Emebedding Conceptual and Historical issues in the Psychology curriculum

Opportunity for a possible paper, just about to send an abstract off for this, after chance to review and revise it for a special issue of of History and Philosophy of Psychology, coming out of some workshops on teaching CHiP Dai and I have contributed to over the last two years.

As it seems to help my process of writing I intend to blog about the paper as I write it.

Here is the first draft of the abstract.

For over a decade the CHiPs coverage at the University of Gloucestershire was isolated in three stand alone modules. The optional year two module recruited poorly, losing out to traditional applied modules, and although the compulsory year three module always had enthusiastic support from a minority of students, module evaluations revealed a group of students who felt that the coverage came too late in the degree. Spurred by University wide changes following the new fees regime in England the whole degree was redesigned for the 2012 academic year. A commitment to teach CHiPs across the whole of the first year provision was established. Integrating conceptual and historical issues into first term research methods teaching, in particular, has led to the opportunity to consider how psychological knowledge production works, rather than teaching research methods as a set of procedures to follow. In addition combining this with material on critical thinking has enabled us to move beyond seeing critical thinking as merely the application of scientific methods to everyday life and towards helping our students be critical about the ways that psychology operates in society. Initial student evaluation of this material has been much more positive than for the stand alone modules.

Any comments welcome. The abstract needs to be submitted by 30 September.