Abstract
To say that 2020 has been a normal year devoid of abrupt change, turmoil, consequential stress, and the essential adaptation to survive would be an understatement. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you. Thank you to the teachers of psychology who are weathering this storm. Thank you to those who sharply turned your pedagogy on its head and reinvited yourself within days of moving to “online education.” Thank you to those teachers of psychology who not only made the transition to remote learning but had the kindness, foresight, and compassion to truly be student-centered. You not only focused and cared about your student’s learning but more importantly you thought about your student’s well-being. Thank you. Although not many students read Teaching of Psychology (ToP, well, mine do because I assign it), thank you for being patient. Thank you for understanding that we are all in this together. Thank you for ignoring my dog barking during our Zoom class or my teenage daughter stumbling in the background with barely a shirt on. Thank you—we will get through this together as a community of learners, teachers, and scholars.
Before moving on, I must thank my predecessor Drew Christopher. For those of you who know him and for those of you who have yet had the privilege to work with him, Drew is one of the most kind, supportive, and magnanimous colleagues one could have. In all sincerity, if it were not for Drew, I would not be the fifth editor of ToP. As he approaches everything, Drew mentored me on what it means to be a scholar in teaching of psychology and what it means to be a good editor. He has demonstrated how to acknowledge and support other scholars’ ideas and assertions while also improving both their work and the overall contribution to the field. It is my hope that I can uphold this strong commitment that he so aptly demonstrated. In the end Drew, many have benefited from your time and energy and we thank you.
As many ToP readers are aware, there have been several changes to the journal as of late. In the spring of 2016, a working group was commissioned by Drew Christopher and Janie Wilson, then president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), to survey the contributors and readership of ToP about potential strengths and weaknesses of the journal. Many of the changes that occurred recently came out of the results of this informal survey. One of the most exciting changes is ToP has many Open Science options. Authors can now have their materials stored on Open Science Framework Materials and have their data stored on SAGE’s Figshare. We are also kicking off our Open-Access campaign, where each month ToP releases one of their top 25 cited articles of all time for free. It is my hope that authors truly embrace and use these new features of the journal. Second, we have a new journal cover! Third, we have moved from a traditional abstract to a structured abstract. Our hope is that this will allow students, teachers, and scholars to better access, summarize, and cite the important work that is published in ToP.
Finally, we have reorganized the types of submission that you may submit to ToP. Specifically, we are now accepting articles to one of four corners: Replication, Proof of Concept, Science of Teaching and Learning, and the Scholarly Teacher. The Proof of Concept Corner will house promising pilot studies or small-scale studies. The catalyst to creating this corner came from one of my favorite articles by Dunn (2008), Another View: In Defense of Vigor Over Rigor in Classroom Demonstrations. In this article, Dunn argues that we should increase the vigor of our research (i.e., the Science of Teaching and Learning Corner) but not at the sake of “…outlets for a forum of pedagogical vigor—the publication of simple, experiential, but empirically unvalidated classroom demonstrations” (p. 349). In this spirit, the Proof of Concept Corner is intended for shorter articles that provide quantitative evidence for teaching- and learning-related interventions, establish associations in teaching of psychology variables, and/or to present descriptive data to propose problems to solve. Although there has been a tradition of replication ToP studies (see Giambra, 1976), as a journal and field of study we need to do better. Thus, the Replication Corner will encourage researchers to not only replicate findings from previously published studies but to also have some novelty and additive value to their replication (e.g., different type of institution, psychology subject matter, additional measures). The Science of Teaching and Learning Corner will be full-length articles that are data- or theory-driven, meta-analytic investigations, or conceptual position articles. Articles in this corner are intended to illuminate teaching of psychology topics with broad implications. Finally, the Scholarly Teacher Corner will be a forum for shorter articles that provide evidence-based or evidence-informed practical reviews, activities, and/or resources for teachers of psychology to directly use in their classroom or teaching responsibilities. To assuage any misgivings that we will no longer be accepting generalist corner, methods, and techniques type articles, of course, we will. They will now be categorized as one of the four corners.
Another change coming to ToP is our approach and makeup of the editorial board. At ToP, we are trying to be inclusive and representative of all students and teachers of psychology. To this end, we have added several new editorial board members (e.g., consulting editors) who represent students and teachers from high school, community colleges, graduate-level education, graduate students, early career, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, International colleges and universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and students and teachers from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and allies (LGBTQIA+) community. For each strata in our populations, we have prioritized seats on the editorial board to best reflect who we are as scholars, teachers, and humans.
I would also like to welcome Natalie Ciarocco from Monmouth University, Jennifer McCabe from Goucher College, and Guy Boysen from McKendree University as the incoming associated editors. All three are leaders in the field of teaching of psychology, complement one another and myself, and are some of the hardest working people you will meet. In addition, we created a new position on the editorial board, obituary editor, and I am pleased to welcome Manisha Sawhney from Saint Mary University to our team. I am so grateful for their incredible contribution to our field as scholars and teachers, and I want you to know that we will work hard to maintain and advance ToP as the flagship journal of STP.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Professor Mark Krank from the University of Montana Western. I was an academically and emotionally adrift undergrad. Mark saw my aimless trajectory and reached out and took me under his wing. He recognized what I didn’t. He saw a scholarly teacher in the making. He was and still is my exemplar for what it means to be a model teacher and scholar. With Mark’s support and encouragement, I decided to graduate school, and well, the rest is history. Thank you Scholar Krank! I am forever in your debt.
I would like to conclude this missive with an open invitation to the once and future readers and contributors to ToP: I want you to contact me with any questions, big or small. Whether you are interested in reviewing, have an idea about an article, want to learn about how to get involved in STP, really anything—my door, email, phone, or video conferencing app, are always open.