In the coming weeks, expect to see some particularly broad and challenging research questions from students in PSY 4012 (Evolution of Modern Psychology). This is the capstone class for the psychology minor and is made up of 12 recitation sections. Each recitation section is broken down into small groups to write portions of a textbook about the history of psychology. Students are expected to go deeper than a mere litany of this researcher said this, then that research said that. Instead, they are expected to explore the connections between ideas in psychology and philosophy and to look at how historical forces affected the directions that psychological research moved in.
The instructor who teaches the two sections, Prof. David O’Brien, kindly shared with me the research topics that each section had to write about. As per his wishes, I’m not posting the topics here but have put them in the password-protected Library Services wiki on the Assignments page.
If you get any students asking for help with questions that sound like they might be for this class, please consider:
- steering them toward signing up for one of the three workshops I’ll be providing to the class (sign up form)
- suggest they consider a research consultation (that’ll likely wind up being with me)
- point out the psychology research guide and the philosophy research guide