Psychology

SUBJECT overview

Studying Psychology has become a very valuable tool in the world we currently live in with mental health being more acceptable in society and more people wanting to seek help to overcome mental health issues. With much more media material nowadays on mindfulness and improving your mental state readily available, the psychology course has been designed to allow for our young minds to understand treatments available and causes around mental health. Learners will be given opportunities to extend their literacy and numeracy skills by studying research methodology and mathematical testing within this discipline. The scientific status of psychology has now fully been enveloped within the new specification and learners will get to see how it transpires within the real world.

unit overview - autumn term

Topic 6: Criminal Psychology
Skills	Essay writing skills to answer 9 mark questions well Evaluative and analytical skills when looking at studies and scenario based questions Debating skills for class discussions on nature vs nurture
Knowledge	1 Skinner’s operant conditioning theory 2 Bandura’s social learning theory 3 Bandura’s study 4 Charlton’s study 5 Eysenck’s biological explanation of criminality 6 Punishment and recidivism 7 Treating offenders
Rationale	Students get to debate whether criminals are born this way or made into criminals. They will be able to understand degrees of punishments and how effective these might be in real life. Teaching the theories around explanations of crime offer learners a good insight into criminal behaviour and they should be able to apply that to real world cases. This topic allows learners to practise their application based questions as most of the content relates to real life prison settings and criminals using the judicial system.

unit overview - spring term

Topic 9: Sleeping and Dreaming
Skills	Essay writing skills when answering 9 mark questions Evaluative and analytical skills when interpreting studies and scenario based questions Researching skills when keeping a record of dreams and finding information on leading dream analysts
Knowledge	1 Internal and external factors affecting sleep 2 Siffre’s study 3 Freud’s Little Hans study 4 Sleep disorders 5 Freud’s theory of dreaming 6 Biological theory of dreaming
Rationale	Students will develop an idea of why we dream and the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. This will help them in preparation for their exams and with everyday waking life. Students will be able to learn about any sleep problems people may have and ways in which to treat this effectively. This topic encourages self- evaluation and ways to combat sleep issues. This topic also allows learners to write in a more application based way as the questions are to do with real life situations. This will make answering questions at AS and A level a lot easier.

unit overview - summer term

Topic: Content reinforcement
Skills	Mathematical Requirements Scatter graphs, distributions, correlations, percentages, fractions, bar charts, histograms, frequency graphs, data analysis Psychological skills A01- Knowledge and understanding of psychological ideas, processes and procedures A02- Apply knowledge and understanding of psychological ideas, processes and procedures A03- Analyse and evaluate psychological information, ideas, processes and procedures to make judgements and draw conclusions
Knowledge	1Recap of year 1 content (Development, Memory, Psychological disorders, The brain and neuropsychology and Social Influence) 2 Consolidation of Criminology and Sleeping and Dreaming
Rationale	Students will have an extended opportunity to re-visit year 1 content and to fill in gaps of knowledge. Students will be able to explore scenario based questions and use AO2 (application) with more confidence. Students will be able to practise and further develop their extended writing skills to answer 9 and 12 mark questions.

knowledge Organiser

A knowledge organiser is an important document that lists the important facts that learners should know by the end of a unit of work. It is important that learners can recall these facts easily, so that when they are answering challenging questions in their assessments and GCSE and A-Level exams, they are not wasting precious time in exams focusing on remembering simple facts, but making complex arguments, and calculations.

We encourage all pupils to use them by doing the following:

Quiz themselves at home, using the read, write, cover, check method.
Practise spelling key vocabulary
Further researching people, events and processes most relevant to the unit.