Senate Document Number   1299S

Date of Senate Approval    1/28/99

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document #4:

 Replace Psychology 220 with Psychology 318

Delete: on page 220, the title and course description for PSYC 220 Educational Psychology

Add: on page 196 after the entry for PSYC 317, the following

318 Psychology Applied to Teaching (4)

Applications of psychological theory and research to learning processes and the teaching of children. Emphasis on developmental, behavioral and cognitive psychology, exceptional students, research methods and testing/measurement in educational settings. Includes a required laboratory component. Prerequisite: PSYC 101 and EDUC 310 or permission of instructor. (Students who have credit for both PSYC 220 and PSYC 317 may not receive credit for PSYC 318.)"

Rationale:

The new course is designed to cover licensure competencies currently met through a combination of PSYC 220 and PSYC 317. There has long been significant content overlap across these two courses as well as overlap with competencies covered in core EDUC courses. Incorporating key competencies within a single course will streamline the out-of-department requirements for teacher licensure students without reducing effective coverage of required information. Licensure students now will complete PSYC 101 (or its equivalent) and PSYC 318.

Melding the necessary information within a single course necessitates a 4 semester hour course. The additional hour will cover a required laboratory component paralleling the design of PSYC 317. Laboratory projects will emphasize the application of course content to analysis of test data and evaluation of children.

In terms of pedagogy, the change generates a new model which more effectively meets the content and skill needs of our students. It is difficult to design a single course (PSYC 317) to address the pre-professional issues of both child psychology and education. Likewise, it is extremely difficult to design two non-overlapping psychology courses (PSYC 220, 317) covering education-relevant topics. Clearly, licensure students have been most disadvantaged by the current model. Many topics in PSYC 317 have marginal links to required licensure competencies and many topics in PSYC 220 are repeated in PSYC 317.

Impact:

The proposal for this course is being submitted in response to a request from the Education Department. If this proposal is approved, a consequent proposal from the Education Department will be submitted to adjust their listing of requirements for teacher licensure students.

The impact of this change will be overwhelmingly positive for students and faculty in both Departments. On the Education Department side, the change will reduce the required PSYC hours from 10 (PSYC 101, 220, 317) to 7 (PSYC 101, 318). This will simplify the process of completing licensure requirements and facilitate students' progress toward graduation without jeopardizing coverage of required competencies.

On the Psychology Department side, the proposal maximizes use of existing faculty resources and increases pedagogical effectiveness (see Rationale section). In the current model Psychology must offer a minimum of 6 classes/year to cover these competencies. A typical year includes four 30-35 student sections of PSYC 317 and two 30-35 student sections of PSYC 220. Data collected annually, and included in our Departmental review report to UPC, indicate that almost 70% of the students in PSYC 317 are non-psychology licensure students (i.e., students majoring in another discipline); over 95% of the students in PSYC 220 are non-psychology licensure students. With the exception of students in the math/science licensure program, all licensure students must complete both courses. Annual staffing of these sections requires at minimum 1/4 of two full-time positions and two adjunct positions. The demands are such that full-time faculty rarely can teach other courses in the developmental psychology area (e.g., Psychology of Adolescence, Behavior Disorders in Children).

With the new model we anticipate offering three 25-30 student sections of PSYC 318 and two 25-30 student sections of PSYC 317 each year. All licensure students, including those majoring in Psychology (see section II), will take PSYC 318; non-licensure Psychology majors will continue to elect either PSYC 317 or PSYC 332 to fulfill their lab course requirement. Reducing need for sections of PSYC 317 will decrease use of adjuncts for licensure courses and provide the flexibility to increase scheduling of other popular developmental courses.