Psychology Curriculum Department

Psychology Curriculum

Age Range: 16-18

Subject Vision Statement: Psychology at School 21 enables students to understand the competing explanations of human behaviour and how this knowledge can empower them to make positive changes to the individuals, communities and world around them.

Big Ideas:

Methodology	How is behaviour researched? What constitutes good research?
Approaches	How can behaviour be explained?
Culture	Does culture impact behaviour? How can we prevent cultural bias in research?
Gender	Does gender impact behaviour? How can we prefvent gender bias in research?
Ethical Issues	What constitues as socially sensitive research? Are cost benefit analyses appropriate?
Determinism	Is behaviour governed by external / internal forces? Does free will exist?
Reductionism	Is it approapriate to break human behaviour down into its constituent parts in order to conduct scientific research?
Idiographic v Nomothetic	Can we make general laws about behaviour?
Validity	Is psychological research authentic?

Subject Design Principles:

The curriculum is structured to empower students to break down text and research into appropriate components, effectively communicating this in verbal and written format. We focus on solid foundations of understanding key concepts.

Understanding research methodology unlocks all other content. Research methods is taught alongside content for the whole course in order to foster links between theories/studies and the underlying research principles.

Knowing the different approaches to psychology gives a framework for later concepts to fit into.

Approaches is the first deep dive into content for Y12 students.

Evaluation is a key skill in psychology. To reflect this, where possible, AO1 will be set as pre-learning and assessed at the start of the lesson, allowing ample time to practise AO2 and AO3 skills.