Toward psychological literacy: A snapshot of evidence-based learning and teaching

Why focus on education in a forum that is obviously research oriented? As professionals, we may consider ourselves to be predominantly (1) psychological scientists, creating basic and applied discipline knowledge, or (2) professional psychology practitioners, utilising discipline knowledge in applied settings to meet client needs. Nevertheless, wherever we stand on the science-practice continuum, if we consider ourselves members of the psychology community, it is likely that we are contributing to the education and training of psychology students at the undergraduate or postgraduate level, whether in the classroom, laboratory, or field. In that regard, we are all practitioners. The question then arises: is our practice in educational settings evidence based? As Bernstein (2011) argues, we need to be ‘scientisteducators’ in that practice, not only by utilising and creating evidence-based teaching strategies but also by modelling to students the psychologically literate professional who applies psychology knowledge, skills, and dispositions in their everyday professional lives. How can a more evidence-based approach to educational practice be achieved? First, it may be instructive to acknowledge where we individually stand in relation to our own educational practice. In educational settings, one could argue that there are four approaches: the indifferent practitioner, the anecdotal practitioner, the scholarly practitioner, and the scientist–educator. The indifferent practitioner takes a minimalist approach to their educational tasks, which are viewed as an undesirable but unavoidable aspect of their professional lives. This practitioner does not waste time reflecting on or developing their educational practice. The anecdotal practitioner has developed an approach to their educational practice that is based on anecdotes derived from either their own experience as a student or from what they consider works in their current instructional tasks. Their practice is based on untested assumptions about the ‘art’ of teaching. With both the indifferent and anecdotal approaches, practitioners may or may not be effective in fostering student learning, depending on a number of variables including the ‘natural’ (as compared to intentionally developed) capacities of the practitioner. The scholarly practitioner reflects upon and attempts to improve their practice, for example by intentionally inviting external evaluation of their practice and by seeking relevant literature on evidence-based practice; however, they do not contribute to that literature themselves (see, WilsonDoenges & Gurung, 2013). In reality, most professional psychology practitioners, regardless of the field of practice (e.g., clinical, organisational), fit this scholarly practitioner category rather than the ‘scientist practitioner’ category, considered the ‘gold standard’ for psychology research and practice (Benjamin & Baker, 2000). The scientist–educator approach aspires to that ideal. At least part of their practice is intentionally planned to create new knowledge regarding effective practice in tertiary education, and they seek to share the outcomes of that research with the wider community through peer-reviewed publication. As such, the authors of the empirical articles in this issue can be described as scientist educators. There are significant challenges, however, for any practitioner who aspires to this ideal, as it could be argued that applied research is much more difficult to enact in a rigorous manner than is basic research. The primary constraint is ethical. For example, if there is already some empirical evidence that a particular learning, teaching, and assessment approach is more effective than others, then in further investigative work, the random assignment of students to the putative more and less effective conditions would be unethical. Although in theory, there are methods that decrease the inequities, such as wait-list control conditions, in practice, these are often not feasible, such as when the subject/unit is structured to scaffold knowledge and skill development (Karantzas et al., 2013). Thus, the second most common constraint is that the curriculum may not be flexible enough to allow for an experimental approach, particularly the use of comparison groups and the control of extraneous variables. Thus, much of the research that is undertaken in educational settings is not experimental but is more likely to be correlational or descriptive, as is the case in this issue. Nevertheless, aspiring to and achieving the ‘gold standard’ in the scholarship of learning and teaching is possible in some circumstances, and so must always be considered (e.g., Cranney, Ahn, McKinnon, Morris, & Watts, 2009). Australian Journal of Psychology 2013; 65: 1–4 doi: 10.1111/ajpy.12013 bs_bs_banner