"Assessment fever has swept through higher education. Psychologists--teachers, researchers, and administrators--have long been concerned with what and how well students are learning, retaining, and applying disciplinary information; however, growing national concerns about educational accountability encourage greater scrutiny of what we strive to accomplish in the psychology classroom, regardless of the specific academic context. As this book attests, the concern about assessing psychology education is broad and deep, involving teachers at the high school, two-year college, and four-year college and university levels. The problem for psychology education is obvious: Few available resources tackle assessment by outlining concrete practices. Educators and administrators want access to effective research on teaching and learning that can be applied in the classroom or shared with the public. This book fills the current void in assessing outcomes, measuring achievement, and promoting quality instruction in psychology. It does so for several compelling reasons. First, there are no current books examining student assessment in psychology education. Yet student assessment is a nascent, lively topic in educational circles, so a resource like this one is long overdue. Second, the discipline of psychology has not yet formally endorsed recognized competencies and outcomes that are widely available or publicly accepted. This volume is a first step toward doing so. Third, disparate assessment articles are available in the psychological literature but are not readily available in a single source like this one. This book is a moveable feast of assessment options, great and small--Book.
