Incorporating Multiculturalism into Undergraduate Psychology Courses: Three Simple Active Learning Activities

Abstract

Many scholars agree that educators must incorporate multiculturalism into the curriculum of all undergraduate psychology students. I designed 3 easy-to-use activities that reinforce why multicultural factors are critical to consider in psychology. Using intelligence testing as a platform, these activities highlight issues of language, cultural loading of test items, and cultural loading of assessment methods. Outcome data from participants in 2 large undergraduate introductory psychology classrooms (N = 301) indicated that students were significantly more knowledgeable about multiculturalism and believed multicultural factors to be more important after completing these activities.

Teaching Metacognition Experientially

“…Our results suggest that teaching using experiential learning is advantageous for both recognition and recall assessments of lower and higher order knowledge of metacognitive theory. This is consistent with a growing body of research that suggest active learning instruction significantly increases academic performance over that of direct instruction (e.g., Butler, Phillman, & Smart, 2001; Harton, Richardson, Barreras, Rockloff, & Latane, 2002; Poirer & Feldman, 2007; Richmond, 2016; Richmond et al, 2015; Richmond & Kindelberger Hagan, 2011; Warren, 2006: Yoder & Hochevar, 2005). Of particular interest is that our results are consistent with that of Richmond and Kindelberger Hagan in that we found a differential effect of experiential learning instruction on higher level learning over that of direct instruction.…”

A Shifting Paradigm

“…Instructional methods courses in teacher preparation programs are commonly used to raise preservice teachers’ attention toward the needs of culturally diverse learners (Avery, 2003; Barba, 1993; McGinnis & Davis, 1995; Saury & Alexander, 2003). However, multicultural content may also be delivered using a range of courses within the curriculum such as language arts, social sciences, and humanities classes (Kubota, Austin, & Saito-Abbott, 2003; Pandit & Alderman, 2004; Warren, 2006). Multicultural learning activities in language arts courses, such as reflective writing, enabled students to challenge preconceived notions about cultures (Brindley & Laframboise, 2000; Lawrence, 1998).…”

Cultural Diversity in Introductory Psychology Textbook Selection: The Case for Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCUs)

“…Recent empirical research has underscored the need for cross-cultural research and documented the importance of cultural diversity in the teaching and learning of psychology (Boysen, 2011; Case, 2007; Fuentes & Shannon, 2016; Kernahan & Davis, 2010; Kite & Whitely, 2012; Lonner, 2016; Prieto et al., 2009; Whaley, 2012; Warren, 2006). We supplemented our textbook selection procedure, informed by several areas of research on introductory psychology textbooks, with a cultural diversity component including a survey of HBCU psychology departments and one item among the criteria.…”