Krisstal Clayton

PhD: New Mexico State University, 2009

Greetings! I am a people-watching, music, and documentary junkie who brings these addictions into my classroom and psychological research. I am a new hire at UNT--my first semester teaching here was Fall 2018. Currently, I am collaborating with law enforcement professionals, clinicians, criminal offenders, and victims' advocates to educate students about the many roles psychology plays in the American legal system. I also begin work with UNT CLEAR as a 2019 Faculty Fellow to develop and promote excellence in teaching. Outside of the classroom, I am a text book author and pedagogical specialist for SAGE Publications, as well as a consulting editor for the Journal of General Psychology.

Prior to my position at UNT, I collaborated with Southern Kentucky Rehabilitation Hospital to develop music-paired rehabilitation therapy for persons with stroke. I actually got to live my dream of being a psychological DJ! Who gets to do that??? In fact, it is my hope that thousands of psychologists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists will have that same chance since my first scientific article on this exciting research has been accepted for publication in Physiotherapy Theory & Practice. I also partnered with Barren County Detention Center and the Western Kentucky University College of Health and Human Services to provide dental cleanings to inmates as a learning lab for dental hygiene students. My interests are broad, mainly because I want to make people's lives better and I think higher education provides wonderful opportunities to achieve that goal.

As for my classroom environment, students can expect to be actively engaged. Past student activities have included interviewing inmates, creating mini-documentaries, participating in mock death penalty juries, designing educational materials to teach kids how to fight antibiotic resistance, analyzing and redesigning political advertisements using Cialdini's Principles of Persuasion, and creating research proposals using team-based learning. My pedagogical research and student feedback demonstrates that my courses have a significant impact on how students see the world. I have presented pedagogical research and an invited talk at the National Institute for the Teaching of Psychology, was the invited keynote speaker for the UNT University Forum on Teaching and Learning, and was the recipient of the Western Kentucky University College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Teaching Award in 2015. You can review how former students have scored my teaching abilities by clicking on the Excel spreadsheet below. I have taught 15 different courses (eek!!) throughout my academic career ranging from Introduction to Psychology to a doctoral-level course called Applied Social Psychology in the Clinic. It's pretty obvious that I LOVE TEACHING, so come learn with me at UNT!

Teaching Interests: The use of gamification and simulations for student engagement both in person and online; community-partnership and team-based learning; Aronson's jigsaw classroom method in project-based learning; and documentaries as case-based learning. See my teaching evaluation scores here.

Research Interests: Music-paired interventions for neurorehabilitation; music-paired interventions and memory for physical therapy; music preference assessments for hospitalized persons; attitude shifts towards the legal system as a result of higher education courses; stigma and deviant behavior; and how to demonstrate teaching effectiveness when learning is defined as longitudinal changes in beliefs. View my CV here.

Dr. Clayton does not take students for Admissions Cycles.