We reviewed the body of published research in the journal Teaching of Psychology (ToP) concerning diversity issues (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status). Between 1974 and 2002, approximately 7 of articles published in ToP substantively dealt with diversity issues, with gender issues being the most frequent topic. ToP publications concerning diversity issues have increased across time, especially recently, with the 1999 and 2001 volumes having the highest number of articles. Most of these diversity articles were conceptual in nature rather than empirical studies. The 33 empirical studies published in ToP concerning diversity were largely descriptive, exploratory, and atheoretical. We offer an agenda and recommendations for future research and submissions to ToP focusing on diversity issues.

We examined how psychology educators regarded and addressed diversity issues in their classrooms. The approximately 650 psychology educators who took part in this survey indicated a high level of personal acceptance of diverse persons and acknowledged the importance of infusing diversity issues into courses across the psychology curriculum. Our findings indicated that the level of importance instructors attached to incorporating diversity issues into their course work accounted for the largest amount of variance in the time they reported discussing diversity issues in their classes. We discuss implications for teachers of psychology.Simoni, Sexton-Radek, Yescavage, Richard, and Lundquist (1999) published the results of a national survey of members of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) concerning how psychology educators addressed diversity issues in the psychology curriculum. These authors found that many of the more

No abstract

The present study examined the ability of younger and older preschool children from different backgrounds (16 middle-class black, 16 middle-class white, 16 working-class black, and 16 working-class white) to map labels to objects and to establish inclusion relationships. The children were taught novel labels for perceptually related and unrelated unfamiliar objects. Although the groups were similar in their ability to comprehend the first label during the first session, white children produced the first label more. When additional labels were taught during subsequent sessions, the differences among the groups of children were augmented. Although children from all backgrounds applied labels to objects based on initial labelings, middle-class, white, and older children did this to a greater extent than working-class, black, and younger children. Evidence for the use of inclusion relations for perceptually related target objects was not found for the children; rather, the children used a mutually exclusive labeling strategy.

In a major effort that encourages assessment, the American Psychological Association Board of Educational Affairs has published suggested learning outcomes for the undergraduate psychology major (see Appendix 3.1;Halonen, J. et al., 2002). When departments use learning outcomes to improve curricula, those outcomes become powerful tools for improving teaching and learning. In this chapter, we describe how the Kennesaw State University (KSU) Psychology Department's assessment process began and how that process changed over time.THE FIRST PHASE OF THE KSU ASSESSMENT PLAN (1995PLAN ( -2001 KSU is a regional state university that is part of the university system of Georgia. The University has an enrollment of approximately 16,000 students, most of whom commute, and is located in a suburban area north of 47