Term 1: Issues and Debates, Forensic Psychology and Biopsychology
Students will complete the Issues and Debates topic covering: gender and culture bias; the three debates: free will vs determinism, nature-nurture, and holism and reductionism. They will explore idiographic and nomothetic approaches and ethical implications of research studies and theory.
Students will begin the Forensic Psychology unit by studying offender profiling (top down and bottom up approaches). The focus will then move to learning a range of explanations of criminal behaviour including; the biological explanations (atavistic form, genetic and neural).
Teacher 2: Students will explore divisions of the nervous system; the structure and function of sensory, relay and motor neurons; and the process of synaptic transmission; the function of the endocrine system; the fight or flight response.
You will be assessed weekly through a range of questions including multiple choice, short answer and extended writing in the form of 16 mark essays. Maths skills and research methods topics will be assessed regularly. Your knowledge retention will be assessed weekly by a range of short answer questions.
Androcentrism
Androcentrism refers to theories that are centred on, or focused on males.
Beta Bias
A beta bias refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from studies using males can apply equally to females.
Biological Determinism
Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behaviour is innate and determined by genes.
Biological Reductionism
Biological reductionism refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviour to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure, etc.
Causal Explanations
Science is heavily deterministic in its search for causal relationships (explanations) as it seeks to discover whether X causes Y, or whether the independent variable causes changes in the dependent variable.
Cultural Relativism
The idea that cultural norms and values are culture specific and no-one culture is superior to another culture
Culture Bias
A cultural bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one's own cultural assumptions.
Determinism
Determinism is the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control.
Enviornment
The environment is seen as everything outside the body, which can include people, events and the physical world.
Environmental Determinism
Environmental determinism is the view that behaviour is determined or caused by forces outside the individual. Environmental determinism posits that our behaviour is caused by previous experience learned through classical and operant conditioning.
Evironmental Reductionism
Environmental reductionism is also known as stimulus-response reductionism. Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be reduced to the simple building blocks of S-R (stimulus-response) associations and that complex behaviours are a series of S-R chains.
Ethical Implications
Ethical implications consider the impact or consequences that psychological research has on the rights of other people in a wider context, not just the participants taking part in the research.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism means seeing the world only from one?s own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct.
Free Will
Humanistic psychologists believe that humans have free will. Humans are able to make their own decisions and are not determined by biological or environmental factors.
Gender Bias
A gender bias is the differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not on real differences.
Hard Determinism
Hard determinism is the view that forces outside of our control (e.g. biology or past experience) shape our behaviour. Hard determinism is seen as incompatible with free will.
Heredity
Heredity is the process in which traits are passed down genetically from one generation to the next.
Holism
Holism comes from the Greek word ?holos?, which means ?all?, ?whole? or ?entire? and is the idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience, and not as separate parts.
Idiographic Approach
The term ?idiographic? comes from the Greek word ?idios?, which means ?own? or ?private?. Psychologists who take an idiographic approach focus on the individual and emphasise the unique personal experience of human nature. This means they favourÿqualitative research methods, such as the case study, unstructured interviews and thematic analysis which allow an in-depth insight into individual behaviour. The idiographic approach does not seek to formulate laws or generalise results to others.
Interactionism Approach
An interactionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour, ranging from lower (biological) to higher levels (social and cultural).
Issues and Debates
The issues and debates in psychology consider some of the important arguments in relation to conducting research and explaining behaviour. The key issues and debates include gender and culture in psychology; free will and determinism; the nature-nurture debates; idiographic and nomothetic approaches and ethical issues and social sensitivity.
Levels of Explanation
There are different levels of explanation and the behaviour can be explained at different levels (e.g. social and cultural, psychological or biological).
Nature-Nurture Debate
The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest debates in psychology. It centres on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development and behaviour.
Nomothetic Approach
The termÿ?nomothetic?ÿcomes from the Greek word ?nomos? which means ?law?. Psychologists who take a nomothetic approach are concerned with establishing general laws, based on the study of large groups of people, and the use of statistical (quantitative) techniques to analyse data. This means that experiments, correlations, psychometric testing and other quantitative methods are favoured among nomothetic researchers.
Psychic Determinism
Psychic determinism claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (id, ego and superego), as in Freud?s model of psychological development.
Reductionism
Reductionism is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts.
Social Sensitivity
Sieber and Stanley (1988) used the term social sensitivity to describe studies where there are potential social consequences for the participants or the group of people represented by the research.
Soft Determinism
Soft determinism is an alternative position favoured by many psychologists. According to soft determinism, behaviour is constrained by the environment or biological make-up, but only to a certain extent.
Universality
When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture.
Develop the individual:
Students will reflect on the extent to which they are responsible for their own actions. They will critically analyse the impact internal and external factors have on their decision making.
Create a supportive community:
Students will explore the idea of responsibility and the degree to which we are responsible to ourselves and each other.
Term 2: Forensic Psychology and Biopsychology
Students will continue with the Forensic Psychology unit. They will move on to explore psychological explanations for offending behaviour including: Eysenck's theory or the criminal personality, cognitive explanations, differential association theory and the psychodynamic explanation. Students will continue to explore the Biopsychology unit focusing on; the brain including localisation of function and lateralisation of the brain; ways of studying the brain; and biological rhythms.
You will be assessed weekly through a range of questions including multiple choice, short answer and extended writing in the form of 16 mark essays. Maths skills and research methods topics will be assessed regularly. Your knowledge retention will be assessed weekly by a range of short answer questions.
Develop the individual:
Students will reflect on the impact biology plays in their own actions.
Create a supportive community:
Students will understand the role of biology in the decisions individuals make and reflect on how this determinism impacts responsibility.
Term 3: Forensic Psychology and Schizophrenia
Students will complete the Unit of Forensic Psychology by studying ways of dealing with offending behaviour and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each method. This includes, custodial sentencing, behaviour modification, anger management and restorative justice programmes. Students explore the classification and diagnosis of Schizophrenia. They will move on to learning the biological and psychological explanations of schizophrenia, followed by therapies including drug therapies, psychological therapies and the interactionist approach.
You will be assessed weekly through a range of questions including multiple choice, short answer and extended writing in the form of 16 mark essays. Maths skills and research methods topics will be assessed regularly. Your knowledge retention will be assessed weekly by a range of short answer questions.
Develop the individual:
Students will analyse the impact external factors have on our decisions.
Create a supportive community:
Students will explore the extent to which psychological explanations are universal.
Term 4: Gender
Students will learn about; the difference between sex and gender; sex-role stereotypes. androgyny and measuring androgyny including the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Students will explore the role of chromosomes and hormones in sex and gender as well as typical sex chromosome patterns: Klinefelter’s syndrome and Turner’s syndrome. Students will contrast these with cognitive explanations of gender development such as Kohlberg’s theory; gender schema theory the psychodynamic explanation of gender development and social learning theory as applied to gender development. Students will evaluate the influence of culture and media on gender roles. Students will explore atypical gender development: gender dysphoria; biological and social explanations for gender dysphoria.
Assessment: You will be assessed weekly through a range of questions including multiple choice, short answer and extended writing in the form of 16 mark essays. Maths skills and research methods topics will be assessed regularly. Your knowledge retention will be assessed weekly by a range of short answer questions.
Develop the individual:
Students will explore the impact of changing understanding of gender will have on their lives.
Create a supportive community:
Students will reflect on how the changing understanding of gender impacts others in society.
Term 5: Revision
Students will spend their lessons revising in preparation for their final external exams which normally begin at the end of term 5. This is targeted and based on personalised learning checklists.
You will be assessed weekly through a range of questions including multiple choice, short answer and extended writing in the form of 16 mark essays. Maths skills and research methods topics will be assessed regularly. Your knowledge retention will be assessed weekly by a range of short answer questions.
Develop the individual:
Students will use the debates to reflect on their own understanding of human behaviour.
Create a supportive community:
Students will take part in interactive activities to develop their ability to discuss and show their reasoning on the different debates.