Personal Space: Mr Chips Changes Brains

Most psychologists of all stripes are likely to have gone through a course of training in which they would have been taught the elements of their particular field of psychology. The chances are that the teaching they experienced will have been a form of lecturing, possibly augmented by fieldwork or assessed coursework. These experiences will have followed many years of school learning where variants of the 'chalk and talk' approach will have been employed. Those who later go on to teach psychology themselves are highly likely to use the same methods as they experienced. They will probably have neither had any training in teaching nor made any study of pedagogy. Thus, the common factor in the professional lives of most psychologists will be some experience of teaching, the staple of which is the full frontal 'stand and deliver' mode.

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