User:LateDawns/sandbox

Action teaching is a pedagogical model in which students learn by engaging with societal attitudes and issues, such as stereotyping and economic inequality. It is an educational counterpart to action research, a philosophy and methodology for the social sciences developed in 1944 by Kurt Lewin with the goal of merging social research and social action. Action teaching can be practiced in varied educational settings, from elementary schools to business schools and schools of education. Some common techniques of action teaching are role-playing exercises, civic participation, and service learning projects. The Action Teaching Award was offered annually by Social Psychology Network from 2005-2015 and is currently awarded by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Past award-winners have been drawn from the disciplines of business, law, language instruction, and environmental science, and winning projects have addressed environmental sustainability, violence prevention, prejudice reduction, and disaster relief.

Origins of action teaching
The first example of action teaching appeared in the journal Teaching of Psychology in 2000 in an article by Scott Plous. The article described a role-playing exercise for teaching students about the psychology of prejudice while also equipping them to respond to bigoted comments, and noted the benefit to students of "[applying] psychological research findings to an important social problem." The exercise was adopted by others, and the concept of action teaching expanded to encompass varied forms of instruction which shared the aim of integrating coursework and social action. In 2006 a repository of action teaching examples and resources, now found on ActionTeaching.org, was established. In 2011 the concept of action teaching entered into the Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology.

Prominent action teaching methods
Three tools of action teaching which have entered into widespread use are the implicit-association test, day of compassion, and MPG illusion. The implicit-association test (IAT), conducted online, measures participants' implicit attitudes and biases regarding a range of social groups. Students taking the test contribute to psychological research while learning about research methods, in a context of examining intergroup psychology and unconscious thought processes. The IAT, developed in 1998, had been taken 17 million times by October 2015.

The day of compassion is an assignment in which students are asked to live as compassionately as possible for a 24-hour period, then write a reflection on the experience. Students learn about principles related to positive psychology and empathy while putting them into practice. A version of the assignment is offered by Scott Plous through a massive open online course in social psychology enrolling 850,000 students. The day of compassion has been conducted internationally, and student projects in London and India respectively have received coverage from NPR and the BBC.

The MPG illusion is a demonstration of cognitive bias showing that consumers reason incorrectly about fuel efficiency. It offers a resource for reasoning sustainably as well as lessons in statistics, decision-making, and environmental psychology. The MPG illusion was referenced by the EPA as grounds for their revision of the text on fuel economy labels, and the article in which it was first described has been cited 382 times since its publication in 2008.

Action teaching awards and grants
In 2005, the first international action teaching award competition was administered by Social Psychology Network. Judging was conducted through a blind review process, with the winner receiving a cash prize of $1,000. Past recipients of the award or honorable mention include:


 * Business and law students at the University of Pennsylvania who studied fundraising techniques and raised approximately $118,000 for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
 * High school students in Poland who learned English by reading true stories of homeless people and completing exercises that led to a reduction in stereotyping.
 * College students in Massachusetts who learned about human dynamics in the Holocaust and then taught children how such dynamics operate in contemporary hate speech, hate crimes, and bullying.
 * College students in New York who learned about culture by providing financial education to refugee families in their communities, covering topics such as setting up a bank account, creating a budget, and avoiding credit card schemes and other money traps.

The SPN competition was discontinued in 2015. However, in early 2020 the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9 of the American Psychological Association) established the SPSSI Action Teaching Program, including the SPSSI Action Teaching Award. The inaugural winner of the competition was Vicki Burns of Florida International University, who developed an assignment in which students learn about the problem of campus sexual violence, then create an original anti-violence plan based on empirically supported prevention planning principles.

In addition, the SPSSI Action Teaching Program offers action teaching grants to initiatives which "develop, enhance, or measure the impact of an action teaching activity, assignment, field experience, or web-based resource."

Action teaching reports
In 2012, the Journal of Social and Political Psychology established an Action Teaching Reports section aiming to demonstrate the role that education can play "in the betterment of society and the promotion of social justice." The section serves as a platform for different models of action teaching: In one example, students learned about the negative health effects of stress and then delivered stress and coping workshops to homeless adolescent mothers in their community. In another, student groups met with individuals who had dementia and assisted them in creating multimedia digital projects (e.g., online scrapbooks) involving experiences with art or nature.