Teaching Psychology and Learning: Making room for reflexivity in an increasingly diverse world

This year´s ECP conference theme is “Psychology: Uniting communities for a sustainable world” – pointing at psychology´s role in addressing societal challenges in an increasingly divided and volatile world.
The implications of a rapidly changing world with increased globalization and internationalization were noted as key challenge facing the profession of psychology by EuroPsy in their report on educational standards for professional psychologists (Lunt et al. 2015).
As a profession, we need to train specialists in intergroup relations who can effectively deal with diverse audiences and who can foster the well-being of the individual within a multicultural setting in various public and private institutions such as industries, organizations, schools, and health services.
Whilst some specialist Master courses recognize the importance of “Interculturality” and interdisciplinarity, we argue that the foundation for critical reflection, reflections on positionality and the acquisition of competencies to operate appropriately and effectively in different cultural contexts should be taught at undergraduate level.
The curriculum for the Bachelor of Science in Psychology is densely packed with courses on foundations of psychology, competencies in methodology and intervention and courses on applied fields of psychology. Detailed specifications regarding the course content and the distribution of the 180 ECTS across the subjects to be covered exist. Yet Lunt et al. (2015) also demand a robust and reflexive interaction between science and practice. We would add a demand for reflexive interaction with diversity in all its facets.
To achieve this, we advocate the adjustment of intended learning outcomes to include a critical lens, and to align teaching and learning activities as well the assessment tasks accordingly. This “constructive alignment” (Biggs, 2014) acknowledges that knowledge is constructed through the learner. We argue that we need a wise combination of evidence-based sources helping to contextualize theoretical models and their application, supported by a specialized course.