Essentials of Psychology: Concepts and Applications 5th Edition

Book Preface

Fifth Edition of Essentials of Psychology: Concepts and Applications. I set out to accomplish three major purposes in writing this text:
1. To make the study of psychology accessible and engaging to beginning students in psychology
2. To provide students with a solid grounding in the knowledge base in psychology
3. To help students succeed in the course

The IDEA Model of Course Assessment:

Mapping Acquired Skills to APA Learning Goals
This text offers a unique pedagogical framework, called the IDEA model of course assessment, which is grounded in the widely used taxonomy of educational objectives developed by renowned educational researcher Benjamin Bloom. Each chapter begins with a listing of learning objectives expressed in the form of action verbs tied to measurable learning outcomes. The action verbs represent four key acquired skills paralleling those in Bloom’s taxonomy. The action verbs identify, dene, and describe represent basic cognitive skills in Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge and comprehension, or remembering and understanding in the revised taxonomy). The action verb apply represents an intermediate level of skills development needed to apply knowledge to real-life situations and examples, and the action verbs explain and evaluate represent the highest or most complex level of skills acquisition in Bloom’s taxonomy—skills needed to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information (or analyzing, evaluating, and creating in the revised taxonomy). These action verbs conveniently spell out the simple acronym
IDEA:

Identify . . . key gures in the history of psychology, parts of nervous system, and so on. Define or Describe . . . key concepts and features of major psychological theories.
Evaluate or Explain . . . underlying processes and mechanisms of behavior and mental processes.

Apply . . . psychological concepts to real-world examples. The IDEA model is integrated with the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major, Version 2.0, which identies ve major learning goals and corresponding student learning outcomes for undergraduate majors in psychology. Learning objectives in this text are mapped onto APA learning goals (see table later in the Preface) to ensure that beginning students in psychology are exposed to core concepts in the eld and foundational areas of competence in the psychology major.

The IDEA model is also integrated with the test-item le so that instructors can select items measuring these particular outcomes—to identify, dene or describe, evaluate or explain, and apply knowledge of psychology. To help students accomplish these objectives, thetext
adopts a learning-centric approach to help students encode and retain key concepts in psychology. The keystones of this approach include the following concept-based pedagogical tools:
Concept Signaling Key concepts, not just key terms, are identied and highlighted in the margins to help students encode and retain core concepts.
Concept Charts These built-in study charts are “see-ata- glance” capsulized summaries of key concepts to help reinforce new knowledge.
Concept Links This feature highlights connections between key concepts across chapters. Concept links are integrated with the key concepts in the margins, so that students can see how core concepts are applied across different areas of psychology.
Concept Maps for Psychology This online visual learning tool helps students visualize connections between key concepts in the text. Concept maps are available through Cengage Learning’s MindTap. Concept maps are schematic diagrams comprising key concepts that are represented in boxed shapes called nodes, which are connected by links that typically take the form of verbs or conjunctions. Unlike other study charts, concept maps can be read either across or down the page to express a coherent knowledge structure. To encourage active learning, concept maps are presented in an incomplete (ll-in-the-blanks) form to engage students in the process of completing these knowledge structures. The answers are also available online.