Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

Please note that given the circumstances of COVID-19, there may be some modifications to the assessment schedule promoted in Handbook for Semester 1 2020 Units. Students will be notified of all approved modifications by Unit Coordinators via email and Unit Blackboard sites. Where changes have been made, these are designed to ensure that you still meet the unit learning outcomes in the context of our adjusted teaching and learning arrangements.

• Unit Title

  Cultural Issues in Psychology

• Unit Code

  PSY3217

• Year

  2020

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  3

• Credit Points

  15

• Full Year Unit

  N

• Mode of Delivery

  On Campus
  Online

• Unit Coordinator

  A/Prof Justine Kate DANDY

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Description

The unit introduces students to cultural issues in psychology. We will draw on theoretical frameworks and concepts from cross-cultural and cultural psychology to critically examine psychology's cultural roots and to examine the ways in which culture influences psychological functioning. The role of culture, worldview, and other contextual factors in shaping realities and adaptations to contexts will be considered. In particular, a major aim of the unit will be to explore our own cultural makeup and to promote the development of a psychology that is sensitive to cultural diversity.

Prerequisite Rule

Students must pass 1 units from PSY1101

Equivalent Rule

Unit was previously coded PSY1107

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Identify contemporary cultural and cross-cultural issues in psychology research.
2. Evaluate how psychology research on theories and frameworks for working with people from different cultural backgrounds may be applied.
3. Examine how and where prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviours might exist in contemporary contexts, both at an individual and societal level.
4. Assess the validity of frameworks for understanding and working with people from different cultural backgrounds.
5. Illustrate increased awareness about ones own cultural values.

Unit Content

1. Ways forward: patterns of cultural pluralism (immigration, Australia as a culturally plural place), the psychology of human categories (race, culture, ethnicity, ethnic identity), culture and the self (identity development models, white identity, biculturalism), cultural dimensions (individualism and collectivism).
2. Cultural implications for health and treatments for psychological disorders.
3. The psychology of prejudice, racism, and oppression and challenges to western hegemony.
4. Immigrants, refugees, and indigenous peoples: culture contact and acculturation models.

Learning Experience

Students will engage in learning experiences through ECU Blackboard as well as additional ECU learning technologies.

Additional Learning Experience Information

Seminars and online materials.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

Core Reading(s)

• Garvey, D. (2007). Indigenous identity in contemporary psychology. Melbourne, Australia: Thomson. Retrieved from https://ecu.on.worldcat.org/oclc/183227176?databaseList=638

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