Many members of the academy have tried to broaden the construct of scholarship to include activities that investigate pedagogy and student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Halpern et al. (1998) first established such a definition for the field of psychology. This article reports on a Society for the Teaching of Psychology (APA, Division 2) task force national survey assessing the state of SoTL in psychology. Although psychology has not globally embraced SoTL as legitimate scholarship, there are indications that the sentiment to do so is taking root. We conclude with recommendations about how the discipline can enhance its efforts to promote SoTL.

Theory and prior research suggest that (a) a positive sense of self-worth and (b) perceived control over one's outcomes facilitate constructive responses to negative outcomes. We therefore predicted that encouraging students to maintain their sense of self-worth and/or construe their academic outcomes as controllable would promote achievement. In a field experiment, low-performing students in a psychology class were randomly assigned to receive, each week, review questions, review questions plus self-esteem bolstering, or review questions plus exhortations to assume responsibility and control. Contrary to predictions, the D and F students got worse as a result of self-esteem bolstering and students in the other conditions did not change. These findings raise ethical and practical questions about the widespread practice of bolstering self-esteem in the hope of improving academic performance.

Many teachers require their students to take cumulative exams, but there are surprisingly few studies that examine the benefits of such exams. The purpose of this study was to determine whether introductory psychology students who take cumulative exams throughout the semester would have better long-term retention than students who take a cumulative final exam after a series of unit (i.e., noncumulative) exams. As expected, the students who took cumulative exams throughout the semester did better on the cumulative portion of the final exam. This main effect evolved into an interaction on a follow-up test administered 2 months after the course ended. The long-term retention of good students was unaffected by the type of exams they took. However, low-scoring students remembered more of the course material when they took cumulative exams throughout the semester.

No abstract

No abstract