Writing as a Tool for Teaching Social Psychology

Abstract

The process of writing is a highly productive tool for learning the concepts and methods of social psychology. Writing, however, is most often used as an evaluative tool rather than as a teaching tool. This paper describes practical ways in which writing can be used in an introductory social psychology course to enhance the students' learning. Keeping a course log (a type of journal), writing analyses of published articles, doing an observational study, and writing a formal research report are among the ideas presented. The techniques described here can be applied to any course in psychology and are not uniquely applicable to social psychology.