I think if we have learned anything from the exam questions in the new AQA A Level Specification, it is that it is essential for A Level Psychology students to be competent and confident in their use of maths. Past papers, although few in number, have already featured questions involving drawing graphs, calculating a percentage change and rounding to significant figures; all of which the examiners reports indicate are problematic for some students.
Psychologists as Mathematicians
Not only are our Psychology students required to carry out calculations, but they are also required to be able to understand when and why particular ways of representing and summarising data are appropriate to use. The examiners reports have consistently told us that candidates are not competent in this area.
It is easy to think that a student who recalls learning about means, median and modes in their GCSE Maths course – and who can calculate each of these when directed to – is well prepared for their Psychology exam, but this does not seem to be the case. Our students need to be as confident explaining why the mean is appropriate to use to summarise and describe patterns in a specific set of data, as they are punching numbers into their calculator to find the mean (if they have remembered to bring it to use in the exam of course).
Making Maths Concepts a Priority
It is easy for us as teachers to think that it is better to spend more time on the more complicated stats tests which are new to students, but I actually think it is vital to put as much effort into helping students transfer their existing learning from maths (which does not happen automatically) and build on this knowledge in order to apply it to the type of data they might come across in their study of psychology. It is important to bear in mind that the contexts they have applied mathematical concepts to in the past will be quite different (or at least look very different) to the data they will face in a psychology exam.
Tricky Concepts
It is worth reading, or re-reading, in detail the specification in this area. The AQA specification states that “at least 10% of the marks in assessments in Psychology will require the use of mathematical skills”. It also states that this “will be at least the standard of higher tier GCSE mathematics”. A glance down the table that follows in this section of the spec identifies a number of concepts that students may be less familiar with by the time they are sitting in our Psychology classrooms, including:
- Standard form
- Using ratios
- Understanding the concept of distributions and skew e.g. related to histograms
- Probability e.g. significance levels
- Estimating a mean
Remember the spec says “at least the standard of higher tier GCSE mathematics” not up to. This means that the mathematical concepts can be at a higher level than many of students have studied. For this reason, it is important to teach these concepts in more detail and avoid leaving students to read about them in their textbooks as direct expert instruction is required to master these skills.
Resources for Teachers and Students
I have been a teacher of Maths and Psychology for 20 years now, and I have always found it to be an advantage that I have an insight into the mathematical knowledge students in the Psychology classroom are likely to have. It doesn’t seem fair to assume that Psychology teachers across the country (or world) are also competent maths teachers and I would assume that there are lots of Psychology teachers out there who might feel less confident teaching this area of the specification. For this reason, I am excited to say that I am currently working on a set of resources to support the teaching and learning of these mathematical concepts in the context of A Level Psychology, so watch this space…! In the meantime regular readers of my blog will know that I created some online courses for Psychology teachers and students on descriptive and inferential statistics (and qualitative data), so take a look (first section is available as a free preview) at these if you haven’t already.
Psychology Teaching Ideas 