Write it 3 ways: A writing plenary

Academic writing

A while ago I came across an article in the Guardian entitled “10 things academics say students get wrong in exams” (30/04/2013). Although the focus of the article is on undergraduate students seeming to fall into the trap of simply regurgitating what they have been told in lectures, I think the article is just as relevant to A Level students.

One of the things the article refers to in the list of general student errors is getting the right tone for academic writing. The article suggests that regular reading of academic articles, which exposes students to the appropriate tone, can help and also that practising a small bit of writing regularly will benefit students in their approach to writing.

This certainly seems like good advice but knowing what something looks like and being able to do it yourself are two different things, and I think students need to be able to explicitly identify the differences between writing styles suitable for different audiences in order to actually make long lasting improvements.

Audience and purpose

Students learn in English all about writing for different purposes but often do not transfer this learning to other situations. As teachers we can point out where skills transfer and give students ample opportunities to make this transfer possible.

The Guardian piece gave me an idea about how a focus on regular writing practice and being aware of the tone of writing might lend itself to being the focus for a plenary activity for A Level Psychology students.

Write it 3 ways: A writing plenary

There are a number of different ways in which knowledge about research in Psychology might be communicated to others. Some of these ways include:

1. Reporting for publication in an academic journal or review for a science magazine/blog
2. Newspaper reporting aimed at a more general audience
3. Tweeting about new research developments (there is a rapidly growing community of Psychologists and Psychology related individuals and organisations that Tweet about new research developments).

The style, length and the sort of language appropriate for these different audiences and purposes varies, with an exam writing style being in line with the report for an academic audience.

I think it could be worth asking students, as a closing activity for a lesson, to write about the area of research that has been studied in each of these 3 ways and discuss how the tone differs and identify the differences in the way in which they have communicated the same information. For example, in a lesson on life changes as a source of stress (Unit 2, AQA A, AS) students could be given a prompt such as “How do our lives lead to stress?” and asked to write a short piece for each of the 3 audiences/purposes highlighted above. Alternatively in groups of 3 students could be allocated 1 purpose each and then they could compare and contrast the outcomes, focussing on identifying what is appropriate when the audience is an examiner and the purpose is to convey knowledge and understanding of research in Psychology. If you can find a piece of research that has been written about in each style/tone this could be useful for modelling.

These are just the 3 purposes/styles that popped into my head when I read the article so I’m sure this activity could be tweaked into something better!

  

 

AS Psychology and EWT: Child witnesses influenced by gestures as well as wording

Factors affecting EWT: Age of witness

AQA specification A requires students studying AS Psychology Unit 1 to learn about research into “factors affecting the accuracy of Eye Witness Testimony”, including the age of the witness. This week I came across some research suggesting that it is not just the fragility of a developing memory or the wording used by the interviewer that can have a detrimental impact on the recall of information when witnesses are children, but also the non-verbal gestures used by an interviewer.

Not what you say but how you say it

Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire have conducted a study where adult interviewers gestured in a misleading manner in a way that seemed to suggest that an item that was not present in a video, shown to the child participants, had been. The children were reported to have been “highly susceptible” to the gesture,  recalling incorrectly that a lady in the video had been wearing glasses when she had not been when the question was accompanied by the interviewer gesturing as if they were putting on glasses.

Implications for training of interviewers

This is particularly worrying as when talking to children it can seem quite natural to gesture explicitly to bring what you are saying to life and to engage children preventing wandering attention. This research implies that when interviewing child witnesses this sort of gesturing needs to be avoided and awareness of this influence should become part of interviewer training should this finding be replicated and validated sufficiently.

The study is summarised on the University website (“Interviewers gestures mislead child-witnesses”) and is being presented at the BPS Annual Conference this week (at time of writing).

In the classroom

As the focus of this research is directly relevant to the AQA A spec there are potentially a number of ways to use this in the classroom. Here are a few ideas:

• Give students an overview of the research and ask them what they would they would be expecting in terms of the method and controls in place in this study in order to take the findings seriously (this could be linked to peer review as a method of validation giving a small taste of A2).
• You could ask students to imagine that they are going to attend the BPS annual conference and prepare a list of questions for the researchers regarding this piece of research.
• You could ask students to design their own study to further investigate the impact of gestures on witnesses (this could go beyond children).
• Ask students to include this research in an exam style question along the lines of “Outline research into factors affecting accuracy of EWT including age of witness (4 marks)”

 

An iPad app for A Level Psychology

ATP Today reviews apps for Psychology learning and teaching

This post was inspired by an article in ATP Today (the Association of Teacher’s of Psychology members magazine; February 2013), written by Emma Weaver, which covered a top ten of iPad apps for the A Level Psychology classroom.

The (free) app that caught my eye particularly was Voicethread, an app that allows the user to upload an image or video and invite comments (comments can be left in audio, video or text form) that make up the so-called “voice thread“. In the article the author suggests using this app to create recap tasks to be completed outside of class for use in the next lesson.

Using the app

Basically you add your image, slides or video, then the app allows you to invite comments from targeted users (your class for example) by emailing a link to the website (they do not need the app or an iPad). They might, for example, video themselves making their comment (which they can edit until they happy with it) or record themselves speaking their contribution to the discussion about the posted content. The Voicethread website has a really helpful video explaining it’s use and how to create a Voicethread discussion and the app itself is pretty easy to use.

Reasons to use this app (or something similar)

Here are a two reasons I think this is worth playing around with.

Increasing participation

Class discussion can sometimes be dominated by a few students who are keen to be heard but if you really want to hear from everyone, without putting those who are less confident on the spot, Voicethread might be an answer. As the comment submitted can be edited and polished (increasing confidence) until the individual is happy with their contribution – unlike class comments which cannot be taken back and refined once made – an individual who is not usually keen to share in class might benefit from being able to prepare. Sharing a students Voicethread comment in audio form allows their voice to be heard in the classroom and gives them the opportunity to make a comment they feel good about and elaborate or justify further in class.

Make lesson starters more productive

If you want to discuss a statement, question or thunk-style conundrum (search this blog for “thunks” for some examples for the Psychology classroom) ask students to discuss this first using Voicethread. Play the resulting comments at the start of the lesson and take the discussion further. As students will already have done their initial thinking and contribution “in the cloud” you should get to the really developed bit and the teaching points you wanted to be made in class much quicker. You could also do this with a debate topic in order to avoid lengthy use of class time by using the Voicethread as the starting point for further debate and for students to show evidence that they have prepared outside of class time.

 

Publishing replications and null findings. A hot topic for a stretching and challenging debate.

Publication bias and the distortion of psychology literature

Professor Keith Laws (University of Hertfordshire), amongst other scientists and science writers, argues that continuing the trend of failing to publish replications and null findings in journals means that the truth of psychology literature is inevitably distorted. In his paper, entitled “Negativland – a home for all findings in Psychology”, he discusses various issues concerning publication bias in Psychology. Laws also stresses the need for psychologists to “get their house-in-order”, making a convincing argument that the current practice of many journals where novelty is favoured over reliability, needs to be stopped.

Hot topic in the real world

This is a highly topical and important issue being discussed in the “real world” of psychology and as such I think it is important for A Level students to be aware of this issue and why it is a hot topic – even if it isn’t printed specifically in any specification.

Unit 4: Psychological Research and Scientific Method (AQA A)

Unit 4 of the AQA A specification for A Level Psychology requires students to study the features of science (including replicability) and the validation of new knowledge, both of which make the issues raised by Laws in his article highly relevant to A Level Psychology.

In the classroom

Here are a few ways the issues raised here might be made relevant to the A Level Psychology classroom to provide a healthy bit of stretch and challenge.

To publish or not to publish…

Give students a brief summary of 4 pieces of fictional research:

1. A quirky novel finding
2. A replication of a piece of research students have come across already where the previous findings were supported
3. A replication of a piece of research where the previous findings were not supported
4. A study where the null hypothesis was accepted.

Either give all students all 4 examples or allocate one per small group. Ask students whether the research should be considered for publication by a leading journal and ask them to justify their opinions. This could act as a stimulus for discussing a range of issues with publication including those raised by the paper discussed in this post. This could also lead into a discussion of how new knowledge is validated as students could be asked how they might ensure that the research they want to publish is of high quality, leading neatly into a focus on the peer review process.

A stretching and challenging debate

Ask students to read the article discussed earlier in this post – or a summarised version – and invite students to a seminar style discussion about the ideas discussed. Alternatively assign “sides” and debate the publication of negative findings.

A student edited journal

This article appears in a brand new journal called BMC Psychology which strives to publish work that adds to the scientific knowledge base without playing to the crowd in terms of interest levels.

After a discussion relating to issues of publication and bias you could ask students to imagine they are the editor of a new journal. Ask students to write a short piece about their journals approach to publication, outlining their publication criteria.

 

CBT: An audience with Dr. Aaron Beck for A Level students

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

@BeckInstitute recently tweeted a link (retweeted by @BPSOfficial) to a number of interesting short videos covering a Q and A session (part of a CBT workshop) with Dr. Aaron Beck on a number of aspects of CBT. The videos (available on You Tube) provide an often rare opportunity for learners at A Level to hear from a highly influential Psychologist first hand and I think make a useful resource for use in a variety of ways both in and outside of the classroom. This post outlines a few ways that these videos could compliment the AQA A specification (or any other spec where CBT is a feature).

1. Broad AO2: Skills of the therapist

In one of the videos, entitled “Tips for the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist”, Beck highlights a therapy-wide issue relating to the impact of the skills of the therapist on the effectiveness of the therapy. Students could take this broad issue and attempt to contextualise the problem trying to make it highly relevant to the disorder they are studying at A2 (Unit 4: Psychopathology).

2. A learning activity with the help of the Beck Institute’s website

The Beck Institute’s website, like most, contains a page dedicated to frequently asked questions about CBT intended for prospective trainers or users of this form of Psychotherapy. These FAQ’s actually pose questions that A Level Psychology students should be able to answer to a degree once they have studied CBT (the depth of answer obviously would differ depending whether these are AS or A2 students). Ask students to write answers to the listed questions, which include “How do Cognitive Behaviour therapists help patients become their own therapists”, then compare and contrast student answers with those on the website, clarifying misunderstandings where necessary.

3. Stretch and challenge

Those students striving for A* grades or those who are simply more interested in Psychology may find the videos that cover broader issues of Psychotherapy particularly interesting and enriching. In one of the videos (“Neurobiology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy”) Beck discusses how CBT might work from a neurobiological perspective. I am going to attempt to summarise the idea here and apologise profusely if my attempt dilutes or distorts Beck’s intended meaning in any way. Beck suggests that in the case of Depression CBT might have a dual effect, both reactivating the rational functioning (the reflective), associated with the prefrontal cortex for example, but at the same time deactivating the hyperactivity in the brain functioning associated with irrationality (the reflexive). This discussion should enable students to see that criticising Psychological approaches for neglecting to consider biological influences is not always a warranted criticism; Beck’s own interest in how the Cognitive and Biological approaches might fit together demonstrates this nicely.

Beck also discusses the use of technology to deliver CBT and the need for Psychotherapy to develop in order to address the lack of available CBT for those that need it. In “The Future of Individual Therapy” Dr Beck suggests the need to take a triage approach, echoing the approach in medical health care. To cope with the shortage of therapists those patients most in need of therapy should, according to Beck, receive CBT from therapists with the highest level of training and experience whilst those with milder symptoms can benefit from access to practitioners with a more general training background and/or technology-based CBT delivery methods.

These videos have the potential to stretch learners and also help to ensure students are exploring the specification with a sense of what is happening now and what might happen in the future in Psychology – or at least in the field of Psychotherapy.

 

Misconceptions and effective learning

Misconceptions and learning

Regular readers of this blog will already know that I think that infinite amounts of learning can come out of explicitly addressing the misconceptions held by learners about the mind and our behaviour in the classroom and that this can often be a perfect starting point for teaching new concepts in A Level Psychology. It’s no wonder then that a short video I recently came across, discussing the idea that teaching concepts in Science without including misconceptions might result in poor quality learning, caught my eye.

The 8 minute You Tube video (Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos) makes reference to research (apparently part of the video presenters PHD thesis) that showed that learners who watched a Physics video that addressed misconceptions about the subject content being explained performed better (in a series of assessment questions presented after the video) than those who did not see/hear the misconceptions. What is particularly interesting is that those who saw/heard the video where the misconceptions were addressed reported feeling “confused” and less confident in their understanding, whereas those that simply saw a video explaining the new concept were more favourable in their descriptions of the video (describing it as “clear” and concise”) and more confident in their knowledge but they did not perform as well or recall accurately what they had seen and heard.

Although this video and the research the observations are based on relate to the content of teaching materials taking a video form, the issues raised could apply to any form of instruction or teaching of new concepts and could certainly apply to A Level Psychology.

A Level Psychology

The video presenter, although using Physics as an example, is talking about effective learning in Science and raising concerns about the use of numerous online videos and teaching materials that are clear and concise but perhaps do not engage with the existing “knowledge” of learners. Psychology is certainly a science that everyone thinks they know a bit about already but often this knowledge is based on outdated ideas, unsubstantiated “pop psychology” and media distortions of research; all of which make for a shaky foundation.

I don’t have any further knowledge about the validity and reliability of the research the presenter refers to but the importance of revealing misconceptions and not assuming students are blank slates, even in a “new” subject, is one close to my heart which is why this video and the ideas it raises caught my eye.

Conflict in learning

It is important to emphasise again that although the students referred to in the video were “confused” their learning actually seemed to be better than when they thought the learning materials were “clear and concise”. This might be because they were being forced to re-evaluate and reflect on their knowledge and understanding (it doesn’t feel very nice to find out you were wrong) rather than passively accept new knowledge, paying only a surface level of attention to the materials because it feels familiar and accessible. It is always worth remembering that what students like is not always what is most effective for learning.

 

Changes to A Levels: What about the subjects that are not deemed facilitating?

Facilitating…?

The Russell Group of Universities have identified a selection of A Level subjects they refer to as “facilitating” subjects. It is these subjects that Michael Gove proposes (22nd Jan 2013) will be re-designed (including the change to a 2 year course with exams at the end of this time) for first teaching 2015 (see letter to OfQual including list of subjects).

A dictionary definition of the term “facilitating” is:

1. “to make easier or less difficult; help forward (an action, a process, etc)
2. to assist the progress of (a person)”.

In my opinion identifying these subjects to be re-developed first, and risking a two-tiered system for A Level coming into play in the awkward interim period come 2015 (see 1994 University group’s comments on this), appears rooted in making a select few universities selection process and entry criteria “easier or less difficult” to manage, rather than assisting the progress of (all) A Level students who take these qualifications.

A Level Psychology

As a teacher of a subject not deemed to be “facilitating” I am left wondering whether the broad range of students that choose my subject will change. I also wonder whether all of the work of the BPS in terms of ensuring that Psychology is recognised as being part of the Sciences is being jeopardised. Those students with high average GCSE point scores will clearly be directed to the “new” A Levels.

Psychology remains an incredibly popular A Level choice that has so much potential to develop skills and impart knowledge that are useful and enriching beyond the A Level itself. I’m not arguing that Psychology is any more “facilitating” than any other subject but rather I am trying to highlight that singling out these other subjects and implying that they are superior lacks validity and is potentially damaging.

Left in the dark

I cannot believe that anyone would think it a good idea to come up with a partial plan for the changes to A Levels and start implementing these changes without having a clear direction for the future of all subjects, so I can’t help feeling that important information is being withheld.

I thought the idea of the consultation process and redevelopment was to involve teachers as well as universities, yet I feel (like everyone else I would imagine) left in the dark with more questions about the reforms than answers. If the idea is to use these “facilitating subjects” to see how it goes and to act as a trial run before investing effort in all the A Levels, it would seem an irresponsible approach given that we are talking about students futures here. I feel for the student who come 2015 might be studying Maths and History with one style of course and Psychology with a completely different style. Doesn’t this piecemeal plan for change also potentially make for more confusion for universities who may regard the perhaps “more rigorous” new 2 year A Level grade as more indicative of  a student’s potential than the old one, making grades more difficult to use to compare student’s performance in this time.

Jumping the gun

I think any changes and any input of the “advisory groups” should be put on hold until a full schedule for changes to all subjects is published. If no such schedule has been identified then the changes should be shelved. At the very least teachers and students should be advised how the interim system will be managed and any negative impact avoided.