History Of Psychology Courses? Influence On Students? Personal Epistemologies

This paper explored how the history of psychology course influences students’ personal epistemologies and if, and how, this alters students’ perceptions of psychological knowledge. Students’ ways of knowing, their experience in the history of psychology course, and their attitudes towards psychology were collected by open-ended interviews with students and qualitatively analyzed. The findings were largely reflected the empirical and theoretical bodies of work on personal epistemology and the history of psychology. The results suggested that a development in students’ ways of knowing and a broadening in students’ conceptualizations about psychological knowledge and institutional psychology took place following their completion of the course. The results contribute to existing personal epistemology literature which is always engaged with the role and outcome of education on students’ beliefs about knowledge. Furthermore, this research also contributed to discourse regarding the history of psychology course’s position within academic psychology, and the importance of teaching history critically.