Psychological literacy and applied psychology in undergraduate education

Psychological literacy for the 21st Century posits both real and virtual resource options for `applied¿ psychology at the interface of psychology education and graduate attribute-targeted student learning outcomes. Psychological literacy encapsulates the common graduate attributes or capabilities that students should acquire while undertaking a major in psychology, as exemplfied by guidelines and lists of student learning outcomes (SLOs) delineated by many national psychology organisations. Application involves purposefully applying the basic capabilites to new problems or in new situations, usually in an experiential and active manner. In this chapter, we briefly consider the background to the issue of `applied¿ psychology in undergraduate education, and then give some concrete examples of how `applied¿ psychology learning and teaching strategies can be implemented to support the development of psychological literacy (McGovern et al., 2010) in our students.