Comments Regarding Material Covered in College Psychology Courses
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Comments Regarding Material Covered in College Psychology Courses
NO, the college Psych info is WAY WAY WAY less focused than AP. AP is harder and more intense.
Janet Smith
Jim,
I am a college teacher of Introductory Psychology turned high school AP Psychology teacher (one semester class)
this year. I won’t start teaching until January, but I can tell you that I find it very different.
The scope of Introductory Psychology in college is really what the individual teacher wants it to be. I felt very
comfortable assigning reading that I would never cover in class (3 days/week, 55 min./class for about 4 to 4 ½
months) and holding the students responsible. I gave three tests that were a combination of multiple choice, short
answer and one longer discussion question. I covered the entire text, but I did not lecture on the entire text and I did
not hold the students responsible for anywhere near the detail required to really prepare for the AP exam. If you
want to listen to and follow the notes of a really good college intro course, listen to Paul Bloom’s class at Yale
University (http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/introduction-to-psychology/). Although the lectures are really great, they
would be totally insufficient for an AP Psychology course unless the kids were doing an incredible amount of work
on their own. His lectures are also available in written format on the site as are his tests.
As I am preparing my daily lecture outlines for next semester and balancing the factual demands of the AP test, the
knowledge that not all of my class will read the text or the additional reading in the Norton Psychology reader, the
loss of lecture time for long assemblies, spirit week, athletic competitions and spring break, I am very concerned
about how it will get accomplished. Toss in the earliest possible AP exam date and the attitude of second semesters
seniors and I feel very discouraged. I am going to push for a year-long course in 21011-12.
Best of luck!
Anne B. Meinrath, PhD
Hi Jim! I remember you from AP grading. I teach Intro to Psych & other courses at East Texas Baptist University.
Only one of the three professors who teach that course covers the entire text. The other two of us just can’t get
through it in one semester (3-50 minute classes a week, 15 weeks, for a total of 45 classes of 50 minutes each). I
have often thought that the AP version of Intro to Psychology is better because you have so much more time. It’s
hard to rush through those chapters as fast as we have to!
Also, U.S. history is two courses here.
See you in June (hopefully)
Jane Ogden
Jim,
I think Kent already passed on information from my high school, since I responded to his email yesterday. I teach
AP Psych as a year-long course; we meet 49 minutes per day. I can't imagine trying to shove the curriculum into any
shorter of a format...
For example, here's the site for UW System Placement info on all the AP tests.
If the reason you are seeking that info is because your administration is trying to tell you that US History is taught in
one year and represents one year of college coursework, so therefore AP Psych should be taught in one semester as
it is a semester course in college, they should know that they are not making a fair comparison. One only needs to
look at the way the UW System awards credit for the various AP subjects (see here:
http://uwhelp.wisconsin.edu/testing/ap.aspx) to see that is not a uniformly applied standard.
For example, AP Bio is generally taught as a year-long course, but students are only given credit for one semester of
Biology with a passing score (generally). Same for AP English Language & Composition.
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Comments Regarding Material Covered in College Psychology Courses
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Hope this helps,
Virginia
Last year at STP ATL 2009, Laura King surprisingly admitted that college professors almost never cover the entire
text but skipped a number of chapters due to time constraints -- some going as far as skipping learning and
conditioning!
I was shocked and appalled when the entire room agreed to skipping over chapters (hands were raised to confirm
this). We as AP teachers may even go above and beyond to teach the material and grow passion for the subject.
Sorry to rant...
Kimberly Patterson
Some colleges do split Intro into two semesters, usually some version of a "social science" semester and a "natural
science".
Nancy K. Dess, PhD
Department of Psychology
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
323.259.2570
dessnk@oxy.edu
Hey Jim,
I know some of my students who have dual enrolled and have taken a college course have said that they have not
covered all of the topics that we have covered in AP.
Mike McLane
JimI teach at a community college and grabbed up all the syllabi I could find. No one taught all the units. The ones that
I found skipped the most were motivation and emotion, sensation and perception, and surprisingly research methods.
I skip motivation and emotion, and tend to do a unit per week in a 3 hour night class.
Scott Reed
I recall attending a presentation at last year's Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology (SETOP) by
Dave Johnson (http://www.jbu.edu/hss/psychology/faculty/johnson/) and Randy Smith
(http://dept.lamar.edu/psychology/randolph.html) that was titled "My intro text has too many chapters to cover in a
semester: Selecting what to teach." Professors Johnson and Smith presented results of a national survey of which
chapters are most commonly covered in / dropped from college intro psychology courses. I'm unaware whether
these data have been written up since February (does anyone else know?), but perhaps contacting one of these
individuals directly for their results would be a good place to start.
Best wishes,
Michael Amlung,
University of Georgia
mamlung@uga.edu
Our AP Psychology class is a year long course and I would not have it any other way. We don't have any non-ap
psychology courses so this class is the first exposure most students have to the topic.
Even with a full year course I am still finding that we don't have enough time to cover everything that might show
up on the exam.
Revised on 12/17/2010 at 11:31:06 PM
Comments Regarding Material Covered in College Psychology Courses
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As an anonymous poster said above, in college the professors emphasize certain topics and assess students on those
topics. AP Psych is another story... we need to give dedicated coverage to roughly 18 different units ranging from
acytlcholine to zebras not getting ulcers.
FULL YEAR is the only way unless your students have already taken a basic psych course and have college level
reading and study skills.
Cantor
My students learn certain topics independently, based on how difficult the info is to absorb, but I also have difficulty
finishing the AP curriculum in a year course, which is actually less than 20 actual weeks of class, when holidays,
vacations, exam weeks and the date of the AP are considered. When I taught the course in college, I didn't have to
cover every chapter, but the AP exam requires this, so one cannot equate a 1-semester college course to what we
have to do.
I just started teaching last year and this is my second year attempting to teach AP psychology in a semester.
In my opinion this is definitely not the best structure for this class. There is so much information that must be
covered from (for our district) the middle of January to the beginning of May. With Spring Break that leaves fewer
weeks to attempt to teach the information than there are chapters in most books. We cover at least one chapter a
week and four weeks in the semester cover two chapters.
It is truly a college level course, apart from the professor being able to administer the test over what was focused on
in class. Instead there is a vast amount of information they could be tested on with very little time to cover all of it.
Based on experience of teaching it in a semester I would say that if you have a choice it should definitely be a yearlong course.
Paul Rush
Julie Kobold said...
I tutored a college student through Intro to Psych which required less than half of the AP standards.
We have a distance learning setting everyday for 45 minutes. It seems to work fine, but I even struggle to fit in all of
the material. It would be insane to fit this course into a semester setting.
Matt Heling
We have our AP class on a year long, 4X4 block that meets every other day for about 85 minutes. I wouldn't want to
teach it in a semester again and hope that more schools can move to a full-year course.
Linda Jones said...
The AP Psychology class at my school in Kansas meets year long on a block schedule. All classes meet on
Mondays (Blocks 1-7) for a 51-minute period. Even blocks (2,4,6,ELO study period) meet on Tuesdays and
Thursdays for a 95-minute period. Odd blocks (1,3,5,7) meet on Wednesdays and Fridays for 95 minutes. I
wouldn't want to teach the class in less than a year because a great deal of the "fun" projects and activities
would have to be left out to fit in all the content (activities teach, but they take longer than just lecturing
and passing on information).
Lisa said...
I have no idea how I am going to be able to cover all the material required in one semester! This is my 1st
year teaching AP Psych and we are behind and I feel like I'm teaching in "yankee-turbo speed." It does not
do the course justice!
Revised on 12/17/2010 at 11:31:06 PM