Ethics Education in Franciscan Undergraduate Psychology Programs
- PDF / 204,179 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 65 Downloads / 246 Views
Ethics Education in Franciscan Undergraduate Psychology Programs Ana Ruiz 1
1
& Judith Warchal & Di You
1
# Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Ethics education is an important goal in higher education overall. It is not clear how well psychology programs are meeting this goal. The American Psychology Association’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (APA 2013) were created to support high-quality education in psychology. The Guidelines focus on five goals including Ethical and Social Responsibility in a Diverse World. This study is a review of ethics information available online from Franciscan Colleges and Universities. We accessed 24 Franciscan institutions and reviewed the available information provided by 22 of them. We asked several questions: Whether the psychology department provided a mission statement and was ethics addressed in it? What courses focused on ethics or mentioned ethics in their description? Were there other institutional ethics courses required for psychology majors? Was ethics mentioned in the institution mission? The results of this study indicate a need for more intentional inclusion of ethics in university and program mission statements as well as specific courses for the undergraduate psychology major. Keywords Ethics . Courses . Mission . Undergraduate psychology . Franciscan education In this time of rapid technological advances, potential higher education students are taking advantage of virtual tours and accessing online information to get an impression of the institution and programs of interest (Selingo 2017). Now, more than ever, a department’s mission statement and list of courses communicate goals and values of a program to students and the general public. While undergraduate psychology programs are not subject to the rigors of an accreditation body, they often refer to the American Psychological Association (APA) for guidance in program development. The APA’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology
* Ana Ruiz [email protected]
1
Psychology and Counseling Department, Alvernia University, 400 St. Bernardine St., Reading, PA 19607, USA
A. Ruiz et al.
Major (APA 2013) were created to support high-quality education by focusing on five goals that Bideally would be included in programs’ mission and vision^ (p. 4). In a review of 1336 websites of U.S. undergraduate psychology departments, Warchal et al. (2017) identified 205 (29.53%) that provided mission statements. The review further indicated that Ethical and social responsibility in a diverse world (APA Goal 3) was the most frequently cited goal. However, a closer examination of the content showed that the focus was on diversity, not ethics, with ethics and values only mentioned in 23.41% of the available departmental mission statements. Teaching of ethics by psychology programs at the undergraduate level is not consistent nor intentional, and specific courses in ethics in these programs are rare. You et al. (2011) found only one ethics course after a review of 161 courses syllabi on Project Syllabi
Data Loading...
