Jane S. Halonen

This supportive guide offers undergraduate Psychology students an active learning approach to critical thinking. Throughout the books the authors include a wealth of hands-on exercises that span the spectrum of topics in psychology from neuroscience, cognitive, social, abnormal, and developmental psychology. The companion uses the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy as a framework to explore how psychology students can improve their critical thinking skills related to the science of mind and behaviour. Designed to support any introduction to psychology or critical thinking course, this engaging and concise companion takes an active learning approach to developing students’ critical thinking skills.

Using Quality Benchmarks for Assessing and Developing Undergraduate Programs Using Quality Benchmarks for Assessing and Developing Undergraduate Programs introduces selected performance criteria?benchmarks?to assist undergraduate programs in defining their educational goals and documenting their effectiveness. The book explores the attributes of undergraduate programs by focusing on educationally related activities in eight domains: program climate; assessment, accountability, and accreditation issues; student learning outcomes; student development; curriculum; faculty characteristics; program resources; and administrative support. Further, it conceptualizes a continuum of performance for each attribute in each of the domains to characterize underdeveloped, developing, effective, and distinguished achievement for undergraduate programs. The goal of the book is to encourage individual departments at various types of institutions to evaluate what they currently do well while identifying areas for refinement or future growth. When benchmarks reveal that a program is underdeveloped, faculty and administrators can plan for how they can best direct subsequent efforts and resources to improve a program's performance and ability to serve students. Emphasizing formative assessment over summative or punitive evaluation, the benchmarks in this book are designed to improve program quality, encourage more effective program reviews, and help optimally functioning programs compete more successfully for resources. Using performance benchmarks to identify areas of program strength can, in turn, be used to recruit and retain students, seek funding via grants or alumni support, and enhance the perceived rating of an institution.

A significant revision of Jane Halonen and John Santrock's groundbreaking textbook representing psychology as a science while emphasizing its real world contextual dimensions, this edition has expanded its scope to incorporate information about applications and skills related to the discipline. Streamlined by more than 100 pages, making it more accessible and affordable, the text provides students with a proven pedagogical program designed to facilitate comprehension. Despite significant changes in design and structure, the paramount goals for this text remain true. First, to present the field of psychology as a science in as solid and interesting way as possible, and secondly to engage and challenge students with real world information that will motivate them to learn.