Students of psychology often have the misconception that psychology is not a science. My approach to teaching is to use the scientific method to help students to become more engaged with the psychological concepts we learn in class and then to apply these concepts outside of class. Engaged learning involves the active participation in the learning process by the teacher, who prepares lectures and assignments that encourage analysis and application of learning, and the student, who prepares by reading the textbook and generating questions before class. Utilizing technology as a tool for creating the appropriate atmosphere for engaged teaching is an important component in my teaching. For example, Blackboard can be used to create pre-class open book quizzes to encourage students to complete readings beforehand while also allowing formative assessment of student’s learning that can be used to adapt teaching. Engaged learning begins on the first day of class, when I will incorporate student feedback on guidelines and expectations for the class. It continues by the use of activities that break up the necessary lecture components so that students remain engaged throughout the entire class period. Below I discuss how I have used the scientific method to stimulate engaged learning.


First, I believe that it is essential to stimulate critical thinking. One of the challenges to teaching psychology is that students often come to class with folk psychology, or preconceived ideas about psychological concepts. Thus, one goal in my teaching is to expel these beliefs in favor of critical thinking. One way in which I have accomplished this goal in my own teaching is by exposing the unfounded beliefs about psychology that we are prevalent in the media and entertainment industries. For example, in a guest lecture I taught at Elon University in a Biological Basis of Behavior class I brought in movie clips about memory loss and asked students to complete a one minute thought paper about their preconceived ideas about amnesia. We then watched a video clip about a real amnesic patient and students discussed in small groups the real impairments from neuropsychological evidence. Finally we used these activities to stimulate a class discussion on the different types of memory.


Second, after critical thinking has been stimulated it is important to teach students the scientific method in action. For example, as a teaching assistant for Cognitive Psychology (PSY 92) I taught a section emphasizing the scientific method in creating and designing a potential research project, which culminated in a poster session in which students proposed their own research study at the end of the course. External poster graders consisting of post-doctorate and graduate students commented that the potential projects presented were equivalent to the standard expected in published data.


Third, with these first two aspects firmly established students must learn to think critically about empirical papers by effectively communicating these ideas. For example, as a teaching assistant for Research Methods I guest lectured on the American Psychological Association (APA) style of writing and I provided students with extensive feedback on a research paper using the track changes option in Microsoft Word. Students then had the opportunity to use these comments to improve their writing on a second research paper. Feedback from students about the course suggested that this was “very helpful” and “surprisingly very beneficial in helping [me] to read through psychology papers better” and “how to correctly write a scientific research paper.”


The success of accomplishing these overarching themes in my teaching also extends to my experience mentoring undergraduate students in the laboratory. For example, I have mentored undergraduate students participating in the Vertical Integration Program (VIP) at Duke University, and this opportunity resulted in an undergraduate senior thesis for two of my students. Furthermore, I have also motivated undergraduate students to attain authorship on posters that were presented at a regional conference.