This research represents an extension of our prior article, published in Teaching of Psychology (Stevens & Witkow, 2014), which detailed the development and evaluation of a single module for training scientific reasoning skills in introductory psychology.Here we report on the development of a larger set of 8 modules, along with evaluation data from a 4-year baccalaureate liberal arts college (N ϭ 195 students) and a 2-year community college (N ϭ 94 students). Each module required 30 -45 min of class time and was keyed to a different major content topic covered in introductory psychology. Participating instructors, who were uninvolved in the development of materials, chose how many and which modules to implement during the term. Gains on a scientific reasoning assessment were compared from the beginning to the end of the term in students in treatment sections versus comparison sections taught as usual. In the liberal arts and community college settings, students in treatment sections showed significantly greater gains in scientific reasoning relative to students in comparison sections (Cohen's d ϭ ϩ0.66 at the liberal arts college and d ϭ ϩ1.06 at the community college). At the community college setting, an additional within-instructor comparison demonstrated that students in the treatment section also made greater gains in scientific reasoning than students taught by the same instructor, but in the term before receiving the modules (Cohen's d ϭ ϩ1.05). Taken together, these results provide evidence for the use of modular activities embedded throughout the term to improve scientific reasoning in introductory psychology courses.

This article presents a census of empirical studies on the scholarship of teaching published in Teaching of Psychology, Psychology Learning and Teaching, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology over the past decade. All articles from each issue were coded for characteristics identifying the teaching context in which the research was conducted, focusing on institution type using Carnegie classifications and average class size. The majority of studies on the scholarship of teaching and learning in psychology were carried out in smaller classes (less than 40 students/class) in settings characterized as Master’s or Doctoral institutions. These data suggest an underrepresentation of studies from 2-year Associate’s colleges, as well as from larger enrollment classrooms. Implications are discussed for conducting research in the diverse classroom settings representative of psychology instruction.