while old ones are discredited. New scientific strategies are devised to test new hypotheses. Our goal is to have the student view the field of psychology as it is today, not as it was years ago. We want students to be able to read the contemporary research literature and evaluate the assertions. We also want students to be critical of statements about behavior made by the media, friends, family, non-scientific psychological theorists and others. In other words, we want students to behave like scientific thinkers. We avoid the term "critical thinking" because it has become so contaminated through wide usage. Instead we can be much more specific. We want the students to think empirically and skeptically.

Students who use these books gain a valuable set of skills that can be used in the real world. They learn to ask intelligent questions when presented with findings from studies. When they discuss assertions about human behavior, they sound as if they had a college education.

Why is there a chicken on the dedication page of the book?

Both of these books have a chicken and a Latin motto on the dedication page. The motto, lightheartedly translated, can mean, "Not chicken to teach science" or "You can not teach science to chickens." Either way, it is an emblem of our dedication and determination to teach students to use scientific thinking to assess assertions about behavior. Most psychology textbooks begin with strident statements about science and research methods but they quickly abandon these principles when discussing material that could not stand the rigor of scientific questioning. Those of us familiar with standard psychology textbooks can easily imagine what would happen if students really became scientific critical thinkers and then turned their critical guns on the rest of the content of a typical psychology text. Imagine what would happen if students followed up on the references in a standard book, critically evaluating the data--if any--behind the assertions in the text. In contrast to the problems this would make for a typical course, this is exactly what we want to happen. We are not afraid of penetrating questions about issues such as internal and external validity, adequacy of controls, appropriateness of operational definitions and sample representativeness. As noted above, we are not chicken to teach science even though it turns the students into a critcal wolf-pack, itching to get their teeth into each study.

Not suprisingly, many people have asked about the breed of the chicken pictured on the books. It is a Single-comb Black Minorca, a proud line once raised by my great-grandfather, Martin Luther Shaffer.

Psychology Portrayed As Recent Research

These books contain contemporary scientific studies that have been rewritten for consumption by beginning students. Each chapter is a separate research story telling why the study was done, what was done, what was found and what the conclusions indicate about behavior. Each section is a story. People think in stories and stories are memorable. Anyone who doubts this should read a chapter--any chapter--in a standard beginning level psychology textbook--any textbook--and then try to tell the story of that chapter to someone else. This is difficult or impossible because there is no story. At best, the texts try to make a story by hitching together unrelated pieces of research in an odd patchwork. These chapters are like Frankenstein's monster--they are bits and pieces from here and there. Like the monster in the movie, they do not work, no matter how they are laced together. In contrast, the research stories in the books I have co-authored are tales that can be retold. Because they can be told, they can be remembered. I am frequently told by former students that they still remember, in detail, the contents of courses that have used these books.

There were several criteria for choosing the particular studies that are highlighted in the books. First, we wanted the articles to be quite current so that they would represent the cutting edge of research. Our own bias is toward empirical research that suggests some sort of application. While there is nothing wrong with purely theoretical research, it may not be the best vehicle for teaching lower-level students. We chose generally robust articles to try to give good models of research. We had to exclude some otherwise promising studies because the design and analysis were so complicated that we could not imagine how to incorporate it into one of our chapters. We dramatically simplified a few very complex studies, but, for some others, the difficulties overwhelmed us and we abandoned the effort.

No So-called Pedagogical Aids

These books do not contain lists of defined vocabulary terms or condensed summaries of the material at the end of the chapter. Any technical terms that are not found in a standard dictionary are defined in context in the books. Students have to go look up the others. Graphs, charts, and tables are analogous to those found in the contemporary scientific literature. The chapters look like journal articles. There are no irrelevant color pictures. These are scientific psychology books, not People magazine. It is the student’s responsibility to interpret these figures and to extract the relevant information contained within them. We believe that the so-called "pedagogical aids" found in standard books encourage students to ignore the rest of the text. It is strange that these are supposed to be learning aids when, in contrast, they encourage the student to avoid learning. In life beyond the college textbooks, students will have to look up some words and formulate their own summaries of chapters. College reading should train them to do this. Standard textbooks are utterly useless as part of this training because all the work is done for the student.

None of the material in theese books is presented in "boxes." When trying to read standard texts, I never know when I am supposed to stop reading the text and start reading those chaotic and scattered boxes. I think many students solve this problem by skipping the boxes (or by skipping the text.) They can easily skip most of the reading in standard textbooks because some nice person has written a detailed summary at the end of the chapter. In some courses, exams are little more than vocabulary tests of the words that are listed and defined in the standard text. Psychology should be more than a list of vocabulary.

The Problem We Confronted and the Solution We found

Co-author Matt Merrens and I have each been teaching Introductory Psychology for over 20 years. I have been teaching Life Span Developmental Psychology for 20 years as well. Until we started to change the teaching strategies used in class we were never fully satisfied with the courses. Prior this change, classes often seemed different for the first few days, but after a few weeks the honeymoon was over and we would begin to have the same old problems. Students were not engaged by the material and class cutting became epidemic. Students did poorly on exams. In introductory psychology the mean grade was a "D." We tried everything to remedy this situation including different textbooks, outside readings, big exams, small exams, attendance policies, group projects, demonstrations, films, in-class written feedback, and small discussion sections. We now believe that in spite of bells and whistles, we were really doing the same old thing. Whatever we tried, the students would sit passively, waiting for us to get done with the show.

We also experienced another persistent problem. Students in our upper-level classes--even those who were previously taught by us--seemed to know absolutely nothing, about Introductory Psychology.

Current Teaching Goals

I decided to move away from our past strategies for teaching psychology. I now have three primary goals for our students:

1) to be actively involved with the material in the classroom

2) to think empirically and skeptically when confronted with assertions about behavior

3) to learn basics which will be used in other psychology classes, and in professional literature

My students now meet these goals and here is how I do it:

I tell the students to know every single thing in the book. The book was written at a level of detail that makes this a reasonable assignment. I meet the class three days a week and assign a chapter for each class meeting. The majority of my students do, indeed, know the book thoroughly. Is there less material in the book than in a standard textbook? Yes, much less. Do my students learn more than in a standard course? Yes, much more. They have less reading, but they know this material, and they know it really well.

Stand And Deliver

My teaching strategy is not the usual lecture approach. Instead, I have used one of two different approaches. In the most directive of the approaches, I call on students by name to answer questions from lists of questions, called "teach outlines" that have been written for the instructor’s manual. I also ask any other related questions about the material that I think of while teaching. Sometimes many additional questions occur to me, sometimes few. Frequently one student’s answer suggests another question. Occasionally I "lecture" for a few minutes to give other examples, but I quickly return to asking questions and getting student answers. While students are permitted use notes to answer, they are not allowed to have their books open or to read from their notes. I want to know what is in their heads, not what is in their books. In a less directive approach that works well for mature students, the strategy is about the same except that I do not call students by name. Instead, I ask for volunteers to answer questions. One of the reviewers of our textbook accused me of exaggerating about my claim that large numbers of students come to my classes prepared and eager to answer at 8 AM. That person was wrong. The students are prepared and they are active. This never happened until I changed my teaching strategy.

A direct result has been a dramatic transformation in learning. Grades are much higher. Students are attentive. They talk about the material with friends and ask good questions in class as well as outside of class. For the first time in two decades of teaching, my students seem actively engaged and even excited about psychology. Maybe better than that, colleagues in my department say that they can "feel" the presence of my students when, later, they appear in upper level classes. The difference is that my students know what have been taught. My experience has been replicated by several colleagues at my institution and at two other universities where the introductory book has been used for several years in draft form. My goals of active learning, critical thinking and detailed learning of concepts have been fulfilled.

The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Psychology by Asking Questions--the directive approach

On the first day of class, each student is issued a 6 X 8 index card, folded lengthwise, and I pass around a felt marker so that they can make a tent sign showing their last name. They must bring this every day and put it on the desk in front of them. In this way, they are no longer anonymous. I carry spare cards and a marker every day because signs get lost.

I teach in a large theatre and I want my 100 or so students to sit near the front where I can see them and where others can hear them when they answer questions. I designate an artificial "back row" in the theatre and tell them that for every day they sit behind that designated row, 1% will be deducted from their final grade. Starting at the second class meeting, all students sit near the front and I have never had to deduct points for seating.

On the first day of class I ask the students to print their last and first name on a 3 x 5 index card along with the correct pronunciation of their name if necessary. I collect these cards and use them for the remainder of the course. In class, I ask a question then pick a card from the card deck and call the name of the student on the card to answer the question. I score their answer, on the spot, as correct or incorrect by marking a plus or minus on the card. If a student is absent when called, the score is a minus. Students who do not know the answers to questions are instructed to say, "I don’t know." I respond professionally and neutrally, calling on someone else and marking the card with a minus. I shuffle the deck at intervals. While choosing names is effectively random, I occasionally stack the deck to keep the number of asked questions approximately the same for all students. At the end of the semester, this participation score is calculated as a percent correct and counts 15% of the student’s final grade. I believe that social pressure to answer correctly is a more important motivator than the 15%, but I have no good evidence for this belief. In a typical class meeting, I will call on between 30 and 60 students.

Often I begin the class by asking a student to identify the research method and to explain why they have chosen that particular method to be the answer. I give them a simplified list from which to choose that includes: Experiment, Quasi-experiment, Correlational study, Longitudinal study, Cross-sectional study, Survey, Interview, Case study, and Naturalistic observation.

The notes that I call the "Teach Outlines" are the questions--found in the instructor’s manual--that I use as a basis in questioning the students. Any instructor who wants to use this strategy will find that the Teach Outlines will be sufficient to get started. Because the students are genuinely engaged and active, it is not always possible or desirable to plan to strictly follow the Teach Outline. In a way, this is the fun and the challenge for the instructor. Most days I do not get through the entire outline, so I end up skipping questions in order to ask the most important questions before the class is over. I often run out of time in class because the students ask me quite a number of questions. When questioning is the order of the day, they feel free to engage me.

The teach outlines consist of lists of questions each followed by a summary of the answer according to the book. Students will often give correct answers that are not in the book. I give those credit, and ask the question again to someone else. Powerpoint presentations of the figures in the text can easily be made from a clean copy of the text. Sometimes I use the presentation of the figures and tables as questions ("Can you interpret these data?") and sometimes I put them up on the big screen after a student has described the findings, to reinforce the answer. The teach outlines also contain questions--indicated by parentheses--that ask about material not found in the book. The questions are things students should be able to figure out from the past or current reading.

For particularly difficult questions, I ask the question then--rather than calling a name--I ask for volunteers to answer. I usually get a forest of hands when I do this, even though I do not give any course credit for volunteer answers when using the directive strategy. They know the material and they like to show what they know. This strategy permits me to ask even the most detailed, difficult or speculative questions.

A Less Directive Approach to Teaching Psychology by Asking Questions

I have found that sometimes more mature students do not need to be asked quesitons by name. About the only difference between the description above and the tactics I use in teaching more mature students is that in the less directive approach I ask the questions and wait for volunteers to answer. I mark successful participants on a copy of the attendance sheet. After class I transfer each student's frequency of participation for that class onto the course spreadsheet. In order to avoid a highly competitive atmosphere in the classroom, for calculating final participation grades I award 100% of the points available for participation to students who achieve the class mean or above. Theoretically, if all the scores in the class were tightly clustered around the mean, all students could get nearly 100% for participation. The less-directive approach works well with class sizes up to about 60 students and it is my responsibility to ensure that individual volunteers are given a chance to answer at about equal frequencies. I have been doing this with some classes for years. Surprisingly, one or two students usually choose to say little or nothing and, in so doing, forgo the 20% of their grade that participation can give them.

The Primary Pitfall

As an experienced instructor the most difficult part of the change has been to lecture much less and ask more questions. Many things that I might tell them can, instead, be asked.

I would be happy to share experiences of this type of teaching with anyone who is interested. I can be reached at:

Lary Shaffer: Email: lawrence.shaffer@plattsburgh.edu

The complete course polices for these courses can be found by clicking on the appropriate box on my homepage.