Teaching Resources for Chapter 1

• Overview of Chapter 1
  
  • Outline
  • Key Issues
  • Key Terms
  • Professor-oriented summary (Talking points, visuals, and some humor)
  • Powerpoint lecture/Chapter outline
   
• Detailed Lecture Outlines from the authors 
  • Scientific psychology versus other ways of knowing
  • In defense of scientific psychology
  • The importance of research
    
  • Powerpoint lecture/Chapter outline
  • Bonus powerpoint lectures (password is the first word on page 3 of the Instructor's Manual. Please type it in lower case.)
• Lecture outlines from other sources 
  • An astronomer's introduction to science lecture.
   
• Chapter 1 section of the student website 

• Handouts 
  • Detailed Learning Objectives for Chapter 1
  • A crossword puzzle

   

  Activities/Demonstrations

  • A fun demonstration of (a) how the correct answer is not always the intuitive one and of (b) how the empirical approach can get us the correct answer.
  • A fun activity to help students (a) test therapeutic touch and (b) understand the value of using "blind" techniques. Although the guide claims that it is for grades 5-8, it works well as an early in the semester activity. The only change is that you will have students pair off with each other rather than with a parent.
  • Contrast science with nonscientific and pseudoscientific approaches
  • Resources and activities for educating students about the confirmation bias
    •  Download a Powerpoint® demonstration that illustrates the tendency of people to use a hypothesis-confirming strategy as well as the advantages of using hypothesis-testing instead.
    •  A very quick, online,  demonstration that illustrates how one can be fooled by the confirmation bias
    • Malcolm Gladwell's article that exposes criminal profiling
    • PBS link that allows you to show a video ("Water, Water Everywhere") that uses the practice of trying to find water with dowsing rods to  illustrate the problems of (a) making untestable statements and (b) the confirmation bias.
  • Have students read and discuss the following two articles that discuss bias in popular reports of published research (link to reference and handouts to help students understand the articles)
  • An online PBS video about the "science" of handwriting analysis
  • Instructions for a  fun and magical demonstration of the reason scientists value predictions to after-the-fact explanations
  • PBS link that allows you to show an online video ("The Aliens Have Landed") that illustrates the problem of the confirmation bias and the value of skepticism.
  • Have students listen to this audio recording of a BBC radio program on Karl Popper (playing the first minute-and-a-half should be enough to spark discussion [some students may gasp at the insinuation that Popper's principle of falsifiability was what led to Freud's theories being demoted  pseudoscience], but you can play the entire 45 minutes)
  • Have students develop a "Research Methods Script"
  • Walk students through a 10-slide, interactive presentation on what science is (courtesy of our publisher)
  • Have students rebut common objections to scientific psychology
  • If you want to present a more critical view of science, you could assign and lecture over the following Appendix on Kuhn's challenge to science. Alternatively, you could discuss the Piltdown Man case and its lessons for science using either the skeptic's dictionary website's entry or show the PBS video "The Boldest Hoax," a NOVA episode on the Piltdown man. (The episode [No. 3202] originally aired 1/11/2005.)
  • Give students one of the following reading assignments--and a useful handout to help them understand the reading.
  • Develop students' library literacy
  • Use this Web Appendix to stress the fact that the research class allows students to refine and demonstrate marketable skills. Alternatively, you could have students find graduate school applications, employment ads, and articles that illustrate the importance of research to getting into graduate school, being a clinical psychologist, or getting a job.

  Notes and Reminders:

1. Student web pages are accessible from http://www.studyrde.com/
2. IM has information about how to download additional PowerPoint® lectures.
3. URL for text's publisher site is http://psychology.wadsworth.com/RDE6e/
4. URL for a guide on how to write psychology papers is http://www.writingforpsychology.com/
5. You can e-mail the authors at either mailto:mitchell@clarion.edu?Subject=RDE Chapter 1 or mailto:jolley@clarion.edu?Subject=RDE Chapter 1