Although psychologists have been studying psychological processes and behaviors across cultures for over a century, the study of the relation between culture and psychology has grown exponentially in the past several decades. Today this area of research has made valuable contributions to our knowledge in all areas of study, including cognition, emotion, personality, abnormal, social, developmental, and organizational psychology. Cross-cultural research has pushed the envelope in the development of new and exciting research methodologies and statistical techniques, and the knowledge generated from this area of research has fundamentally changed the way psychologists think about, study, and understand psychological processes and human behaviors.
Thus, it is not surprising that the topic of culture has been increasingly infused across the psychology curriculum. This movement has reflected not only developments in the field, but also the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in our student populations. One of the many questions students ask when they take psychology classes is, “does this apply to me?” And for many years, that increasingly diversifying student body raised questions of the applicability of psychological knowledge and principles taught to them based on monocultural studies. This trend has also occurred in secondary schools, where psychology courses are increasingly found as part of the curriculum, too.
Despite this evolution in knowledge in psychology vis-à-vis culture, and despite the increasing need to teach about the fruits of this evolution in university and secondary school classrooms, to date there has been a dearth of resources for teachers out on the front lines teaching this material. Certainly there have been a few books, study guides, and readers developed over the years, but what the field sorely needed was a single, comprehensive handbook specifically designed for teachers of this important material.
It is within this backdrop that this handbook is a breath of fresh air, addressing a significant gap in the literature. Ken Keith has lined up a stellar cast of scholars, all of them outstanding teachers and/or researchers themselves, to provide their insights related to the teaching of this important material. The content covers all the major research areas on which culture has made an impact, and the areas most relevant to students across the country and around the world. Moreover, the book is structured into reasonable and easy-to-understand sections, namely Basic Concepts and Teaching across the Psychology Curriculum, with the latter broken down into sections titled In the Beginning, Research and Statistics, Biological Connections, Development, Cognition, Social Psychology, Health and Well-Being, and Personality, Disability, and Disorders. Professor Keith wraps up the book with an incisive, forward-looking synthesis and integration of the material.
This handbook promises to make a strong contribution to the literature. But more importantly, it will be a welcome resource for the many teachers of this area. Equally significant is the notion that this work is the all-important beginning of a living body of work, one that will need to be adjusted as new research on culture and psychology provides new insights into human behavior, and these can be combined with important developments in teaching methodologies and pedagogies.
I offer my congratulations to Professor Keith for this very welcome resource. And I offer my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to the many teachers of culture and psychology for all of their hard work, efforts, and hours dedicated to a labor of love. You truly are the unsung heroes of academia and scholarship.
