Teaching

Three key values that inform my teaching include psychological science literacy, science as a process, and the centrality of measurement.

Psychological Science Literacy

Psychology information literacy and the ability to interpret psychological research are critical parts of an undergrad education in psychology (APA Learning Goals & Outcomes for the Undergraduate Psych Major). However, these skills don't come naturally to most students; they are difficult and take time and practice to develop. To facilitate the development of these skills, I place a heavy emphasis on the use of primary and secondary scientific articles in my teaching (as opposed to reliance on textbooks). My senior-level moral psychology course relies almost entirely on articles, and even my social psychology course (the first psych course for many students) uses articles as required readings toward the end of the term.

Process of Science

Psychological science is not a fixed set of facts; it is a process to understand people and their interactions with the world. Accordingly, I try to teach psychology as process, not body of facts. I start my social psychology course with a section on the replication crisis/credibility revolution, and we talk about how the human element in science can distort the scientific record and what can be done to improve our science. I then weave this way of thinking in throughout the course, including qualifying common claims and calling attention to classic findings that may not hold up to later replications.

Measurement

Everything in psychology (in science, for that matter) starts with measurement. I integrate this idea into my courses by continually having students consider how data were generated in studies we cover. For example, students in my social psych course complete a variety of "Method Assignments" in which they reflect on various aspects of the relationship between measurement and data. Among other things, students compare and contrast a behavioral and self-report measure of the same construct, complete an IAT and generate examples of constructs that it might capture outside of implicit attitudes, and explore how different operationalizations of religiosity lead to different research conclusions in the same dataset.

Recently Taught Courses

Moral Psychology, Fall 2023, Willamette University

Introductory Psychology, Spring & Fall 2023, Willamette University

Moral Psychology, Spring, Summer, & Fall 2020, Florida State University, Syllabus

Social Psychology, Spring, Summer, & Fall, 2019, Florida State University, Syllabus