Abstract
“Can you hear me?” “You’re on mute.” “Unmute yourself.”
As I write this in September, many of us have just returned to our classrooms and are busy disinfecting podiums and stocking up on masks. Or holed up in our home “offices,” shooing away cats or children (or even other adults!), and figuring out how to eke the most out of our Wi-Fi signals. Mastering the mute button is far from the steepest obstacle we face. No matter our instructional modality, pandemic teaching is riddled with logistical, pedagogical, and safety challenges, beyond what many of us have previously faced. In short, this is not the year I would have chosen to be STP president.
There is, however, a silver lining to our current challenges, one that fits squarely with STP’s mission. Almost every instructor I know spent the summer of 2020 as a student. Particularly for those of us who are years removed from our own education, we may have forgotten what it’s like to approach a new topic with no idea of what to even ask. Am I the only one who sat in a virtual classroom this summer and wondered what a Zoom or Teams “channel” was? Or, for those of us who are white and in the United States, to have been shocked by elements of the U.S.’s racist history that we didn’t know, but should have? At the same time, I want to acknowledge the summer experiences of Black colleagues as well as those from other minoritized racial and ethnic groups (Black, indigenous, and people of color in the United States; Black, Asian, and minority ethnic in the UK). Many also took on the role of student in some contexts, especially with regard to the changing modalities of teaching, but these colleagues had numerous other, often unanticipated and usually time-consuming, roles. They were often tasked with creating diversity statements or joining, and often leading, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committees. Our Black colleagues, in particular, were also coping with the psychological impact of historic racial unrest in the United States and many other countries.
The learning experiences that many of us had allow us to better understand our students—to anticipate questions they may not know to ask but also have empathy for their struggles in the classroom and beyond. And also to remember that most of them, like us, really do want to learn, even if we might initially display some resistance!
Against this backdrop, as I returned to a student focus this summer this summer, I saw the power of STP. I was in awe of the generosity of the psychology instructors, many of whom are STP members or leaders, who volunteered to teach us. As incoming STP president, I took notes! So often, experienced, skillful (even renowned) instructors were—unpaid—educating the rest of us, formally and informally. As a result of their collegiality and altruism, I developed skills in online instruction; gained insight into teaching open science via the very public nature of contradictory research in a pandemic; and, as a white woman, expanded my understanding of the deep-seated roots of racism as well as how to practice antiracism as an instructor but also as a person and a citizen. Here are just a few specific ways our colleagues taught us this summer.
Online Teaching
STP’s Facebook group hosted lively discussions with uncountable offers to share carefully crafted intellectual property, from syllabi to slides to infographics. Moderator Molly Metz so often connected people across threads to find the resources they were seeking. Slightly more formally, Beth Johnson and her colleagues organized a reading group that met virtually several times over 6 weeks to discuss Small Online Teaching. (Darby & Lang, 2019; Shout out to Beth’s organizing colleagues Carolyn Brown-Kramer, Jennifer Doran, Amy Hillard, and Heather Poole.) What a wonderful book! But the participants, including many STPers, perhaps learned even more by actively engaging with peers during the discussions. It was a hopeful reminder that it is possible to build community remotely.
The Intersection of Open Science and Current Events
Psychology has so much to say about open science. After all, it’s “our” replication crisis that has thrust the concept of open science into the public consciousness. It was thrilling to watch so many psychologists, including many members of STP, step out of their academic personas to teach their communities about how science works and update their colleagues on the latest ideas to incorporate in their teaching. Some patiently explained preprints and data ethics in blog posts. Others shared ideas, resources, and explanations on Twitter or STP’s Facebook group. And Alisa Beyer and Janet Peters published a free STP e-book, For the Love of Teaching Undergraduate Statistics, with chapters on replication and the new statistics (2020). These colleagues all help us make our courses cutting-edge and relevant and make our already-strong science even stronger.
Racism and Antiracism
In May 2020, the brutal murder of George Floyd propelled (way too belatedly) the U.S.-based Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement into a far greater segment of the non-Black public consciousness. The elevation of the BLM antiracist movement, along with parallel global movements, has spurred many of us, particularly those of us who are white, to grapple with how to decolonize our syllabi, expand representation in content, and support our students and colleagues from minoritized racial and ethnic groups.
To help us in this endeavor, many of us turned to our colleagues. We were guided by STP colleagues Leslie Cramblet Alvarez, Jonah Leach, Jerome Rodriguez, and Nicole Jones (2020) whose research highlights who makes it into our history and who does not. We were inspired by the new additions to Eric Landrum’s and Garth Neufeld’s STP-sponsored PsychSessions podcast: Marianne Lloyd, with her AskPsychSessions mini-series on DEI, and Anna Ropp, with her scholarship of teaching and learning series that has championed DEI-related research. And in an enormously rich experience, in June, many STPers participated, along with thousands of academics across the United States, in the Academics for Black Lives and Wellness weeklong training, led by psychology doctoral student Pearis Bellamy and professor Della Mosley (https://www.academics4blacklives.com). For 7 days, Black colleagues practiced self-care, while non-Black colleagues participated in workshops and accountability groups aimed at helping “to honor the toll of racial trauma on Black people, resist anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and facilitate accountability and collective action.”
Our colleagues from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, and especially our Black colleagues, were more often teachers than learners in this context. While I learned the importance of not asking my colleagues of color to teach me, I realize that far too often, my Black colleagues and friends were pressed into that role anyway. As one example, I learned from the generous, candid feedback from members of STP’s Diversity Committee, chaired by Teceta Tormala, as I worked with a group of STP Executive Committee members to draft a “Statement on Addressing Systemic Racism and Inequity in STP” (http://teachpsych.org/Addressing-Systemic-Racism). Teceta and her Diversity Committee colleagues, particularly Dina Gohar and Leslie Berntsen, helped to mitigate my initial failures—my defensiveness, in particular, even though I (thought I) was explicitly trying not to be. I was proud of STP 2020 President Amy Fineburg when she suggested airing our missteps to the STP community, while shining light on the STP leaders who gave of their time and expertise to teach us.
My summer experiences as a student also informed my goals for my year as STP president, including how I hope to support these kinds of initiatives by our talented members and leaders. By the time this is published, calls for the 2021 presidential task forces will have gone out, so I’ll just give brief overviews of what I plan to focus on. Developing and publicizing resources for what I’ll call “pivot teaching”—prioritizing top-notch, evidence-based, student-centered teaching and learning as modalities and other conditions shift. Updating STP’s statistical literacy guidelines to incorporate open science and data ethics. (From my vantage point as a Fellow of Division 1 [General Psychology] and Division 5 [Quantitative and Qualitative Methods], I see discussions unfolding about the ways in which new thinking about statistics and research methods is making psychological science stronger than ever. Our pedagogy and curricula must keep pace.) Continuing to work on inclusion of those who are underrepresented among our members, leaders, award/grant applicants, and invited speakers. (This extends the work conducted under the excellent leadership of President Fineburg.) Exploring how to more fully integrate STP’s DEI and international initiatives in all we do, including programming, awards, and resources. Might there be a new structure that would move away from the siloed nature of our current structure?
In conclusion, I was reminded through my summer of learning that we, as instructors of psychology and STP members, have the prerogative, and arguably the obligation, to speak out from a place of field-specific knowledge. Of course, first and foremost we should listen—to each other, to members of groups that have been marginalized, to our students. And also to the science; the research that undergirds our field speaks to so many aspects of what is going on in the world—how students learn, how we counter misinformation and anti-science views, and how we can fight back against prejudice and discrimination. We have a lot to say, as psychology instructors.
As members and leaders of STP, striving for better teaching and learning, let’s continue to unmute ourselves.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
The author wrote this article as the President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Amy Fineburg, Kelley Haynes-Mendez, and Marianne Lloyd for their feedback on this essay.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.