Jennifer Harper on Writing Her Own Introductory Psychology Book

Growing up, my father owned a pawnshop, so I’ve been fascinated by human behavior from a young age. This fascination eventually led to a career as a psychology professor, a chair of a psychology department, and most recently, the author of an online, interactive psychology textbook. But it began in the pawnshop.

In the pawnshop, I interacted with customers from all walks of life. I remember people tearfully pawning family heirlooms to pay for medical bills, musicians looking for good deals on used guitars, and millionaires who’d buy jewelry for their wives and tell them they got it from a high-end store. I learned to listen to people instead of make assumptions about them. And I learned a lot about human psychology, as well: how our beliefs shape and distort our perceptions, how childhood experiences have long-term effects, how so many things motivate and influence our behavior.

How I Discovered Educational Psychology

To this day, I think of certain customers when I teach about learned helplessness and think of others when I teach about grit and proactive coping.

As a teenager, most of my understanding of psychology came from media portrayals of psychiatrists, such as Frasier. But when I was a junior in high school, a teacher decided to resurrect a psychology elective. I immediately enrolled.

It wasn’t exactly a great class. We used a 20-year old textbook the teacher found in the storage closet and mostly spent class time watching Phillip Zimbardo’s “Discovering Psychology” video series. But I was hooked, especially by the topics of memory and cognitive development.

The following year, I had an unpleasant experience in my math class. I had a teacher tell me that I was asking too many questions, and the ones that I was asking didn’t matter. Obviously, I disagreed, so I decided to take it upon myself to research why asking questions does matter in the learning process. During this pursuit, I accidentally discovered the field of educational psychology. And I knew, after skimming a few articles in the Journal of Educational Psychology, that that was the field I would go into.

I realized I could apply psychology to help and support teachers and students. I didn’t know what that would look like as a job, and I never imagined that it would involve me writing my own textbook. But everything I have done and continue to do in my career is done to support and help teachers and students.

My Frustrations Using Traditional Textbooks

As a graduate student at the University of Georgia, I studied applied cognition and development. I also studied instructional design, knowing that it would help me support teachers. My research centered on motivation and how teachers’ beliefs about student motivation influence their responses to student behaviors.

Later, as an associate professor at a small liberal arts college, I tried using the traditional textbooks my psychology department had chosen. But they all failed to connect with my students. There was a gap between the rich, varied lives of my students and the examples and applications provided in the books. And while I emphasized research methods and scientific thinking in my courses, the traditional textbooks I was using only discussed research methods in the first chapter—and they rarely revisited them.

I wanted a textbook that would:

• teach research throughout,
• help students develop the ability and confidence to read and understand real academic studies, and
• get students interested enough to actually do the reading.

It felt impossible to find a textbook that not only covers the essential theories and concepts of psychology but also relates to the diverse experiences of our students and helps them meet concrete objectives for the course.

I was equally dissatisfied with the free OER textbooks and with the expensive books and software packages, which honestly weren’t much better and left me feeling guilty for asking students to pay so much.

These frustrations became the driving forces behind the creation of Psychology in the Real World—a text I made to bridge the gap between what was on the market and what I felt students actually needed.

Inclusive Teaching: Crafting Content that Resonates with Nontraditional Students

My 10+ years of experience in the classroom and my tenure as department chair at Tusculum University have shown me the real and urgent need for a resource that speaks directly to our students’ lives and scaffolds their critical thinking.

And my studies in educational psychology have taught me how crucial it is to meet students where they’re at, to respect what they’re going through, and to acknowledge their beliefs about themselves. I also know the importance of frequent formative assessment, of repetition in learning, and of material that is both accessible and engaging.

I’ve filled the webtext with real-world examples that illustrate the concepts and theories central to any introductory psychology course. I’ve deliberately crafted examples that will resonate with both traditional undergraduates as well as those who are balancing studies with work and family responsibilities.

When I taught using traditional textbooks, my students would often joke to me about the examples and what they really wanted to learn was how you could use operant conditioning to teach your husband to fill the dishwasher properly or how to apply self-determination theory to the teams they led at work.

I wrote Psychology in the Real World for all students, including the ones who are considered “non-traditional.” The webtext itself is built on the principles of inclusive teaching. The images, names, and example scenarios I’ve included mirror the diverse experiences of our student body.

Original video interviews with practicing psychologists, therapists, and professors close out each chapter. These too are appropriately inclusive. The people we’ve selected represent the diversity of the field in their perspectives, backgrounds, and areas of expertise. These conversations show students that the concepts and theories they’re learning about don’t just exist on the page but in the real world.

Building Critical Skills by Integrating Research Throughout the Text

Each chapter contains a Research Spotlight page. These pages offer students the chance to compare a headline to the methods and data of the research study it’s based on. They expose students to real research and afford them opportunities to read charts and identify different types of variables and claims. This repeated practice helps them build their statistical and data literacy.

Psychology instructors agree that it’s important for students to think critically about claims that are supposedly based on research. Our textbooks should be helping us equip students with the tools they need to do that—but traditional textbooks simply fall short of this.

I designed Psychology in the Real World to address these challenges head-on. By integrating research methods throughout the text, students can see the relevance of these core concepts in every chapter, reinforcing their understanding and application of critical skills.

Using Webtext Technology to Engage Students in a Better Learning Experience

One of the many perks of building this book within the Soomo platform is that it allows instructors to assign the reading and formative assessment pages for credit. This ensures your students will actually interact with the webtext and demonstrate their learning. And with Soomo, everything is all in one place. The questions are right there in the text, so students develop the habit of pausing as they read and check their understanding.

Psychology in the Real World is my response to our shared challenges as educators. It’s a low-cost resource designed to engage students by making psychology relevant and applicable to their lives outside the classroom. I hope this webtext will not only facilitate learning but also inspire a deeper interest in psychology among your students, showing them how these concepts play out in everyday scenarios.

I invite you to consider Psychology in the Real World for your next psychology course. Together, we can provide a learning experience that respects the diversity of student experiences and promotes a meaningful engagement with the field of psychology. Let’s make psychology relevant, engaging, and applicable for all our students.

You can explore the webtext yourself by visiting its catalog page, where you can also access its table of contents, read the six “big ideas” that shape the content, and see who peer-reviewed the text.