Psychology’s core knowledge, scientific subfields, and health service specialization: Preparing a competent workforce—recommendations from the Opening Doors Summit.

Abstract

Even though those earning graduate degrees in psychology have high employment rates in both traditional and emerging careers, early career psychologists often note the transition from doctoral education to attainment of first job as the segment of the education and training pipeline during which they faced the most barriers and challenges. To address these issues, the American Psychological Association (APA) presidential initiative that culminated in the Opening Doors Summit identified shared steps that students and postdoctoral trainees, training communities, and the discipline of psychology can take to facilitate pipeline transitions and entry into a satisfying first job. This article describes how an education in the field of psychology should combine instruction in core knowledge of the discipline with a focus on scientific subfields or applied specialization in order to prepare a competent workforce. This approach to education and training is presented within a competency framework aimed at helping graduate students and postdoctoral trainees advance their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Because these competencies should be fostered in a developmentally appropriate manner, we separately focus on the transition into graduate school and the transition into an internship/postdoctoral training/first job. Specific recommendations for students, training communities, and the discipline of psychology are detailed which, when followed, can facilitate career attainment and success.

Facilitating pipeline progress from doctoral degree to first job.

“…At the graduate level, programs should assist trainees who experience challenges transitioning into the program. Doctoral programs should develop consensus on the core competencies required for successful transition to the next stage and ultimately to the first job (Bangasser et al, 2016). These competencies (e.g., advocacy) and their essential components (e.g., offering psychological science data to policymakers and the public related to key social policy issues) should be made a priority in the curriculum and diverse experiences to hone these competencies should be offered.…”

“…#1 Conduct workforce analyses relevant to pipeline blockages and successful passages. These analyses would be most meaningful if individuals are tracked from entry to psychology graduate school throughout their career and if success is redefined to include broader concepts, such as job satisfaction, happiness with the choice of career path, and so forth (Bangasser et al, 2016). Pertinent workforce questions could pertain to attrition, underemployment, and miss-employment; employment characteristics of all psychologists and range of first jobs; similarities in first jobs between trainees and their trainers; and similarities and differences between first jobs and subsequent employment.…”

“…Recommendations and actions steps to foster positive transitions are delineated. These recommendations and action steps build upon best practices in training programs and our prior publication from this Summit, which focused on capitalizing on the ways in which an education in psychology that integrates instruction in core knowledge of the discipline, with an emphasis on scientific subfields or health service/ other applied service specialization, can optimally prepare a competent workforce (Bangasser et al, 2016). This prior work did not attend, however, to factors that facilitated pipeline transitions or to potential strategies for fostering pipeline progress.…”

The Socratic Method: Empirical Assessment of a Psychology Capstone Course

“…The promotion of culminating projects, or capstone courses, is presented extensively by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (Carey, 2013). Capstone course goals are aligned with APA objectives and typically include opportunities for students to integrate, create/synthesize and apply knowledge (Bangasser et al., 2016). Encouraging students to question their understanding of the nature of their knowledge in a rigorous, intellectually authentic manner can be transformative (Ashworth, 2004; Formenti, 2015; Goodman, Murphy, & D’Andrea, 2014; Illeris, 2015).…”

“…Clegg (2015) identified five key knowledge practices or forms of meaning making: description, personal reflection and reflexivity, explicitly theoretical, and data-driven. Capstone courses vary in the proportional use of these, but intellectual maturity requires personal reflection and reflexivity – of the instructor and the students (Avalos, 2016; Bangasser et al., 2016; Bendixen, 2002).…”