Going global: Intersections of the American Psychological Association's Guidelines 3.0 with international foundational competence framework

Going global: Intersections of the American Psychological Association's Guidelines 3.0 with international foundational competence framework

As both the discipline of psychology and psychology postsecondary education are increasingly global in nature, there is a need for ways to communicate across countries and contexts to facilitate collaboration and mobility of programs, degrees, graduates, and faculty. As such, we believe that it is important that the American Psychological Association’s third iteration of its Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (2023) is explicitly more international than its predecessors. In this article, we analyze Guidelines 3.0 through an international lens. Our first goal is to outline how the Guidelines 3.0 Task Force embraced an international outlook and to describe how Guidelines 3.0 may impact the internationalization of psychology curricula in the United States. Second, we describe how Guidelines 3.0 may be used in international contexts, offering specific international examples and noting potential benefits of its international application, as well as cultural and regulatory challenges to its broader use. Third, we explore several other competence frameworks used around the world and identify similarities and differences compared to Guidelines 3.0. We conclude by highlighting the International Competences for Undergraduate Psychology, the first international framework developed for undergraduate psychology curricula. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

© American Psychological Association, 2025. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/stl0000409