Accountability pressures influence all levels of psychology instruction. In this article we explore how to meet those pressures with integrity, focusing on authentic assessment and teaching as a primary solution. We propose a rubric to describe the progress of students' acquisition of scientific inquiry skills applied to behavior and provide an example of an authentic assessment that demonstrates use of the rubric. Application of the rubric can enhance active learning, promote more sophisticated scientific inquiry, improve metacognitive development, support program evaluation, and enrich faculty development.

Performance benchmarks are proposed to assist undergraduate psychology programs in defining their missions and goals as well as documenting their effectiveness. Experienced academic program reviewers compared their experiences to formulate a developmental framework of attributes of undergraduate programs focusing on activity in 8 domains: curriculum, assessment issues, student learning outcomes, program resources, student development, faculty characteristics, program climate, and administrative support. A continuum of performance was conceptualized for each attribute in each of the domains to characterize underdeveloped, developing, effective, and distinguished achievement for undergraduate programs. The authors hope to inspire a national conversation about program benchmarks in psychology in order to improve program quality, encourage more effective program reviews, and help optimally functioning programs compete more successfully for resources on the basis of their distinguished achievements.[A]lthough outcomes assessment and educational standards can aid in improving quality, in isolation they will fail. To succeed, they must be part of an integrated strategy with a heavy emphasis on the use of formative assessment for both teacher and learner.

Critical-thinking scholarship is in a mystified state. No single definition of critical thinking is widely accepted, but stakeholders in higher education often enter conversation about critical thinking with the premise that their individual definitions are uniformly shared. With an increasing emphasis on academic accountability, we need to work toward a better understanding of the varying ways the term critical thinking is used and explore the implications of the variation for effective pedagogy. In this article, I describe the confusion about critical thinking in psychology and offer suggestions for demystifying the concept. I provide a framework for organizing critical-thinking scholarship into meaningful dimensions. Finally, I describe a psychology curriculum using performance-based assessment practices as one context in which critical thinking in psychology can be made clearer for students and faculty.

Despite the popularity of the psychology major, complaints regularly arise about the value of majoring in psychology. This article reviews the workforce advantages that accrue to successful psychology students and encourages new strategies for emphasizing the professional development goal in the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (2013). Recommendations include infusing career preparation in advanced classes, designing career-focused capstone courses, and conducting a climate check on department support for fostering realistic and appropriate career aspirations in undergraduate psychology majors.

At the Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology, the Scientific Foundations and Research Competencies Work Group focused on identifying how psychologists practice scientifically. This article presents the subcomponents associated with the core competency of scientific practice. The subcomponents include: 1). access and apply current scientific knowledge habitually and appropriately; 2). contribute to knowledge; 3). critically evaluate interventions and their outcomes; 4). practice vigilance about how sociocultural variables influence scientific practice; and 5). routinely subject work to the scrutiny of colleagues, stakeholders, and the public. In addition, the article briefly discusses how the depth of training for and assessment of each subcomponent will vary by training model. Implications and future directions for individual psychologists, training programs, and the profession are discussed. This is one of a series of articles published in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Several other articles that resulted from the Competencies Conference will appear in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and The Counseling Psychologist.