Practicum In Psychology

In my opinion, I feel like the message the authors are trying to convey to readers of this article is that most people do not understand the role of practicum in the undergraduate psychology curriculum. I feel like they wanted to give readers a brief history of the development of practicum and how people think they are beneficial to undergraduates. Universities and professor for the past 30 years have been looking at ways in which they could improve the undergraduate curriculum in psychology. According to the article, respondents of a recent report by Kulik (1973) stated that they offered courses that included field experience. The idea of field experience coursework grew rapidly and many universities and professors added the course to their programs.
From reading this article I learned the purpose of practicum in the psychology curriculum, faculty and staff issues with practicum, and how grading and crediting were developed for practicum. Prior to reading this article, I had no idea as to what a practicum was and how it differed from an actual internship. Like I had no idea that the goal of practicum was to enhance liberal education, I thought the goal was to gain experience in one’s career field. In the article the authors stated that practicum follows an experiential learning model. From my experience I agree with this statement. The …show more content…
I feel like if this information was included in the article then it would better explain the role of practicum of undergraduate psychology. Like I stated earlier, I feel like the article focused on the development of practicum into the field of psychology rather explain its importance and how it has benefited psychology majors. That piece of information in my opinion made me question reading the rest of the article because I do not feel like I was getting enough information on the actual