Diversity,Equity,Inclusion,and Internationalization: Past,Present,and Future of STP

Abstract

Introduction: As an organization with a 75-year history of supporting the teaching of psychology, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), which also operates as Division 2 of the American Psychological Association, has a significant influence on psychology learning and teaching. Statement of the Problem: In this article, four former STP Vice Presidents for Diversity and International Relations explore STP’s history through the lenses of diversity, equity/social justice, inclusion, and international relations. Literature Review: The paper explores the relevant history of STP and incorporates scholarship of teaching and learning literature through an international and social justice lens. Teaching Implications: The authors discussed ways to support BIPOC and underrepresented instructors of psychology. Conclusion: STP and teachers of psychology play a pivotal role in changing the cultural, structural, and institutional processes representing ongoing barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and social justice within the organization and the teaching of psychology. Instructors of psychology are well positioned to promote systemic and structural changes and advocate for social justice for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other underrepresented teachers of psychology.

Keywords

teaching psychology diversity social justice equity inclusion internationalization

The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), Division 2 of the American Psychological Association (APA), was founded in 1945 to support psychology teaching and learning. A 50th-anniversary history of STP, published in STP’s flagship journal Teaching of Psychology (ToP), highlighted its turbulent beginnings as one of the first APA divisions, and its shifts toward an organization that is part of APA, but is also free-standing and to which non-APA members can belong (Wight & Davis, 1995); however, there was no mention of diversity or international issues in this early account of STP. A 75th-anniversary special issue in ToP addressed the most recent 25 years of STP’s history (Davis & Smith, 2020). The special issue outlined how STP addressed diversity and international issues through its organizational structure, including the creation of a standing committee on diversity in 2005, a Vice President (VP) for Diversity and International Relations (DIR), and a standing committee on international relations in 2010 (e.g., Hill et al., 2020). It further outlined some of the initiatives undertaken by these groups and by the larger organization.

In this paper, we expand on these histories of STP by summarizing how STP has navigated diversity and international issues, exploring them alongside a consideration of equity and inclusion, and outlining areas needing additional work. Structural changes are crucial; indeed, research suggests that a leader or committee with the specific goal of diversity, such as a VP for DIR, leads to greater success in diversifying an organization than do other strategies, such as diversity training or affirmative action policies by providing accountability that can spur change (Dobbin & Kalev, 2015).

Our Positionalities

The authors of the current paper include four former VPs for DIR. (Since the manuscript was written, two additional VPs for DIR have served in the role—Dr. Gabrielle Smith and Dr. Teceta Tormala. We acknowledge that current and future VPs for DIR will leave indelible marks on STP diversity and international initiatives.) Our positionalities include diverse experiences, identities, and intersectionalities. We identify, collectively, as a first-generation immigrant, Asian American, African American with ties to the United States south, European American, predominantly European American, able-bodied, differently abled, middle-aged, older, middle-class, cisgender, gender and sexual diverse, female, atheist, Jewish, non-native English speaker, native English speaker, and highly educated. We also acknowledge that, as psychologists working in the United States of America, not all aspects of this paper will be relevant internationally.

History of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives in STP

With respect to the diversity of leadership, STP has made progress (Haynes-Mendez & Nolan, 2021). Prior to STP’s 2010 restructuring, 6% of leaders on the Executive Committee (EC) were BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). That number increased to 17% in 2021, albeit still lower than the 38% of current members who identify as BIPOC. Representation based on gender has been closer to the overall percentage of 57% of women in the organization, although 2021 marked the first year that all members of the “presidential trio” (president-elect, president, and past president) were women (whereas all-male trios occurred numerous times). Of course, this bifurcation of gender does not reflect gender-diverse identities, but rather cultural norms for gender. Our membership and leadership are more diverse than implied by over-simplified categorizations. Diversity extends beyond racial/ethnic identification and gender, and the above does not address non-visible identities or intersectionality.

Since the creation of the VP of DIR position, STP has implemented several initiatives related to diversity or internationalization. A 2020 presidential task force recommended the creation of interest groups—for example, instructors from a particular country or teaching in a particular context (e.g., Historically Black Colleges and Universities). STP expanded its peer-reviewed materials, including e-books, instructional materials, and syllabi; and created a new award for excellence in instruction-related DEI. The Diversity Committee contributes a column to the monthly newsletter. The editor of ToP expanded the editorial board by creating consulting editor positions for instructors from particular contexts (e.g., Hispanic-serving institutions and institutions outside the United States). STP diversified its programming and events, including having diverse keynote speakers; increasing funding for speakers traveling internationally; initiating an International Twitter Poster Conference; and creating an award specific to international conference travel. The Director of International Programming expanded STP’s support for international teaching conferences, a role that had previously been part of the portfolio of the VP of DIR. Despite these efforts, STP has seen only modest growth in non-U.S. membership—from 6.8% in 2013 to 7.8% in 2021. Most of our international membership is from English-speaking countries, with 4.5% of our total 2021 membership from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

We hope that burgeoning relationships with international organizations (e.g., Australian Psychology Learning and Teaching [AusPLAT], European Society for Psychology Learning and Teaching [ESPLAT], the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica) will foster collaborations and expand our membership, particularly to be more inclusive of those from the global south. Similarly, we hope to convert many of the approximately 7,000 non-U.S. members of STP’s 16,000-member Facebook page into official members. The top 10 non-U.S. countries from which STP’s Facebook page draws members are, in order, India, the Philippines, Canada, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Australia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and South Africa, suggesting broad international interest that may translate into more diverse international membership and involvement.

Despite these efforts, there is a growing awareness among STP leadership of a longstanding lack of attention to equity and inclusion. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, antiracist movements in the United States increased the urgency among many people about the need for DEI-related systemic change. STP enacted several initiatives to spur deeper and more lasting equity and inclusion within the organization, including the interest-group initiative mentioned earlier and a 2021 presidential task force examining the overall structure of STP from diversity, equity, inclusion, and internationalization perspective. A former VP for DIR spearheaded a DEI assessment project whereby each VP evaluates their area of the organization. In August 2020, the EC of STP issued a Statement on Addressing Systemic Racism and Inequity in STP (Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 2020a), developed with significant input from the Diversity Committee. The APA, in their requisite review of STP’s statement, found it “strong and compelling.”

As the discipline moves forward, the values we teach must change. The APA’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology major outlined five goals, one of which is explicitly tied to DEI and international issues, Social and Ethical Responsibility in a Diverse World (2013). The APA’s Project Assessment mapped tools that assessed learning onto this goal, providing a roadmap for instructors (APA, 2018; Halonen et al., 2020). Internationally, options for assessing values related to a global perspective have increased (Acheson et al., 2021). Buskist et al. (2012) specifically addressed the need for training in how international issues impact the teaching of psychology at the graduate level, while Morgan-Consoli et al. (2018) outlined competencies for U.S. psychologists teaching internationally. STP is well situated to support instructors with regard to international competencies in their own countries as well as abroad.

Social Justice Pedagogy and STP

STP has made a commitment to DEI and international issues and to move the organization toward social justice to achieve a more equitable community. Social justice is not just about making changes now, but is rooted in context, climate, and history (Woolf, 2019). It requires examining an organization’s cultural context and values, socio-political climate, and history, including structural, institutional, and cultural harms. Such harms are often ubiquitous, continuous, and insidious (Galtung, 1996; Opotow, 2001) because they are built into the fabric of most institutional structures and create normative inequities. After examining STP’s own history, STP identified several priorities to address structural and institutional barriers to DEI, including to: (1) conduct critical self-assessment to address how the organization is upholding structural inequities and barriers, (2) promote recruitment and retention of members from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, (3) promote equity and social justice initiatives, and (4) design more outreach strategies that promote inclusion. In 2020, STP began the process of self-assessment involving all major divisions within the organization and a 2021 Presidential Task Force was convened to address diversity, equity, inclusion, and international initiatives within the society. The task force offered several recommendations in an STP Color Paper (2021) outlining their overview of the self-assessment: the development of affinity groups; more inclusive representation among leadership; and more resources to support teachers of psychology from underrepresented groups themselves, and also those teaching students from underrepresented groups; more inclusive classrooms and pedagogy; and calls for an equitable and inclusive scholarship through the STP journal Teaching of Psychology. This self-assessment resulted in other organizational changes, some of which are noted below as well as proposed. STP (2020a) also recently updated its mission statement to reflect these values:
The Society for the Teaching of Psychology promotes excellence in the teaching and learning of psychology. The Society provides resources and services, access to a global collaborative community, and opportunities for professional development. It endeavors to promote equity and social justice for teachers and students of psychology with marginalized, racially minoritized, and intersecting identities. The Society also strives to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning; advocate for the needs of teachers of psychology; promote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the teaching and learning of psychology; foster partnerships across academic settings; and increase recognition of the value of the teaching profession. (para. 1)

STP’s mission statement recognizes that the teaching of psychology is a global collaboration that includes persons with marginalized, racially minoritized, and intersecting identities. However, DEI statements alone do not have long-term effects on addressing inequities (Bell et al., 2009; LePeau et al., 2019). Rather, mandatory training and long-term changes in institutionalized practices are more likely to result in cultural change. Thus, first, STP may want to institute leadership training and training related to institutional and systemic roots of bias and harm.

Second, regarding curricular content, educational leaders such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U, n.d.) have called for training in cultural competence as did the APA document, Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (2013). Although STP has DEI-related resources, these resources have not always been easy to find on the STP website. As such, a Diversity tab has been added to the main page and a “tagging” project is underway to make these resources more accessible. Nonetheless, STP needs to continually add, and update resources related to and inclusive of multicultural education and intersectional identities. However, is it simply enough to include DEI content as discrete resources, or should such content be required in all future resources? Should existing materials be examined for bias and exclusion, and identified as such? It is important for STP to address such questions recognizing the ramifications of these decisions not only on the structure, function, and content of resources but also on other areas of STP endeavors (e.g., awards, programming, publications).

Third, social justice includes elements of equity but also distributive and procedural forms of justice (Opotow, 2001; Woolf, 2019). Distributive justice is about the equitable distribution of resources, including awareness of different needs and the ability to access those resources. For example, STP endeavors to make most of its resources freely available to anyone with Internet access. Yet, access varies in many parts of the United States and the world and among people with various disabilities. A related element of distributive justice for STP involves who has access to the membership—the cost of joining may be prohibitive for many. In line with this, STP recently created two tiers of membership dues; US$25 for those living in high-income countries, based on the World Bank classifications, and all others paying US$5.

Procedural justice involves fair processes within organizational systems, including bias and harm caused by structural and institutional systems. One key element of procedural justice is the examination of systems, which create barriers to benefits from an organization or institution. For example, STP is a division of APA, and most STP members join and renew through the APA website, which makes renewal in STP seamless. However, the processes for non-APA members were historically more challenging, particularly because many prospective members incorrectly perceive that they must join APA to join STP. (In an effort to reduce this barrier, STP has recently created a new means to join or renew directly from the STP website.) Moreover, the hierarchical nature of APA membership with fewer opportunities for affiliates and associates creates barriers to DEI. Although there are fewer barriers within STP for involvement, positions such as STP Council Representatives to APA require full APA membership.

As noted above, STP has begun to examine and change systems that might be exclusionary. However, in calls for applications, is it enough to include the statement, “STP encourages applications from colleagues who are from underrepresented groups and have diverse backgrounds and experiences”? Such statements are only effective if they reach such colleagues and are viewed as genuine. Is such a statement welcoming and encouraging or viewed as a token gesture? Additionally, what role can STP play in addressing ongoing harms within educational institutions? For example, how might STP foster educational opportunities for students around the globe or increase the diversity of students in secondary school advanced placement (AP) psychology courses? What role can STP play in decolonizing the curriculum within European-rooted psychology?

Indeed, it is the realm of social justice that presents the greatest challenges to the organization. What processes can be put in place that celebrate diverse and intersectional identities, create equitable processes, and foster an inclusive teaching home? Below are actions that can be implemented:
Increase the number of presentations by and/or about BIPOC people and members of other marginalized groups at conferences and make those presentations available virtually during and after the events.

Develop mentoring programs for BIPOC, LGBTQ + , differently abled, and underrepresented persons.

Include DEI and international issues as criteria for awards, grants, and other opportunities.

Include author photos for ToP articles, author’s positionality, and/or author’s statement regarding contributions to DEI and international issues.

Develop resource materials concerning difficult dialogues, diversity awareness/consciousness, DEI teacher training, decolonizing psychology, and related topics.

Review and update STP materials to ensure greater DEI and international content.

While STP does not conduct research, the society can advocate for diversification of both qualitative and quantitative research, with a focus on inclusive teaching practices and pedagogy.
While STP’s strategies to address structural barriers to DEI are important, it should be noted that cultural forms of harm are challenging to address as they are “baked” into the fabric of a people, community, or discipline. Examples include the Protestant work ethic, class structures, belief in American exceptionalism, culturally defined gender identities and roles, and other cultural values. National cultural norms form the foundation for ongoing structural and institutional violence (Jippes et al., 2015; Stoermer et al., 2016). U.S. psychology also exists as a culture with values grounded in our conceptualization of science. For example, Chang and Sue (2005) posited that psychology’s focus on experimental designs represents a specific scientific paradigm, which has introduced bias in its focus on internal validity over external validity.

The primacy of causality has led to limitations in studying and publishing multicultural research (Bernal et al., 2014). Other cultural values, including quantification, operationalism, empiricism, positivism, power analyses, and methods of sampling, have led to harm against people who have been marginalized. As a discipline, psychology has increasingly explored the ramifications of its colonial, male-dominated, and western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD; Henrich et al., 2010) history, including through the lens of liberation psychology (e.g., Comas-Díaz & Torres Rivera, 2020) and efforts to decolonize psychology (e.g., Bhatia, 2018; Schmidt, 2019).

Addressing Structural Inequities for BIPOC and Underrepresented Teachers of Psychology

BIPOC faculty and faculty from other underrepresented groups suffer inequities in higher education, as summarized in a 2018 report by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Both BIPOC people and White women are less likely than White men to hold prestigious positions and earn less than White men overall. For faculty with identities that intersect across race and gender (e.g., BIPOC women), the outcomes are more dire. BIPOC faculty members are underpaid, underrepresented in higher-level faculty positions, and overrepresented in nonpaid and voluntary service roles (McChesney, 2018). In examining the increasing numbers of BIPOC individuals earning doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, regardless of gender, Black Americans earn doctorates at a rate that outpaces the rate at which they are hired as faculty. However, the rates are proportionate for Latinx and American Indians earning PhDs (Gumpertz et al., 2017). In addition, BIPOC faculty are generally underrepresented in STEM disciplines in the nation’s top 40 public universities (Davis & Fry, 2019).

In its statement addressing systemic racism, STP (2020b) acknowledges several inequities in the field. Specifically, that:
BIPOC instructors are often held to higher standards than their White counterparts, with implications for hiring, promotion, and tenure.

BIPOC instructors are often expected to refrain from speaking out about racism, which also has implications for hiring, promotion, and tenure.

The field of psychology tends to regard topics of race, ethnicity, and diversity as a special interest topic outside of mainstream psychology, with implications for presenting at conferences and publishing in academic journals.

Racial inequity exists in psychological research regarding work about race and ethnicity. While generally such work is not published nearly as often as other topics, when it is published, the work of White authors is disproportionately published over that of BIPOC authors. Additionally, BIPOC authors who publish work about race and ethnicity are often not esteemed as highly as White authors who do work in this area.

Research shows that students often rate equally qualified faculty members and BIPOC instructors as less skilled and competent than their White peers. Nevertheless, these evaluations are utilized in faculty performance review processes as a means to judge teaching effectiveness.
Academia, including in psychological science, is not free from structural inequities. Reviewing more than 20,000 empirical articles, Roberts et al. (2020) found that few publications that specifically addressed race; that most papers were submitted to journals with White editors (impacting the publication of papers about race); and that many papers focused on race were written by White authors. The authors highlighted the need for systemic changes to address these problems.

Another area for concern is the experiences of BIPOC and other marginalized instructors in terms of both hiring practices and student evaluations. Bavishi et al. (2010) found that even without meeting a professor face to face and when provided with identical qualifications, instructors identified as Black or Asian were rated as less competent and less legitimate, on average, than their White counterparts. In a similar study, students taking an online course rated the same instructor more negatively, on average, when students thought the instructor was female versus male (MacNell et al., 2015). Other research suggested that instructors from underrepresented groups teaching about cultural diversity were seen as more biased than instructors from dominant groups (Abel & Meltzer, 2007; Littleford et al., 2010). Finally, some instructors from marginalized groups received poorer ratings on student evaluations (with the potential for negative impacts on tenure and promotion) and were more frequently burned out than their White counterparts (Ahluwalia et al., 2019).

Faculty members belonging to underrepresented groups seldom have “counter spaces” in which they can feel safe due to systemically marginalizing structures embedded within institutions’ governance, including recruitment, hiring, and retention practices; this may be particularly true for female BIPOC faculty members (Ong et al., 2018). Findings indicate that female faculty members with a spouse and/or children do not benefit professionally in terms of tenure or rank in the same ways that male faculty members with a spouse and/or children benefit (Perna, 2005).

This gendered pattern was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Thibaut & van Wijngaarden-Cremers, 2020). For example, a study of academic productivity among faculty members during the COVID pandemic indicated that although most faculty working from home had similar work hours, participants who identified as female were tasked with far more childcare responsibilities than those who identified as male (Krukowski et al., 2021). This discrepancy impacted their overall performance. In terms of research productivity, female (versus male) researchers also had significant reductions in the amount of research proposal submissions submitted in the weeks following shutdowns because of the COVID pandemic (Cui et al., 2020). These types of differences may eventually disproportionately impact promotion and tenure for some female academics and educational institutions are therefore encouraged to explore ways to mitigate these outcomes (Krukowski et al., 2021; Malisch et al., 2020).

Institutionalized practices often fail to recognize that the differential experiences of BIPOC faculty members may place them at a disadvantage. For example, promotion and tenure practices seldom account for the informal demands placed on faculty members from underrepresented groups with regard to committee membership, as well as extra advising, support, advocacy, and mentorship solicited by students with similarly marginalized identities. It is imperative that STP create and sustain a program aligned with the aspect of its mission statement to promote equity and social justice for teachers and students of psychology with marginalized, racially minoritized, and intersecting identities.

We need to ensure that BIPOC faculty members who work to increase and retain more BIPOC students in graduate programs are also rewarded for their often invisible work. Navigating these added roles takes time away from the expectations formally evaluated in the tenure and promotion process. Ahmed (as cited in James, 2012) noted that microaggression-based costs are also relevant with regard to the adverse impact of the “extra collegiality” necessary to conform in a system that marginalizes people from underrepresented groups based on policies developed by those who may not be negatively affected by these inequities.

Teachers of psychology sometimes take on formal roles that impact larger institutional systems. Administrators (e.g., department chairs, directors of programs or centers, deans, and provosts) have opportunities to impact systems historically inaccessible or inequitable for BIPOC and other marginalized students, staff, and faculty. In addition to encouraging inclusive curricular and departmental/organizational policies, leaders in these positions can also work to dismantle systemic inequities. BIPOC faculty in formal roles have additional challenges. BIPOC faculty are often called in to formal positions within their institutional contexts to provide consultation and expertise on a number of equity, diversity, and inclusion topic. These roles are often burdensome on time and resources. BIPOC faculty may also have their ideas undermined in these spaces, providing major obstacles to creating structural changes in their institutions.

Organizations like STP can be impactful in advocating for resources and support for BIPOC faculty having these experiences, as well as advocating for structural changes in the teaching of psychology. In building its structural competencies STP could successfully navigate barriers. Structural competency is necessary for confronting more complex structural problems within organizations and may encourage advocacy beyond “individual encounters” to become more actively involved in social justice action (Ali & Sichel, 2020). Furthermore, structural competency involves “understanding the effects of oppression and structural-level disparities on the psychological well-being of marginalized groups and individuals” (Ali & Sichel, 2014, p. 1). These types of systemic and structural influences in higher education can be important factors to address barriers within our organizations.

International Relations

Internationalization in psychology higher education leads to a more inclusive and global psychology (van de Vijver, 2013) that avoids the pitfalls of remaining a purely Euro-American discipline. The internationalization of psychology also encourages the incorporation of concepts from a variety of cultures that are not specifically Western or European (Berry, 2013). Bullock (2015) noted that the goal of internationalization within psychology does not mean global or universalist principles. Instead, the goals recognize a variety of systems, concepts, and processes while navigating local, regional, and international contexts. Doing so enhances psychology’s capacity at disciplinary and organizational levels to address more geographical contexts related to DEI.

Higher education is increasingly global in its interconnectedness; scholars have argued that “the internationalisation of education policy in general, and [higher education] policy in particular, is one of the most significant forces affecting universities across the world” (Robson & Wihlborg, 2019, pp. 127–128). This is true for psychology, which is becoming increasingly international (McCarthy et al., 2012), a phenomenon that must drive the internationalization of organizations like STP. In the 1980s, 80% of psychologists globally were from the United States; more recently, fewer than 25% of psychologists globally were from the United States (Takooshian et al., 2016). The decrease in the percentage of psychologists from the United States is particularly notable because there are far more psychologists in the United States now than in the 1980s.

It is also important to note that, unlike in the United States and Canada, most countries do not require psychologists to hold a doctorate; rather, the standard worldwide is the master’s degree, (Nolan et al., 2020). The shorter path to becoming a psychologist stands in stark contrast to the United States and Canada, where the educational requirements are about double that, and has likely opened the field to more diverse representation. Moreover, a global movement toward “harmonization” (a more flexible form of standardization) of psychology curricula and degrees has increased the mobility of psychologists across borders, particularly outside of the United States. And discussions of assessment of psychology education are occurring more frequently across countries (e.g., Cranney et al., 2021).

As more psychology instructors work beyond our national borders, we must develop competencies to ensure that we are teaching in an ethically, internationally, and culturally responsible manner. International competencies should include foundational competencies, those not related to a specific professional role, including “(a) awareness of self in relation to the country, community, and culture; (b) linguistic and communication practices; and (c) familiarity with the constructs and influence of global and local systems” (Morgan-Consoli et al., 2018, p. 177). They also should include competencies specific to the role, including teaching. STP could become a leader in fostering such competencies.

Relatedly, psychology instruction itself must embrace internationalization in addition to DEI. Too much of the psychology canon was built using samples from WEIRD countries (e.g., Arnett, 2016). An examination of the widely distributed journal Psychological Science found that more than 94% of studies in published in that journal were based on samples from WEIRD countries, with many not disclosing demographic details about their samples, limiting external validity (Cheon et al., 2020; Rad et al., 2018).

In the teaching and learning of psychology, global citizenship education (GCED) is a useful pedagogical practice in higher education (Larsen, 2014; Shultz, 2007). Davies (2006) described GCED as a direct concern with social justice and an active role in global affairs. GCED also identified educational practices that address the more complex systems that create and maintain exploitation and disempowerment (e.g., de Andreotti, 2014). GCED is applicable at all levels of education, including colleges and universities seeking to cultivate graduates prepared to be successful in a global arena (Boni & Calabuig, 2017; Caruana, 2014).

GCED has specific implications for teachers of psychology. Psychological science researchers Iva Katzarska-Miller and Stephen Reysen conducted a study to evaluate a specific model for global citizenship education (2019). Their work showcased the relevancy of global citizenship education for both college students and younger learners. In their study, global citizenship was described as having intersections among awareness, caring, and an embrace of cultural diversity. Additionally, the model promotes social justice and sustainable practices coupled with a responsibility to act (see also Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013).

International Psychology Learning and Teaching Organizations

The field of psychology learning and teaching continues to grow more global. As mentioned previously, a number of international groups and organizations exist and also share STP’s mission to advance the teaching of psychology in a variety of academic and educational environments. In STP, both the International Relations Committee and the International Twitter Poster Conference are mechanisms for incorporating international perspectives in the field. In 2018, STP hosted the Global Education Summit for teachers of psychology in collaboration with the University for Peace in Costa Rica (established by the United Nations). STP co-sponsored a similar virtual course in 2020. These experiences were designed to assist psychology faculty in attendance to explore and apply principles of global citizenship education pedagogy to further internationalize the teaching of psychology.

International psychology learning and teaching networks and events might be useful in maintaining international relationships and connections within the field.¹ At present, not all of the existing networks and conferences have held events in the past few years; this was true even before the pandemic. A structured and organized network of international psychology educators and more opportunities for international networking at conferences could be a useful addition to the field.

Conclusion

STP is committed to DEI and international connections and has made progress, as evidenced by the changes we summarized. We believe that STP should play a pivotal role in changing the cultural, structural, and institutional processes representing ongoing barriers to DEI and social justice within the organization and the teaching of psychology.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Kelley D. Haynes-Mendez

Susan A. Nolan

Linda M. Woolf

Notes

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