Bachelor Study Programms of Psychology: Moving towards more culture-inclusive curricula

One facet of contemporary societies is their increasingly diverse composition. To what extent has this diversity entered the teaching of psychology to undergraduate students? The Bologna Process created the European Higher Education Area, defining qualifications and learning outcomes and making higher-education qualifications in Europe comparable. Study programs need to meet the standards and guidelines for the quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015). In addition, national psychological associations such as the German Association for Psychology (DGPs) introduce a special catalogue of course content, study
programs need to comply with to achieve quality control accreditation. The field is constantly expanding with pressure to include the latest developments, for example in the field of neuro-cognitive sciences. This makes for already very tight curricula – yet how can we enhance the awareness of and increase the competences in dealing with ethnic and cultural diversity in the next generation of psychology students? Possible avenues of building a culture-inclusive curriculum will be shown by building on the analysis of the cultural content of introductory psychology textbooks. An extensive analysis of the cultural content of introductory psychology
textbooks has shown that it is possible to integrate cultural references into all topics taught in psychology. There are different ways to do so – options will be presented and discussed as well as examples of good practice provided. Importantly, teaching of culture is not relegated to specialized courses – cultural examples can be cited in any subfield or facet of psychology. In addition, some examples on how to include the cultural lens will be provided from the Bachelor
of Psychology Program (BAP) taught at the University of Luxembourg. These examples are thought as impulses for a discussion towards more inclusive teaching of psychology in an increasingly diverse European cultural context.