Can Journaling Help Psychology Majors Achieve Learning Outcomes?

For our study, we posed the question: Can journaling, which has been shown to enhance students\u27 learning (e.g., Blake, 2005; Mills, 2008), help psychology majors achieve the learning outcomes outlined in the American Psychological Association\u27s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major ? The participants for our study were 30 psychology majors enrolled in a 200-level developmental psychology course during the fall 2012 semester at Agnes Scott College. Over the course of the semester, each student wrote a total of 38 one-page journal entries, each on a different assigned topic within developmental psychology. During the last class, the participants completed a paper-and-pencil survey in order to obtain their feedback on the journal entries, as they relate to APA\u27s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major . The students reported that the journals helped them most with achieving the learning outcomes of Knowledge Base , Application, Critical Thinking , Personal Development , and Values