answering open questions to prepare for an exam teaching psychology in germany 6th international...

Answering open questions to prepare for an exam

Teaching Psychology in Germany

6th International Conference on Psychology Education; Flagstaff 2014

Birgit SpinathHeidelberg University

Germany


University Education in Germany

- vast majority of universities are owned and financed by the 16 federal states

- quality differences between universities are rather small

- no tuition fees

Psychology Teaching in Germany


University Education in Germany

- major change came with Bologna Process

- degrees changed from diploma to bachelorand master

- typical bachelor’s degree: 3 years

- typical master’s degree: 2 years



Psychology as a Major

- about 50 psychology departments acrossGermany provide both bachelor and masterpsychology programs

- typical size of a psychology major bachelorcohort: 100 students

- master cohorts typically a little smaller; most departments aspire to have as many master students as they have bachelor students

- almost all bachelor programs cover the full range of basic and applied sub-disciplines (in accordance with DGPs recommendations)

- most master programs have some kind of specialization but are still broad enough to grant the degree “Master of Psychology”

- almost all students aspire a master’s degree



Psychology as a Minor

- although psychology is a very popular minor,departments usually accept only few psychology minor students

Psychology in Teacher Education

- Psychology is an important part in pre-service teacher education

- almost all pre-service teacher students take psychology courses

- the number of psychology courses they have to take varies across federal states



Quality of Psychology Teaching

- the quality of psychology teachingis considered to be high

- almost all professors have bothresearch and teaching obligations

- a lot of the teaching is done by professors(as well as by post-docs and doctoral students)



Quality of Psychology Teaching

- strong connection between researchand teaching; students often becomeinvolved with ongoing research projectsearly in their bachelor programs

- all programs undergo both university internal (evaluation) and external (accreditation) quality assurance processes

- university instructors have options to attend courses to improve their teaching but they are not obliged to do so



Employability of PsychologyStudents

- in Germany, academics have avery low unemployment rate

- among academics in Germany, psychology graduates have one of the lowest unemployment rates

- the majority of students work in the clinical and health sector

- other major fields of work are counselling, training, quality management, personnel management and development



Who are Our Psychology Students?

- Psychology is a very popular major

- e.g., at Heidelberg University, we have more than 5.000 applicants for 90 bachelorplaces

- students are highly selected (main criterion: school GPA)

- students have both high cognitive ability and strong motivation to learn about psychology

- students graduate with very good grades

- about 1/3 of the master graduates continues to do a Ph.D.



Upcoming Changes in the Teaching of Psychologyin Germany

- the German ministry of health wants study programs of clinical psychology to end with the license to practice as a clinical psychologist (like for medical doctors) - to this end, special master programs in clinical psychology and psychotherapy have to be designed

- these programs will be much more specialized than most master programs today and they will contain a high portion of practical courses



Anticipated Dangers of Specialized Clinical Master Programs

- programs that lead to one special profession provide a less broad and less scientific education (because of the high practical shares they need to include) - unity of psychology as a discipline endangered

- many non-clinical psychologists cannot or do not want to teach in purely clinical study programs

- it is difficult to estimate how many students will want to study in these specialized clinical programs and how many will be interested in different psychology programs (question of resources for different programs)




Time for Questions and Discussion

answering open questions to prepare for an exam teaching psychology in germany 6th international...

Documents

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