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This study is an empirical analysis of the field’s current state in Argentinian universities. Bibliometric parameters were used to retrieve the total listed texts (N = 797) of eight undergraduate history courses’ syllabi from Argentina’s most populated public university psychology programs. Then, professors in charge of the selected courses (N = 7) were interviewed regarding the structure, procedure, and instructional strategies of their courses. Results showed predominance of works produced by Argentinian scholars and secondary sources. Syllabi showed limited incorporation of primary sources, recent research papers, and certain psychological schools. The pervasive presence of infrastructural constraints and lecture-based instruction are seen as limitations that should be collectively debated and addressed by courses’ faculty. Fil: Fierro, Catriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina Fil: Ostrovsky, Ana Elisa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina Fil: Di Doménico, Maria Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina

Using a surplus of older laboratory instruments, 48 students in a learning and behavior course completed an assignment designed to provide an introduction to the history and use of some instruments in psychology. Students worked in pairs, were assigned one instrument, and created labels in which they identified several keys characteristics of an instrument. Assessments indicated that students learned from and also enjoyed this assignment. Sixteen of the 48 students presented and demonstrated each instrument to 19 students enrolled in a history and systems class. Pre- and posttest assessments in the history and systems class indicated significant increases in knowledge about these instruments. This is a simple, versatile activity than can be used in a variety of psychology courses.

This article is concerned with the recent debate about the identity of psychology’s lost boy—Little Albert, the infant subject in Watson and Rayner’s classic experiment on fear conditioning. For decades, psychologists and psychology students have been intrigued by the mystery of Albert’s fate. Now two evidentiary-based solutions to this mystery have been proposed. Given the present absence of coverage in introductory textbooks, the purpose of this article is to provide a cornerstone resource for teachers to use as an advance organizer to the literature on this debate. Synopses of the search and resulting evidence for each candidate are provided. A summative comparison of the evidence indicates that Albert Barger is likely Little Albert and that Douglas Merritte is not.

Inaccuracies, especially concerning the stimulus generalization findings, in textbook descriptions of the Little Albert study have been well documented since the 1970s. However, there has not been a systematic examination of introductory psychology textbooks since the 1980s to determine whether such inaccuracies still persist. This study filled this gap by examining 23 current introductory texts for accuracy in their coverage of the Little Albert story. In addition, it checked for coverage of recent unsettled issues in the story—the claimed identification of Albert, discovery of his neurological impairment, and early death at 6 years of age. Inaccuracies, especially concerning generalization, are still present in some texts, and coverage of recent developments is rather limited. Resource information for remediation is provided.

The article describes an innovative technique for teaching the History of Psychology (HoP) using the story of Victor the “Wild Boy” of Aveyron. Students were given both a traditional history textbook and assignments, along with a novel on the life of Victor and a themed writing assignment. The goal was to elicit connections between Victor’s story and the HoP to increase enthusiasm and engagement in the material. Pre- and postcourse assessments were collected and compared to a senior seminar. Results indicated that students in HoP had higher ratings of overall knowledge and enthusiasm than seminar students. In particular, the Victor reading and assignment were positively evaluated. Students were able to connect the story of Victor to a wide range of people and ideas in the HoP. Using Victor’s story as a teaching tool was effective and engaging in this challenging course.

Gaining a perspective on the evolution of psychological concepts can show students the power of theory and societal perspective in shaping scientific ideas across time. In this article, the author uses two constructs, the broad concept of intelligence and the narrow concept of combat stress reaction, to illustrate how psychologists have grappled with these ideas over the past century. These examples can provide a model for using the history of psychology to explain how ideas have taken their shape. These illustrations also show the difficulty in developing ideas that are scientifically useful and that periodic changes in the conceptualization of ideas are a normal feature of a dynamic discipline.

This article describes an assignment in a History of Psychology course used to enhance student retention of material and increase student interest and discussion of the long-standing debate between...

Wayne Viney is Professor of Psychology and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the history of psychology. He is also inaugurating a new course, The Development of Scientific Thought, for the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State. Earlier in his career, he served as Head of the Department of Psychology, Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, and Director of the University Core Curriculum in the Biological Sciences. Viney was elected President of Division 26 (History of Psychology) and of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association. He has been the recipient of 15 teaching awards at Colorado State University. In 1998, he served as a G. Stanley Hall lecturer for the American Psychological Association. He is coauthor with D. Brett King of A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context. He is also coauthor with Michael and Marilyn Wertheimer of a major bibliography entitled History of Psychology: A Guide to Information Sources. The focus of Viney's historical research has been the psychology and philosophy of William James as well as the life and work of the American humanitarian reformer, Dorothea Lynde Dix. Alexandra Rutherford is Assistant Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she is a faculty member in the History and Theory of Psychology Graduate Program. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of psychology and undergraduate courses in abnormal psychology and personality psychology. She supervises both undergraduate and graduate students in historical and theoretical research projects and serves as the assistant editor of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. She also edits the Heritage Column for The Feminist Psychologist, the newsletter of the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35 of the American Psychological Association). She has developed a Heritage Web site for Division 35 that is devoted to documenting the role of women in the history of psychology and promoting feminist approaches to writing, teaching, and understanding psychology's history ( www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/ ). Her primary research areas are the history of B. F. Skinner's system in science and culture and the history of women and feminism in psychology. In 2001 she received the Division 26 (History of Psychology) Early Career Award for scholarship in the history of psychology. She is also a clinical psychologist in private practice.

In this article, I present dialectical thinking as a useful tool in teaching psychology. The basic notion of dialectical thinking is that ideas evolve in a cycle, by which the statement of an idea—the thesis—is followed by the statement of a seemingly contrary or contradictory idea—the antithesis—that is in turn followed by a synthesis that incorporates the best elements of both of the original ideas. I also contrast the dialectical model for teaching about the history of psychology with the more traditional model.

C. James Goodwin (CJG) is Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Wheeling Jesuit University (Wheeling, WV). He has published research on human memory processes, the history of psychology, and the teaching of psychology. He has written Research in Psychology: Methods and Design (Wiley, 1995) and is currently completing A History of Modem Psychology (Wiley, in press). Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. (LTB) holds a chair in Distinguished Teaching at Texas A & M University (College Station, TX) where he teaches courses in general psychology, history of psychology, and a graduate course on the teaching of psychology. His research interests are in the history of psychology, especially the history of American-applied psychology. Currently, he is working on a book on the history of psychology in American business. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the American Psychological Foundation and several teaching awards from his university.

A lesbian assistant professor of counseling psychology disclosed her sexual orientation during lectures to 2 sections of an undergraduate course and did not disclose in 2 comparable sections of the same course. Group differences in means and variances of teaching evaluations were examined for possible student bias. No evidence of sexual orientation bias was found.

Students in a history of psychology course participated in a classroom exercise designed to encourage active learning while minimizing the importance of a testing-lecture format. Teams of students received an introductory psychology text from a different decade spanning the 1880s to 1970s. They also each received a 1990s introductory psychology text. Each team assumed responsibility for two class presentations in which they compared and contrasted the historical text with the contemporary text. Students' evaluations of the exercise suggested that it facilitated their overall understanding of the history of psychology and enhanced their abilities to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information pertaining to psychology's development as a scientific discipline.

The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to stimulate interest in and promote scholarly activity about teaching history of psychology. We organized 56 articles into three categories: projects, perspectives, and evaluations. This literature on teaching history of psychology is a source of valuable reference material for teachers and scholars. The most glaring need is for thorough evaluative research.

There is great recent concern with the “value added” concept in assessing quality of instruction. Although it is relatively easy to measure some aspects of learning, more general skills and attitudes are harder to assess. In order to measure some of these less accessible changes, students in three history of psychology classes were given a “semiprojective” pretest and posttest. Over the term, student responses increased in level of abstraction, concentrating more on philosophical and general methodological issues and less on specific methodology and empirical findings. Our results suggest that students change their attitudes about what course material is important without being taught specifically to attend to broader issues and that these changes can be measured.

We conducted a survey of the history of psychology course and received 357 undergraduate syllabi. Despite wide variation in the syllabi, several trends emerged. For instance, most instructors depend heavily on textbooks to organize their courses, and three textbooks accounted for more than 60% of book choices. Newer areas of historical interest did not appear in the course syllabi to any substantial degree.

If psychology is to accept responsibility for its own historiography, then it must instill within its students an interest in and love for history. We provide an argument for this assertion and describe a pedagogical assignment designed to achieve these objectives.

Many psychology students initially have difficulty with the philosophical character of the typical history of psychology course. One way to introduce students to psychology's philosophical roots is to survey their assumptions on the nature of mind, emotion, and behavior. This article describes and gives examples of a 50-item Likert-scale questionnaire concerning the positions of many philosophers, biologists, and psychologists that are typically covered in the class. This article also presents data from three history of psychology classes and suggestions for using the measure as a teaching tool.

Teachers of courses in the history of psychology sometimes assign term papers requiring the treatment of a single major figure in the discipline. One instructive conceptual framework for writing such “great person” essays is to interpret a psychobgist's life and work according to the typical profile of an eminent scientist. This profile is provided by empirical research in the metasciences, especially the psychology of science. A sample handout suggests some of the questions that students can address when evaluating whether an eminent psychologist fits the generic pattern.

This article offers five pedagogical strategies for a history of psychology course to help students begin to discover their disciplinary worldviews or philosophies of psychology. Students write short, in-class, contemplative essays (microthemes) on polarities of psychology (e.g., empiricism vs. rationalism). The instructor presents selected student writing samples, peers debate their positions, and students respond to their peers' microthemes. Finally, in a detailed critical analysis assignment, students intensively reexamine selected microtheme polarities.

Historical awareness of psychology majors and faculty members was assessed using a name recognition questionnaire, which included the names of 53 eminent contributors in the history of psychology. Before taking a course in the history of psychology, students showed a low level of name recognition, which was markedly inferior to that of faculty members. It appears that, without explicit instruction, students acquire little knowledge of the history of their discipline.

This teaching activity attempts to expand the range of contributions usually covered in a history of psychology course by incorporating the social custom of toasting.

The case study method, as used in law, business, and religion, is proposed as a teaching method in the history of psychology.

This instructor has developed a course using art and music to develop an understanding of the history of psychology.

Many teachers of the history of psychology course make women invisible, despite women's participation in and contribution to the discipline. The limited coverage of women in textbooks and the tendency to teach the course as history of ideas contribute to this neglect. This article argues for the inclusion of the experience of psychologists of both genders in the history course and provides suggestions for ways of integrating material about women.

Two History of Psychology classes were taught utilizing more than 1,000 slides illustrating biographies, concepts, and theories. The students were informed that the slides were ancillary and that they would not be held responsible for them. An unannounced Slide Recognition Test, given at the time of the final exam (but not counted toward any grade) was significantly correlated with all examinations given throughout the course.