Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

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David W. Carroll et al.


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In addition to teaching students to think critically about the data of history, instructors


can encourage critical thinking about other problematic aspects of course material:


(a) how to do history despite the problems with data, (b) how to decide when the history


of psychology begins, and (c) the problem of why we study history at all. Another


opportunity for critical thinking in the history of psychology is how to understand the


many schools and systems of psychology.


Robert Watson’s Prescriptions

Robert Watson (1967) made a contribution toward understanding schools and systems of


psychology in a classic paper on psychological prescriptions. Watson’s work influenced the


scholarship and teaching of the history of psychology and also provided a way to construct


a new, critical history of psychology (e.g., Brennan, 2003). Watson argued that psychology


is a preparadigmatic science because the competing schools and systems differ dramatically


in terms of what psychologists should study and how psychologists should conduct


research. Watson made this point forcefully by comparing and contrasting schools and


systems in terms of 18 prescriptions displayed in the table in Appendix 1 as polar adjective


with explanations. The 18 prescriptions address four aspects of a psychological system:


● Content (e.g., conscious mentalism vs. unconscious mentalism)


● Method (e.g., quantitativism vs. qualitativism)


● Philosophy (determinism vs. indeterminism), and


● Orientation (e.g., functionalism vs. structuralism).


One can characterize a school or system in terms of its positions on the 18 prescriptions.


Keniston uses Watson’s (1967) prescriptions to teach students how to thinking critically


about historical psychological perspectives. Different assignments require students to


(a) characterize the key issues addressed by systems of psychology; (b) compare and


contrast systems, (c) derive a sense of psychology’s core purpose and unity, and (d) iden-


tify students’ convictions about the subjects and methods of psychology. The prescrip-


tions provide one way to infuse critical thinking into the tapestry of a history and


systems course.


Survey. Keniston uses Watson’s (1967) prescriptions in a pretest and posttest survey. On


the survey students indicate their views on a four-point scale for each of the 18 dichoto-


mous prescriptions starting with (conscious mentalism–unconscious mentalism) and


ending with (staticism–dynamicism). At the start of the course the instructor distributes


the pretest survey to students who indicate their position on each prescription once they


understand the meaning of the terms. After the pretest, the instructor informs the class


that they will use the prescriptions to learn about course content and to compare and


contrast the schools and systems of psychology throughout the course. In other words the


prescriptions will be part and parcel of the entire course. Near the end of the semester


student complete the posttest. Use of a posttest survey provides a way to study changes in


students’ thinking over the course of the semester (Chang, Wojtanowicz, & Keniston,


2005; Vitulli, 1995).

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