A psychology teacher is a professionally trained educator who focuses on teaching students about psychology concepts. A psychology teacher with a bachelor’s degree can teach high school students, but a PhD is required to teach psychology at the college level. The range of psychological topics that a teacher lectures on is usually determined the age level of his or her students as well as the class’s specialization.
One of a psychology teacher’s most common responsibilities is to teach students the fundamental concepts of psychology. Many introductory psychology courses cover the seven major behavioral approaches: cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, psychodynamic, sociocultural, biological, and humanistic theories. Teachers will typically concentrate on scientific issues relating to psychology, such as the functions of various brain areas and how they contribute to mental illnesses.
A psychology teacher may focus on the research methods used in psychological studies and experiments in more advanced psychology classes. He or she could instruct students on the history of well-known psychological experiments and their impact on behavior research. A teacher may also give a lecture on research ethics, such as the value of unbiased observation and the importance of not causing psychological trauma to participants in the name of research. In most research-based psychology courses, students will learn how to calculate statistics correctly.
A psychology professor who teaches at a higher level may choose topics that are more specialized. The study of abnormal psychology is a common specialized psychology course. Personality disorders, depression, and manic disorders, as well as drug and alcohol addictions, are all included in the category of abnormal psychology.
Developmental psychology is another popular specialty psychology class that a teacher can teach. This branch of psychology focuses on the various psychological issues that arise throughout a person’s life, from early childhood to adolescence, middle age, and the elderly dealing with mortality. Students may learn about different parenting styles and how children learn most effectively at different stages of their development from developmental psychology professors.
Teachers of psychology may also choose to focus their classes on the impact of psychology on various social issues. Different communication styles and which ones work best are frequently discussed in social psychology classes. These classes may also cover topics such as gender or race psychology, such as discussing the causes and effects of discrimination or investigating how different genders or races are portrayed in the media and how this may influence people’s perspectives.