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Skills for Undergraduate Psychology Majors: Because You Need It, Do We Measure It?
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by: R. Eric Landrum, PhD, Boise State University (ID)
Categories: Career Preparation
Educators have long been interested in
knowing what their students know,
and what they can do. In the United
States, collegiate level grading began in 1783
at Yale University using the terms (from best
to worst) optime, second optime, inferiores,
and pejores. Based on this 4-point grading
scale, grade point averages could now be
calculated (Milton, Pollio, & Eison, 1986).
Educators have been quantifying learning
outcomes ever since. In my opinion, the
bulk of our collective efforts has been to
measure what our students know. My intention
here is to make the point to students,
and those who advise them, that psychology
educators also need to acquire information
from our students about what our students
can do. Of course knowledge is important,
but skill development is also important.
The theme of skill development has been frequently mentioned in previous issues
of Eye on Psi Chi (e.g., Appleby, 2000;
Beins, 2003). When McGovern, Furumoto,
Halpern, Kimble, and McKeachie (1991)
wrote about the common goals that undergraduate
education in psychology should
aspire to, notice the emphasis on skills:
knowledge base, thinking skills, language
skills, information gathering and synthesis
skills, research methods and statistics skills,
interpersonal skills, history of psychology,
and ethics and values (for more on the
assessment of skills, see Graham (1998)
and Halpern (1988)). You can see that the
above-listed skills are the direct precursors
to the current APA Guidelines for the
Undergraduate Psychology Major (American
Psychological Association, 2007). Each of
the 10 undergraduate Guidelines is presented
in the left column of Table 1.
Although psychology educators have
been talking about skills for some time,
more recent efforts have been more detailoriented
about the assessment of skills
and abilities. For example, Kruger and
Zechmeister (2001) developed a skillsexperience
inventory that students might
use to gauge their own progress. Fried
and Johanson (2003) asked psychology
alumni to self-assess their own level of skill
development, and link these skill levels
to specific courses in their undergraduate
curriculum. Gaither and Butler (2005) asked
general psychology students what skills they
expected psychology majors to gain, and
the results matched well with the Guidelines
(APA, 2007).
But what about the actual measurement
(i.e., assessment) of student skills? One
could make the argument that that is what
grades do; however, individual grades tend
to represent the cumulative knowledge
and skills obtained in a particular course,
and a student’s GPA represents this same
accumulation over multiple courses. Grades
are not very indicative of specifi c skills and
abilities, including those listed in the left side
of the table. Scoring well on content-based
tests is not the same as having the ability to
apply skills in real-world situations. Say for
example that you received an “A†in your
English Composition course. Th is grade
is not necessarily an indicator of your skill
in writing in APA format, nor even more
broadly the communication skills desired
in Goal #7 (see Table 1). Luckily, some
psychology educators have begun work on
the development of assessment plans and rubrics for understanding psychology major
skills, such as scientifi c inquiry (Halonen,
et al., 2003) and critical thinking (Lawson,
1999). By carefully defi ning the skill and
developing a grading rubric for that skill,
this should facilitate the development
of assessment techniques that will allow
psychology educators to actually measure a
student’s skill in a particular area.
On the whole, developing assessments
with the goal of measuring the level of skill
attainment is extremely challenging. In
Table 1, I have attempted to summarize the
current “state of affairs†with regard to actual
measures of the 10 Guidelines. Please note
that there is some subjectivity in the creation
of such a resource, and some may question
the inclusion of a particular instrument,
while others may lament my exclusion of
some fine instruments. However it is viewed,
I believe Table 1 is instructive and tells an
important story about where our strengths
and weaknesses lie in psychology education.
In my estimation, we currently have
multiple measures available to us to measure
goals such as knowledge base in psychology
(#1), critical thinking (#3), information and
technological literacy (#6), communication
skills (#7), sociocultural and international
awareness (#8), and personal development
(#9). But students, think about this – how
many of these assessments listed in the right
side of Table 1 have you actually completed?
Although psychology educators have some
confi dence that we help students develop
these skills, the question becomes this—how
do we know the level of competency with
which our students leave the undergraduate
psychology major? My best guess is that
rarely do we have evidence that students
have achieved the skills we hope we are
imparting. Furthermore, look at the gaps
in the table! To my knowledge, there are
not psychometrically sound, national
assessments available to help us measure
a student’s skills in the areas of research
methods in psychology (#2), application of
psychology (#4), values in psychology (#5),
or career planning and development (#10).
What’s the moral to this story? If psychology
educators want to be serious about
imparting students with knowledge, skills,
and abilities, we need to do a better job
measuring students’ skill levels. Not only
do we need measures in some of the areas
of the Guidelines (APA, 2007), but ideally
we would have multiple measures available
with established reliability and validity.
Students, these goals are important to you,
too. Employers oft en lament that new graduates
are not prepared for the professional
world (for an excellent resource on transitions
from college to career, see Hettich &
Helkowski, 2005). About 1/3 of employers
surveyed recently by the Association of
American Colleges and Universities (2008)
indicated that recent college graduates
lacked the knowledge and skills needed
to succeed in entry-level positions (see,
employers emphasize knowledge and skills).
When employers were asked specifi cally
what recent college graduates lacked, the
following percentages of employers reported
these problems: global knowledge (46%),
self-direction (42%), writing skills (37%),
critical thinking skills (31%), adaptability
(30%), and self-knowledge (26%). The good
news is that the APA Guidelines overlap
nicely with what employers want; the bad
news is that employers appear dissatisfi ed
with the preparation with recent graduates—
some students are dissatisfi ed too (see the
quarterlife crisis; Robbins & Wilner, 2001).
For students, assessment in these areas is
critical, so that you can enter the world of
work confi dent that you have the knowledge
and skills to succeed. But if we don’t measure
that knowledge and skill, how will you know?
This is a “call-to-arms†to both faculty
and students who care about undergraduate
psychology education. Students (and this
may seem a bit counterintuitive to you), call
for more assessment and more systematic
measurement of what you know AND what
you can do. Your faculty members can use
this information to improve instruction and
improve opportunities provided to students.
Faculty, meet the challenge. Enormous
resources are invested in undergraduate
psychology education. I do not believe it is
too much to ask to document the knowledge
and skills that we say we value. Greater use
of existing assessments should occur, as well
as the development of new measures, especially
in those areas where none currently
exist. Development of new measures should
include multi-institutional collaborations
and adhere to the best practices to assure
reliability and validity—in fact, current
Psi Chi mechanisms (research awards and
research grants) could go a long way in aiding
the development of assessment practices
that capture skills. If we want to continue
to meet the needs of our students and
society as a whole, we must move forward to
develop and use measures of student skills.
References
American Psychological Association. (2007). APA guidelines for
the undergraduate psychology major. Washington, DC: Author.
Retrieved December 3, 2009, from www.apa.org/ed/resources.html
Appleby, D. (2000, Spring). Job skills valued by employers who
interview psychology majors. Eye on Psi Chi, 4(3), 17.
Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2008). How should
college assess and improve student learning? Employers’ views
on the accountability challenge: A survey of employers conducted
on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Washington, DC: Author. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service
No. ED 499718)
Beins, B. (2003, Spring). What should psychology majors know and
what should they be able to do? Eye on Psi Chi, 7(3), 38-39.
Fried, C. B., & Johanson, J. C. (2003). Curriculum review using a
knowledge, skills, and abilities-based assessment of alumni.
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Gaither, G., & Butler, D. (2005). Skill development in the psychology
major: What do undergraduate students expect? College Student
Journal, 39, 540-552.
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major: An assessment-as-learning framework. Current Directions
in Psychological Science, 7, 165-170.
Halonen, J. S., Bosack, T., Clay, S., McCarthy, M., Dunn, D. S., Hill, G. W., IV,
McEntarffer, R., Mehrotra, C., Nesmith, R., Weaver, K. A., & Whitlock, K.
(2003). A rubric for learning, teaching, and assessing scientifi c inquiry
in psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 30, 196-208.
Halpern, D. F. (1988). Assessing student outcomes for psychology
majors. Teaching of Psychology, 15, 181-186.
Hettich, P. I., & Helkowski, C. (2005). Connect college to career: A
student’s guide to work and life transitions. Belmont, CA: Thomson/
Wadsworth.
Kruger, D. J., & Zechmeister, E. B. (2001). A skills-experience inventory
for the undergraduate psychology major. Teaching of Psychology,
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Lawson, T. J. (1999). Assessing psychological critical thinking as a
learning outcome for psychology majors. Teaching of Psychology,
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Milton, O., Pollio, H. R., & Eison, J. A. (1986). Making sense of college
grades. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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Robbins, A., & Wilner, A. (2001). Quarterlife crisis. New York, NY:
Penguin Press.
R. Eric Landrum,
PhD, is a professor of psychology at Boise State University (ID). He
received his PhD in cognitive psychology (with an emphasis in quantitative
methodology) from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in 1989. He currently
serves as the Psi Chi Vice-President of the Rocky Mountain region (2009-11), and
is a fellow of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (APA Division 2),
currently serving as secretary (2009-11). His research interests center on the
study of educational issues, identifying those conditions that best facilitate
student success (broadly defined). He has over 225 professional presentations at
conferences and published over 20 books or book chapters, and has published over
65 professional articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. He is lead author
(with Steve Davis) of The Psychology Major: Career Options and Strategies for
Success (4th ed., 2010, Prentice Hall). With APA Books, he has authored
Undergraduate Writing in Psychology: Learning to Tell the Scientific Story
(2008) and Finding A Job With a Psychology BachelorÕs Degree: Expert Advice for
Launching Your Career (2009). He has worked with over 240 undergraduate research
assistants and in 17+ years at Boise State, he has taught over 11,000 students!