Everyday Psychology

Catalog description

PSYC 4460 is an activity-based course with three major goals. First, the course is an opportunity for psychology and cognitive science undergrad majors to develop their professional and science communication skills and share their enthusiasm for these topics with high school students at a nearby public high school in West Philadelphia. In this regard, Penn students will prepare demonstrations and hands-on activities to engage local high school students, increase their knowledge in functions of the mind and brain, providing insights that may promote well being for the high school students and their community. This will be accomplished as students design and execute hands-on/minds-on activities on a range of psychology topics. There will be 10 sessions across the semester for these lessons, allowing the college and high school students to develop a consistent teacher-learner relationship. Second, students will explore the literature that discusses the need for better bridges between scientific research and the broader community. Discussions will incorporate the students' experiences, including challenges and rewards, as they bring psychology lessons to local youth. This academic portion of the course will include guest lectures from the Penn community who actively engaged in community partnerships. Third, students will be challenged to consider solutions for any problems that they encounter using a Theory of Change framework. This aspect of the course will result in a final project in which students much create logical, realistic, evidence-based links between interventions, indicators of change, and ultimate impacts to mitigate the problems.