The teaching of psychology in the contemporary university: Beyond the accreditation guidelines

Abstract

Current Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) imperatives for generic skills and quality constitute a challenge for university teaching. There is an increasing recognition in higher education that this challenge cannot be adequately addressed by a top-down approach but requires bottom-up integration of generic skills in curricula. Psychology has long claimed that the very nature of our discipline provides our graduates with a wealth of transferable skills and perhaps assumed that our science identity and the profession's commitment to self-regulation provide adequate testament to the quality of our programmes. There is however, evidence of room for improvement and it is argued that in positively addressing the generic skills challenge, we can improve student outcomes in our undergraduate programmes.