Teaching Psychology in North America: Four Case Examples as Cautionary Tales Introduction to the BISTOPS 2022 Special Section

The articles and commentaries in this special section of Human Arenas are based on presentations by four invited speakers at the 2022 Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science (BISTOPS; www.bistops.org ). BISTOPS is designed to give 25–30 invited psychology teacher/researchers the opportunity to spend five days in Paris discussing research on various aspects of teaching psychological science, to exchange new research ideas, to create international research teams, and ultimately to generate empirical studies whose results will lead to evidence-based recommendations for promoting excellence in the teaching of psychology. Though written by North Americans about teaching psychology in North America, the articles are relevant for the teaching of psychology, and other disciplines, in many other parts of the world. That is because they deal with thorny questions about what teaching methods lead to the greatest long-term retention of new knowledge, about how we can disabuse our students of the misconceptions they bring with them to our courses, about whether and how we should try to protect students from potentially upsetting course content, and about how best to evaluate the quality of our teaching.