The Importance of Helping Students Recognize Their Skills

I’ve written about skills learned by students of psychology before, and there is more to say. In the past, I’ve highlighted the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major 2.0 (the updated 3.0 version, which is likely to be ratified in August 2023, may be found here), it outlines many skills acquired through undergraduate psychology courses.

A more recent and helpful source from the APA is The Skillful Psychology Student, a one-page summary of 17 skills that are tied to the sorts of abilities that prospective employers are looking for when they hire college or university graduates. The list of skills falls under five categories: cognitive, communication, personal, social, and technological. The ability to think and reflect, write and speak, show individual initiatives and outlooks, connect to and engage with others, and use or learn to use digital tools, are all accounted for. Each category has between two and four skills that are clearly and succinctly defined for readers, who can then consider how they have learned or can learn to deploy a given skill. (You can find and download a copy with the link provided above.)

LI’ve been asking my students to review the one-page summary and to do two things:

1. In a course they are taking with me, think about the top three skills that are linked to our class discussions and the course material.
2. I ask them use the same reflection and identify the top three skills they believe they are exercising or acquiring in their other psychology courses.

These related activities are a great way to break free of sole emphasis on course content and instead highlight skills that emerge from that content. I urge my students to jot down the skills they identified in reaction to the above two activities so that they can use them in the future, perhaps in:

An in-person or Zoom interview for internship placement or a postgraduate position

A cover letter for an internship or graduate school application or job application

Any graduate school application essays or personal statements

A resume or CV

Conversations with their parents, relatives, and friends

Focusing on skill development via The Skillful Psychology Student is much easier than trying to later reflect on course content to do the same thing. I suggest you share this resource with your students if you are a teacher (it is a great resource for high school students interested in psychology, as well) or just share it with an undergraduate psychology major in your life. You—and they—will be glad you did.