An Action Orientation to Pedagogy Through Teaching Field Social Psychology

A confluence of societal challenges and critiques of dominant modes of psychological science have created an opportunity to reassess how research in the discipline is taught to future generations of researchers. Given this context, psychology instructors must employ methodological approaches and concrete strategies that provide students with research tools focused on developing effective and ecologically valid insights about everyday life. In this paper we aim to offer a way to address this need through a review of field social psychology and an argument for incorporating this approach into the teaching of psychology across levels. Field social psychology is a conceptual and methodological approach to researching psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis with emphasis on people’s everyday socio-cultural environments. We discuss what this framework entails, make an argument for why it should be taught and how it integrates with an action teaching orientation, and present concrete applications in undergraduate and graduate instruction and mentoring. We argue that this integration can promote the development and growth of students as psychologists prepared to engage with society and critical psychosocial questions of the contemporary world.