Integrating research training and the teaching of positive psychology

Abstract

Faculty hoping to add a Positive Psychology course into the undergraduate curriculum as a regularly taught stand-alone course may face multiple hurdles: finding the time to develop the course, and once it is developed, attaining approval by departmental level as well as college level curriculum committees. In addition, even after the approval process, faculty might find that the ability to regularly offer the course may be limited due to the demand for the teaching of other basic courses. On the other hand, most undergraduate Psychology curriculums require students to successfully complete at least one course on research methodology. We describe two courses, a 200-level and an upper-level course, that integrates positive psychology topics into the teaching of research methods and hands-on research experience.

Keywords:

• teaching of psychology
• positive psychology
• research methodology