psychology_Sons_(2003)

Teaching 469

and different types of students and from the expansion of sci-
entific programs at the graduate level that influenced teachers
at the undergraduate level. Whether one looks at catalogs
from 1900 or more recently, a common denominator is that
new faculty, after a period of apprenticeship at an institution,
create new courses that get absorbed into a department’s cur-
riculum. For example, F. H. Sanford and Fleishman (1950)
found 261 different course titles in their study. Lux and Daniel
(1978) found 1,356 different course titles and concluded:
“Thus, we have a ‘course title inflation’ of 519%, or about
19% per year on the average, from 1947 to 1975” (p. 178). An
expanded breadth of psychology course titles accompanied
expansion in American higher education during this time.
Nevertheless, a parallel conservative force operates on the
curriculum from inside the institution as well. Rudolph (1977)
reminded us of “the academic truism that changing a curricu-
lum is harder than moving the graveyard” (p. 3). As a histo-
rian, he knew that such resistance is a complex interaction of
internal (departmental faculty and institutional priorities) and
external forces (disciplinary groups and community/public
constituencies). For psychology, Perlman and McCann
(1999a) were led to conclude:

Many frequently offered courses have been found for decades

and 13 such courses first listed by Henry (1938) are in the pre-

sent Top 30. Some courses are slowly being replaced. Thus, the

curriculum reflects both continuity and slow change, perhaps

due to the time it takes for theory, research, and discourse to de-

fine new subdiscipline areas or perhaps due to department inertia

and resistance to modifying the curriculum. (p. 181)

In the next section, we focus on the concepts of conti-
nuity and change in the curriculum, but with an eye to the
boundary-setting agendas of disciplinary groups.

The Discipline: Recommendations from the Experts

Discipline-based curricula are a social construction developed by

academics. Over time, knowledge has been organized into key

terms, concepts, models, and modes of inquiry. Academics add

to and test these knowledge constructs using their disciplinary

associations as means of verbal and written communication. Cur-

ricular change is conditioned by the role of the disciplines in con-

serving and transmitting their organization and representation of

what is worth knowing, why, and how. (Ratcliff, 1997, p. 15)

In this section, we review various statements made by psy-
chologists after World War II about what was “worth know-
ing, why, and how” in the study of undergraduate psychology.
Such statements carried added weight by virtue of discipli-
nary association (APA) or sponsorship in process (national
conferences and studies) and outcome (publication in jour-

nals such as theAmerican Psychologist). When departmental

psychologists engaged in voluntary or required curriculum

review projects, they looked to these reports for guidance

(Korn, Sweetman, & Nodine, 1996).

At the 14th meeting of the American Psychological Asso-

ciation, E. C. Sanford (1906) offered a “sketch of a begin-

ner’s course in psychology.” He suggested that we first build

on the knowledge that students bring with them into this

course; second, that we offer a wide base of psychological

facts; third, “a genuine interest in science for its own sake is

a late development in knowledge of any kind” (p. 59). He

then suggested seven broad topics and an organizational se-

quence within which to teach them: Learning and Acquisi-

tion; Truth and Error; Emotion; Personality and Character;

Facts of the Interdependence of Mind and Body; Psychogen-

esis; and Systematic Psychology (pp. 59–60). In 1908, the

APA appointed the Committee on Methods of Teaching Psy-

chology, which decided to inventory goals and teaching prac-

tices for the elementary course (Goodwin, 1992).

Synthesizing the responses from 32 universities with

laboratories, E. C. Sanford (1910) reported that institutions

were teaching the first course in sections of 200, 300, and

400 students; Whipple (1910) reported a mean enrollment of

107 students, according to his 100 normal school respon-

dents. In institutions with laboratories, Sanford reported that

25% of the instructors saw the course as a gateway to the

study of philosophy; more than 50% wanted students to study

science for its own sake and also to appreciate the concrete

applications of psychology to life. Calkins (1910) summa-

rized the responses she received from 47 institutions with no

laboratories in this way:

First,teach psychology primarily as you would if it were an end

in itself.Second,eschew altogether the method of recitation;

lecture in order to sum up and to illustrate different topics of

study, but lecture sparingly; and cultivate constructive discussion.

Third,bar out the possibility of memorizing text-books by requir-

ing students to precede text-book study by the solution of con-

crete problems.Finally,do not tolerate inexact thinking. (p. 53)

Seashore’s (1910) summary included three aims: teach psy-

chology (i.e., not philosophy) as a science with incidental

treatment of its application; train students in observation and

the explanation of mental facts; offer a balanced survey of all

topics that psychologists study with an in-depth examination

of a few. He urged that the elementary course be taught to

sophomores in a two-semester sequence, preferably preceded

by a course in animal biology. More than for any other disci-

pline of that day, the teacher of psychology should have an ex-

ceptionally thorough preparation (because of the breadth of

topics), be one of the most mature members of the department