L.E.A.R.N. (Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network) (Psychology) (USYD)

Title: The discipline that couldn’t explain itself: Narrative identity and Psychology’s crisis of coherence

Abstract:

Anyone familiar with Psychology’s history will recognise a discipline shaped by fragmentation, competing paradigms, and unresolved questions about Psychology’s identity and purpose. These tensions have become more pronounced in contemporary debates about open science, interdisciplinarity, decolonisation, and Psychology’s standing beyond being ‘just’ a science. In this presentation, we argue that Psychology continues to face an identity problem that is at once theoretical, pedagogical, and professional. We situate the problem historically, tracing enduring tensions between experimental science, applied practice, and humanistic approaches. Drawing on McAdams’ narrative identity framework, we propose that Psychology’s pluralism can be understood not only as intellectual diversity, but also as narrative fragmentation.

We then examine how Psychology’s narrative is encountered by students in undergraduate education. Undergraduate curricula often present Psychology as a collection of disparate topic areas, with limited explicit guidance on how these areas connect to one another or to students’ emerging professional identities. We argue that this lack of a shared disciplinary narrative has important negative consequences for student engagement, sense of belonging, and their understanding of Psychology as a coherent and meaningful field of study.

We then present findings examining first-year students’ perceptions of the implicit and explicit narratives operating within our large introductory Psychology courses. Our findings reveal systematic mismatches between what we teach within the scientist-practitioner model and student narratives potentially shaped by career aspirations and broader societal understandings of Psychology.

We conclude by addressing how narrative coherence can function as a unifying device for Psychology education, linking disciplinary identity, pedagogical practice, and student professional development. More broadly, we suggest that addressing Psychology’s identity challenges begins not only with theoretical integration, but with the stories we tell both ourselves and our students about what Psychology is and can be.

Bio:

L.E.A.R.N (Psychology) is a collective of education‑focused academics within the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, dedicated to advancing evidence‑based teaching and learning in higher education. The group has enjoyed recent success in securing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grant funding for innovative projects spanning feedback literacy, clinical supervision, self‑regulated learning, peer‑assisted study, and learning analytics. Funded initiatives include:  Facing Feedback: Developing Student–Teacher Feedback Literacy Through Partnership; Advancing Clinical Supervision Pedagogy: Using Developmentally‑Tailored Approaches to Strengthen Engagement, Competency, and Confidence in Early Clinical Placements; Teaching First‑Year Students How to Learn: Co‑Designing Self‑Regulated Learning at Scale; The Value of Peer‑Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) for Mathematics and Statistics Students; and Early Warning: Using AI to Predict and Support At‑Risk Students in Large‑Scale Units.