Undergraduate psychology education and assessment: International perspectives

We present perspectives from five nations (Australia, Indonesia, Italy, UK, USA), with a particular emphasis on undergraduate psychology education outcomes and their assessment, but taking into account the broader higher education context. A number of commonalities were identified, including: the nature of the intended graduate competencies; many more graduates from UG programs than places for graduate training in psychology; diversity of graduate destinations for undergraduate graduates; often conflicting pressures (reflecting different stakeholders) on the nature of education and training; and the lack of training and resourcing of faculty in terms of authentic assessment. A beginning set of recommendations/solutions is identified, including: increased emphasis on the development and assessment of scientific thinking, particularly research and critical thinking skills; increased emphasis on assessment of whole-of-program learning outcomes in addition to assessment of unit-level outcomes; increased emphasis on psychological literacy as the ‘umbrella’ graduate outcome that includes evidence-based strategies for career development learning; explicit delineation of career development learning as one of the goals of psychology major education; and increased emphasis on training of faculty in authentic assessment. The implementation of these recommendations may best be achieved by passionate psychology educators working through their national or international disciplinary/professional bodies to achieve changes through accreditation or other national or international quality assurance schemes. Moreover, such bodies could promote relevant faculty professional development through supporting/instigating psychology education conferences, grant schemes, and awards, all leading to greater student employability and global citizenship, and a more applied focus that can benefit society generally