Psychology

Staff


Mr Warner - Head of Department
Ms Allen


Department Overview


Aims: 

  1. To help understand the role of the brain to explain human behaviour.
  2. To arouse interest in how the brain functions.
  3. To encourage awareness as to how our society has tried to use psychology to explain complex behaviours such as conformity, aggression, gender, consumer behaviour.
  4. To enable students to become independent learners, through the development of essential study skills and to understand the distinctive methodology of psychologists.
  5. To prepare students for adult life and to encourage them to take an active part in society.

Objectives:

  1. To teach Psychology within the context of a scientific background.
  2. To develop the ability to be able to question, analyse and evaluate a wide range of explanations, theories and research.
  3. To encourage understanding of a broad range of methodology used by psychologists, including experiments, observations etc to demonstrate their understanding orally and in writing supported by an appropriate amount of evidence and psychological knowledge.
  4. To develop an understanding of different explanations of behaviour e.g. biological and psychological explanations of aggression.
  5. To ensure that all students are able to make useful connections between what they learn in psychology and relate these to everyday life e.g. conformity, gender.

Curriculum Content


Key Stage 5 – A LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY

YEAR 12
Social influence (including)
  • Conformity
  • Obedience
  • Resistance to social influence
  • Social change
Memory (including)
  • Models of memory
  • Forgetting
  • Eyewitness Testimony
Attachment (including)
  • Explanations of attachment
  • Effects of disruption to attachments
  • Adoption studies
Biopsychology (including)
  • CNS
  • Role of neurons
  • Fight or flight
  • Endocrine system
Clinical Psychology and Mental Health (including)
  • Depression
  • Phobias
  • OCDs
Research methods (including)
  • Experiments, Observations, Questionnaires, Interviews, case studies
  • Sampling
  • Pilot studies
  • Plus many more features of research methodology

 

YEAR 13
Issues and debates in society (including)
  • Gender and cultural bias
  • Free will and determinism
  • Nature-nurture
  • Holism and reductionism
  • Ethical implications of research
Gender (including)
  • Androgyny
  • Sex-role stereotypes
  • Hormones
  • Gender incongruence
Forensic psychology
  • Offender profiling
  • Explanations of offending behaviour
  • Dealing with offending behaviour