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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The History of psychology course in Spanish psychology curricula: Past, present, future

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Since the university education of psychologists began in Spain in 1954, the history of psychology course has been included in the curriculum. In the first few years, only half of the curricula offered the course. From 1973 to 2007, the universities' organization and regulation underwent successive reforms that involved changes in the curricula, decreeing specific national guidelines for each degree and establishing a minimum set of common required courses, called core courses, including the history of psychology. In 2007, the European Higher Education Area was set up, transforming the 5-year bachelor's degrees into 4-year degrees and eliminating the required guidelines, with each university being able to define the content of their curricula. The Dean's Conference for Psychology agreed on some recommendations related to core courses, which continued to include the history of psychology and were adopted by the majority of the universities. In 2015, the government established a new national regulation that makes it possible for each university to voluntarily reduce the length of the bachelor's degree to 3 years. Some psychology historians believe that this hypothetical reduction in the length of the degree, along with the already existing general tendency to prioritize applied or practical courses over basic or fundamental ones, could produce an appropriate scenario for the disappearance of the history of psychology course in some universities.