The COVID-19 pandemic has shone light on issues within the discipline and profession of psychology. Governments have created opportunities for education and employment and foreseen an acceleration of evolving technologies. These affect the nature of psychological research and practice to produce several immanent crises. These include the nature of education in the discipline and practice of psychology, including the curriculum and modes of tuition. The government response to the pandemic to stimulate education exposes the underlying epistemology that guides the curriculum and the methods of delivery and reveals how funding fundamentally influences the outcomes of education to show the role of politics in the evaluation of education. Additionally, the emergence of new technology of artificial intelligence, facilitated by the economic and business crises, will influence the process of education, the utilisation of knowledge by the professional, and the employability of scientists and professionals.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the course of everyday life. While there has been an emphasis upon the economic consequences of the pandemic, economists consider that the consequences may not be as dire as were predicted earlier, with the decline in economic growth limited to 10 per cent in the coming year (The Economist, 19 September, 2020). But there have been interventions by governments to protect employment in a post-pandemic world. The consequences of the pandemic that we examine are the result of these structural changes in beliefs of ministers and policymakers that affect structural features of society, rather than purely changes in economic and fiscal practice.
These consequences outside of economic changes will be lasting in education and with the use of technology in training and practice. The pandemic has shone new light on several issues in psychology, issues shielded from critical scrutiny for several years. These have also resulted in an acceleration of the impact of evolving technologies in influencing health, treatment and the nature of work, and in turn are related to the practice of fundamental research, the delivery of clinical services, and the contribution of psychology to the workplace of the future.
We highlight these matters anew to demonstrate how they combine to produce several immanent crises in the field of psychology. The issues that we discuss are not exhaustive, there are many others that can be examined, for example changes in the increased amount of working from home with resulting concerns about productivity and changes in the balance between work and home life, etc. But the two that we address are immediately relevant to the future practice of psychology in Australia.
These matters are first, the nature of education in the discipline and professional practice of psychology. This includes the content of the curriculum and the modes of tuition to inculcate expertise in the psychologist, whether they be employed in scientific research or in the clinic. Underlying this is the philosophy that guides the curriculum and the means whereby the novice psychologist is trained. We examine the funding of such training, especially through government sources, and the ways in which the source of such funding may come to influence how providers of higher education teach. We deal here with the inherent role of political ideology in the determination of what is valued.
Secondly, we look at the emergence of new technology, especially the technologies of artificial intelligence (AI), which will influence the methods of delivery of education, the utilisation of knowledge by the professional in the delivery of services to clients, the employability of scientists and professionals and, inherently, the model of expertise that the scientist/professional should and will possess.
Education and training in psychology
Responsibility for the education of psychologists lies within the universities and emerging private providers. In Australia, however, the content of the curriculum is determined by regulators outside the universities; originally through the accreditation teams of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and more recently the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC). These external bodies determine what is taught, how it is taught, and impose a set formula on all providers for training. We take it for granted that there is external accreditation, but this is a lifetime away from the concerns, when the APS was founded, that the intrusion of accreditation standards was a threat to academic freedom (as referenced to Professor Dick Champion, cited in Cooke, 2000, p.133).
The process has been renewed several times, but it has always carried artefacts of previous formulations. The primary model for training is that there is a fundamental science of psychology in which all students must be trained, after which they may be allowed to separate into various forms of application. What is accepted as science is usually not examined critically; there is an emphasis on quantification and measurement and the ‘scientific method’. This has meant an adherence to experiments, and especially the randomised control experiment associated with the use of statistical methods to examine group differences and relationships between individual differences, and the development of psychometrics.
Observation without experimentation is usually relegated to secondary importance in the design of methodology courses. While there is now an acceptance within the discipline for qualitative techniques of theory and analysis, as recently as 25 years ago it was not possible to carry out a qualitative exercise as an acceptable honours project in an Australian university.
The model has been a four-year degree, three years of undergraduate study, followed by a fourth year with an emphasis on a thesis supervised by a member of academic staff. The process of the thesis essentially resulted in the replication within each student of the skills and expectations of the supervisors. Kennedy and Innes (2005) showed that this model resulted in 100 per cent of students being trained to proceed to further training in academic psychology when only five per cent of graduating students actually did take that path. Why this model was adopted, as against a three-year degree or a degree in a European tradition with less emphasis on the individual accomplishment of the sole student/supervisor dyad, can be examined by historians of education, but that is the model that has survived into the 21st century in Australia with little critical examination.
The emphasis has been the teaching of basic science, without concern with the application of that knowledge. Where application was taught there was an emphasis on the applicability of the knowledge, without tuition on how to manage the impact of that application. This meant that, upon graduation, the novice psychologist could not do much of anything with practical value and therefore had to be trained, essentially from scratch, on how to do something.
Could it not be possible to reduce the length of training and include training to equip the student with practical skills?
This process led to the development of master’s degrees, normally requiring a further two years of study, including a further thesis, with training in application. It also led to the unusual practice, by comparison with other countries, of the 4 + 2 internship model; four years of undergraduate education plus two years of supervised practice, under the aegis of a practising psychologist, where the quality of practice was dependent on how fortunate one was to have found a willing supervisor who was a ‘model’ psychologist. The limitations of this model led in turn to the development of the 5 + 1 model, in which a further fifth year of study, within a university, was required before the variability of the supervising psychologist could be experienced. The history of these developments is set out in forensic detail in Cooke (2000).
This process was contingent within Australia that registration of psychologists was required before the professional practitioner could be released to the public. The process of registration was a state-based process for many years, dating from 1966 in Victoria and finally completed with the Australian Capital Territory in 1995. It was intended to protect the public from charlatans, and was subsequent to the university-based training, which essentially did not concern itself with that matter. The role of the external authority was to provide a form of gatekeeping for those who passed through to professional practice. The national registration process through the Psychology Board of Australia was only completed in the 21st century.
What emerged was a process of training that required six years of full-time equivalent study and experience before the graduate was ready for independent practice. The question was frequently asked as to why there needed to be such a lengthy process. Could it not be possible to reduce the length of training and include training to equip the student with practical skills?
These questions were posed not least by the undergraduates of psychology programs who continually wondered why they were doing the seemingly obscure things they were expected to do and who remonstrated frequently about the apparent waste of time in training. As a Head of School of Psychology departments in the 1990s one of us (JMI) was able to deflect the antagonism of students to the courses they were undertaking by asking them to do, as a reflective exercise, a critical analysis of the accreditation standards. They came to appreciate that the academic staff were as much in the thrall of the accreditation process as were the students and they accepted that protest at the departmental level was unlikely to have any effect on what they were taught and why.
These historical processes of accreditation and registration have come to an interesting pass. As part of governmental intervention to educate students to make them more employable in a post-pandemic world, the Liberal-National coalition proposed a revision of the fee structure of degree courses. Within this, there was a proposal to facilitate the production of allied health graduates, including a reduction in the fees of students doing postgraduate courses in psychology.
But at the same time the government proposed that fees for undergraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences should be significantly increased. The result was that a graduate in psychology, who might eventually exit the process as a health practitioner, would end up paying more than before! The minister and advisors seemed not to be aware of the problem. Subsequent discussions resulted in amendments being made. It should be noted that these changes seem to have received support from the parliamentary Senate for an initial period of two years.The employment of psychologists may not change radically due to developments in AI, but portions of the everyday practice of psychology will change fundamentally
Funding and political intervention
This result highlights the present system of education of professional psychologists as anomalous. The proposal that undergraduate programs in psychology could be labelled as ‘pre-professional pathways’ and therefore be charged lower fees than arts and social science courses in essentially the same content, creates a contrast with some combinations of courses in the discipline being charged fees at lower levels than the same courses in another degree combination.
At the same time as these events took place, there were appeals made by the APS and the Heads of Departments and Schools of Psychology Association (HODSPA) to political parties for help to avoid the structural fee changes for psychologists. There were, apparently, moves by members of the National Party to assist. Such intervention may be seen by some as beneficial, with the proposal that some fees be reduced, but there are possible unintended consequences that will emerge in years to come.
Members of the parliament will come to examine in more detail the content and methodology of the curricula that they have been invited to support. It would take little effort for an inquisitive Minister of Parliament to ask why the undergraduate curriculum of a trainee psychologist requires the inclusion of non-psychological content, in the form of electives in anthropology or history or economics, or why there is no emphasis in the early years of hard practical training in ‘hands-on’ skills. While the most recent (2019) APAC Standards have moved measurably towards the inclusion of such skills, they are still some way away from centrality in the process. So, the profession of psychology is at risk of having political questions being asked about what is done at the training level. There are certainly people within the profession and within the universities who ask these same questions and who may ally themselves with the political stakeholders, who, importantly, remain the purse-holders.
There are still many within the discipline of psychology who continue to believe that the undergraduate psychology degree should include broad cultural training, linking psychology to disciplines within the basic sciences and humanities. The questions that will come to be asked will essentially lead to the possibility of a stripping away of these components and a reduction in the general level of cultural and philosophical awareness of the psychology graduate in order to reduce costs of training to the departments.
Within the discipline and professions of psychology this conflict between different philosophies of education will emerge, which will be fueled by the influence from an external source, namely politicians, about the merits of scientific education. Once politicians have been given power and influence in any domain, they are very reluctant to relinquish that control (c.f. Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2020). Political influence will be here to stay. It should not be overlooked, also, that the undergraduate student who will entail the HECS debt associated with the course in which they are enrolled, will ask the question why there are such differential costs. The student is a central stakeholder in the present mix of funding in tertiary education and should have a voice in the process. Can academic staff in the universities coherently defend their choice of educational philosophy in the context of degree courses costing students in excess of $100,000?
Role of technology
Understanding the process of education and training and professional practice cannot be divorced from an appreciation of the role of technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the need to maintain social distance, resulting in the wholesale move from lectures and tutorials in collectives to distance learning via computer and recordings. Many in education have been advocating such a move for many years, but the trend within the universities had generally been slow. The pandemic brought forward the revolution at breakneck speed. Having made the change, there will be great reluctance to move back to the earlier mode. Online and automated teaching will be seen to deliver measurable and acceptable educational outcomes and, while there may still be a place for face-to-face teaching, the benefits of the new model for distance education and the use of cheaper educational methodology will be difficult to contest and will be supported by university management intent on minimising costs.
So, the technology will become the driver and new teachers and researchers will be required to become experts in its use. An additional consequence may be the reduction in the proportion of academic staff who are allowed to conduct research to inform their teaching. This will have consequences for the ability to teach the scientist-practitioner model of the psychologist, which presently lies at the heart of psychological education and there will be effects on the ability to train students in fundamental science.
There are onward effects as well with the practice of psychology. We argued in a paper three years ago (Innes & Morrison, 2017) that there were emerging technologies, associated with, but not entirely dependent upon AI, which will have impact upon the practice of psychology. We have continued to promulgate these changes (e.g., Innes & Morrison, 2020a) and we have not been alone in making the case (Susskind & Susskind, 2018). In Australia the recent report by Walsh et al.(2019) has amplified these issues. The effects of the pandemic will only raise further the pressure to adopt new technologies.
The development of AI highlights the need to understand the nature of expertise (Collins, 2019; Eyal, 2019) and critically analyse the role of experience (Schulte-Mecklenbeck et al., 2017; Vollmer et al., 2013). The development of algorithms requires the deconstruction of systems and exposes misunderstanding and deficits in processes. Many in psychology may believe that the profession may be immune to the passage of AI, with a belief that interpersonal skills cannot readily be replicated. But the encroachment of automation upon professional services has proceeded and the capacity of deep-learning algorithms to transform an understanding of processes has startled many former sceptics (Harford, 2020). The encroachment of the so-called ‘narrow’ version of AI into territory previously believed to be the province of the general or ‘strong’ model of AI shows how very subtle human skills can be simulated while not being entirely replicated (Susskind & Susskind, 2018).
Many psychologists will reject an analogy between the practice of psychology and chess, but the developments of algorithms in the understanding of the processes of chess at the highest levels of competence, have been revelatory. The programs have transformed the ways in which grandmasters learn new tactics (Sadler & Regan, 2019) and recent advancements show how these systems can change thinking about fundamental problems that have not been possible before (Tomasev et al., 2020). We are well aware of concerns about the validity and adequacy of much research in AI (Innes & Morrison, 2020b), but the social momentum to adoption of the technology is powerful and will affect the workplace in many forms.
The employment of psychologists may not change radically due to developments in AI, but portions of the everyday practice of psychology will change fundamentally. Psychologists need to be aware of changes in other related professions, such as education, where the question “should robots replace teachers?” has to be taken seriously, as a replacement for the question “can robots replace teachers?” This latter question has already been answered in the affirmative (Selwyn, 2019). This process will accelerate with the changes following COVID-19.
But change is not irresistible. The current paradigm in psychology, which has resulted in the strong compatibility with automation, could be replaced by one which is more humanistic and oriented to the arts, as exemplified for many years by Koch (Finkelman & Kessel, 2000). Koch’s approach has been debated interminably over the years (cf. Morawski 2001), never adopted, but also never rejected. There is a place for debate and a reconfiguration of the standards for the curriculum in psychology, especially in Australia, that can mitigate the degree to which the processes of the robot can replace the processes of the human.
What does it mean for the future?
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact upon the structure and function of societies, affecting business, the workplace and education. The effect that it has had upon the belief systems of politicians and the ways that they act upon the world may be long-lasting beyond the immediate impact upon the economy and will affect the education and practice of psychologists. The profession needs to be mindful of the dangers of forming alliances with politicians while seeking to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on practice. And the threats of technological development are also present and need to be accommodated in training and practice.
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