The Changing Content of Teaching

In the 1950s there continued to be conflicting views about the teaching of psychology in social studies courses to future social work students who were restive about academic psychology, sometimes narrowly focused on perception, intelligence, motivation, memory, habit, and so forth in isolation from developmental and social contexts. It was agreed that students needed a good grounding in general psychology before they went on to professional courses, but different universities did not give a common basis of knowledge. This increased the split between the academics and the professionals. The JUC held meetings on the subject which debated the problem of how to teach psychology to non-specialists while maintaining scientific integrity by teaching what was known, how knowledge had been obtained, and the little that was known. It was suggested that the framework should include cognitive and developmental processes and the individual in relation to his society. It should aim to demonstrate to students that the systematic study of human behaviour by scientific methods was possible, and to induce a disciplined and broadminded intellectual and emotional attitude towards human behaviour ( Barnes and Tajfel, 1958 ; Trasler, 1959 ).