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PSYC(AFAM) 2150 (UGA)
Understanding Cultural Diversity (3 semester hours)
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Cross-cultural psychology, including an examination of issues such as conformity, leadership, and attributional style as they vary across different cultures, with consideration of their implications for the emerging world.

Requirements: Eight lessons, two examinations.

Instructor: Matthew S. Harrison, M.S., or Wendy Reynolds-Dobbs, M.S., The University of Georgia.

Texts: Monteiro, Ethnicity and Psychology: African-, Asian-, Latino-, and Native-American Psychologies, Kendall/Hunt, 1995; course packet.



AFAM (PSYC) 2150
Understanding Cultural Diversity
Course Overview

Introduction

What would psychology look like if people of color and their associated cultural world views were placed at the center of analysis? Would there be any change in the things we take for granted about humanness, about psychology, about what is universal or important? Psychologists and others from various racial, ethnic, national, and cultural backgrounds have explored questions such as these empirically and theoretically. In this class, we will survey some of these perspectives and the work that supports them.

This is a survey course on multicultural psychology, with an emphasis on non-white perspectives in the field of psychology. Following UGA guidelines, this course addresses only major ethnic groups residing in the United States of America. One main goal of this course is for you to come away with a multiculturally enriched view of psychology. We will achieve this by 1) exploring theories and research on how individuals confront and interact with members of other cultures and 2) participating in course activities that will provide cross-cultural contact. As part of this, we will explore how other categories, such as gender, generation, and sexual orientation, interconnect with ethnicity to produce a multifaceted group composition.

A second goal of the course is for you to gain some familiarity with research methods. We will achieve this by conducting a series of “mini-experiments.” A third goal is for you to sharpen your critical thinking skills. We will work toward these two goals by 1) examining the field of psychology, 2) examining our own behaviors and experiences, and 3) responding to a series of opinion questions where your response will be assessed by how well you support your perspective. /p>

Course Materials

  • Monteiro, K.P., Ethnicity and Psychology: African-, Asian-, Latino-, and Native-American Psychologies (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt), 1995
  • course packet containing supplementary readings

Lesson Preparation

The readings and assignments for this course are broken down into eight lessons. Most assignments will consist of five components. The point values of the components, which will vary depending on the emphasis of that lesson, will be given in each assignment. Along with allowing me to assess your knowledge of the information presented, each of these components has other goals, specified below. These five components are:

Essay Questions

  • These will usually require you to synthesize information from several of the reading assignments and supplementary materials.
  • These types of questions are included because research has shown that synthesizing information from several sources increases comprehension of the material.

Activities

  • These are the equivalent of the classroom activities and out-of-class projects that would be completed during a classroom version of this course.
  • These activities are designed to (1) move your consideration of the material outside of the text and into the lived world, (2) introduce you to some of the research methods employed in the social sciences, and (3) stimulate self-reflection in order to realize the personal relevancy of the material.

Student Archives

Within the classroom, when students have completed a project, they share their experiences and findings with other students in small groups. This way, students gain both a detailed knowledge of their project plus a more general knowledge of what other students found. As students have always commented positively on these sharing experiences, I have included in each lesson an activity to provide you with a similar experience. Your response to each of these activities will be shared with future students. You will be asked to select a response of a previous student from the appropriate lesson folder under “Student Archives” and respond to it as specified in the lesson. In turn, after grading your lesson, I will place your response to the specified activity in the same folder (identified only by a non-sequential number) for use by future students.

Opinion Question

  • Your answers to these questions cannot be “right” or “wrong,” as they are your opinion, but they will be assessed for the depth of thought you have put into your response. If I feel that you have not addressed the topic seriously, you will not get credit for your response.
  • The goal here is the stimulation of your critical and sometimes creative thinking processes by considering a question that does not have a “correct” answer.

Extra Credit

  • You may receive one point of extra credit on each assignment by writing a response to an additional student archive.
  • All extra-credit activities must be turned in as part of the lesson. They will not be accepted separately from the appropriate lesson. You cannot earn more than one point of extra credit per assignment.