Course List

This course will examine ideas of influential philosophers and schools of thought, and highlight the foundations on which the broad discipline of contemporary psychology is based. To expose students to the history of psychology and its relationship to psychiatry, providing an important foundation on which to understand contemporary psychology.

Students will be introduced to an eclectic mix of topics including ‘the upside of being down’ and ‘the psychology of eating animals’. The course highlights the integrative nature of contemporary psychology and introduces students to different ways in which psychological theory can be applied in the real world. This course also adopts a more ‘hands-on’, student-centred approach to teaching psychology by focusing group-based activities around recently published research in the Current Directions in Psychological Science journal.

This course provides an overview of the history of positive psychology and the contributions that positive psychology has made to several traditional research areas in psychology. The course will define and unpack the complex concept of happiness, and examine the mechanisms that cause and maintain it. Topics will be connected to their implications for increasing well-being throughout the course. Training in psychology typically focuses on ‘weakness’, rather than on ‘strengths’. This course addresses a need for programmes in psychology to build on personal strengths, something that can immediately affect students’ lives.

Psychological literacy is the major outcome of a major in psychology. It involves acquisition of specialized knowledge, grounding in scientific thinking, capacity to think critically, acting ethically, competency in using and evaluating information, effective communication, respect for diversity and being reflective about one’s own and others’ behaviour. The psychologically literate citizen is able to draw upon this knowledge of psychology and apply it to a broad range of situations. The time for the psychologically literate citizen is overdue. As indicated by U.S. President Barack Obama at Arizona State University in May 2009.

This course gives the student the opportunity to grow academically, through participation in a service-learning experience. Students will meet real needs in the community by applying knowledge from the course. This course will examine elements of disaster response, volunteerism, civic engagement, service learning, social innovation, healing proposals and service projects and will expose students to the four basic principles of service learning namely, engagement, reflection, reciprocity and public dissemination. Students will complete 30 hours of service over a five week period (Weeks 7 to 11), which may include participating in community enhancement activities or other community projects that are related to disaster risk reduction/management. During the 5 weeks of community service, students will be expected to reflect on their experiences and document their reflections in their online journal while completing other tasks online. Students will work with selected NGO’s, CBO’s or other established community groups and partners in their respective territories, in post-disaster response or disaster preparedness/risk management service areas that positively impact the community.

This course will introduce students to classical social theory through an understanding of the work of writers such as Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Karl Marx and George H. Mead. The main focus of this studying is to understand the central ideas of these writers and to reflect on the usefulness of their theory in contemporary Caribbean societies. This reflection will support students’ further investigations of the explanations given for issues on the front line of Caribbean societies’ development agendas. At the same time, students will learn about the central ideas and perspectives of writers such as Edward Kamau Brathwaite, M.G. Smith and George Beckford. The combination of classical and Caribbean schools of social inquiry will set the tone for a synthesizing of perspectives on race, class, gender, ethnicity and the family in society. This process will assist students with developing their theoretical base in social theory, as well as independent thought on happenings in Caribbean society.

This course addresses those general philosophical questions which form a necessary grounding to the understanding of these techniques and procedures which follow. It will not be dealing with those methodological issues featured in faculty introductory courses. Some of the topics include: epistemological issues and theories of knowledge, Weberian and other perspectives, causality and association, social sciences as a science, induction and deduction, the distinction between a social problem and what is socially problematic.

Sem 1 - Assoc S/Work

Must have Math as part of matriculation requirement or do IYMS