Abstract
This chapter, written primarily as a letter to colleagues, grapples with one psychology instructor’s attempts to understand why incorporating a civically engaged curriculum into an introductory psychology course initially appeared like an easy and intuitively obvious endeavor, but was ultimately very difficult to achieve in a way that felt meaningful and authentic. I begin by reflecting on my previous attempts to bring “the civic” into psychology, as well as on students’ struggles to build that critical bridge between the psychological concepts discussed in class and the community-based endeavors grounding the civic engagement component of the course. Following, I propose a curricular revision, which draws on narrative methodologies to assist students in using core psychological concepts as a vehicle for thinking about persons-in-context and working towards social change. Key features of this curricular revision include writing one’s life story, interviewing an activist or community leader, and attempting to understand this activist’s commitments via core psychological concepts such as “generativity,” “identity,” “observational learning,” and “prejudice.” Ultimately, I call for further reflection on what it means to “do civic engagement” both within our particular disciplines and within the context of teaching and learning at a community college.
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- 1.
The Opening Doors Learning Communities provides first semester students with an opportunity to take two or three “linked classes.” Faculty teaching in links together often share curriculum and assignments and work collaboratively to help students persist through their first semester in college. The learning community that I discuss within this current chapter was developed in collaboration with George Hill, who shares his perspective in another chapter in this volume.
- 2.
It is important to point out that a great deal of the “micro” understandings about individual persons in psychology come from large sample sizes that never really look that closely at the individual person. This has been a serious critique of modern psychology (Billig, 1994; Carlson, 1984; McAdams, 1997, 2008; Ouellette, 2003).
- 3.
This person would not necessarily have to identify as an “activist” or “community leader” in order to be interviewed.
- 4.
Students would be permitted to choose the excerpts of the interview that they transcribe and I would be available to help them figure out which parts of the interview might provide the most valuable data for analysis.
- 5.
All specific references to community based and/or activist endeavors have been added in to suit the purpose of this assignment and to link activists’ narratives with their larger social commitments.
- 6.
In fact, many colleges break this 12 week course into two full semesters, arguing that there is simply “too much to cover” to teach this class in one semester.
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VanOra, J. (2016). What Does This Have to Do with Psychology?: Challenges and Possibilities of Civic Engagement in Introduction to Psychology. In: Schnee, E., Better, A., Clark Cummings, M. (eds) Civic Engagement Pedagogy in the Community College: Theory and Practice. Education, Equity, Economy, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22945-4_6
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