Gurung, R. A. R., Enns, C., Cacioppo, J. T., Hackathorn, J., Frantz, S., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112–124.
This article proposes a new model to guide content coverage for teaching introductory psychology that also includes experiential or laboratory components. The authors represent a working group appointed by the APA’s Board of Educational Affairs from 5 different higher education institutions in the USA. They advocate for greater commonality and assessment given the importance of the Intro Psych course (13,000 instructors teach the course in US colleges and universities with an estimated 1.2 to 1.6 million students). They propose that the content integrates a) scientific foundations, b) 5 major domains of knowledge, and c) cross-cutting themes relevant to all domains. Suggestions are provided for the laboratory components, e.g., a two-class period multidimensional scaling activity (McConnell & Marton, 2013) and lab software projects that allow for virtual experiments using the APA Online Psychology Lab, a free resource available for instructors and their students (http://opl.apa.org/). They further advocate for textbook publishers to use the model, national assessment standards and guidelines as well as training resources for instructors. The authors claim the model has considerable flexibility and allows for academic freedom.