Psychology News

Insight Conferences

Insight conferences offer conferences/workshops relating to crime, psychology and forensics.

Their conferences/workshops can be delivered in your school/college and in a number of venues across the country.

During December, they will be holding an overnight Forensics conference at the University of Warwick and this will be aimed at years 12 and 13 students who have an interest in the world of forensics, either through Psychology or Science related subjects they are studying.

Areas they will cover will be Ballistics, Fingerprinting, Crime Scene Investigation plus mock crime scene, Reformed Prisoners, Forensic Photography, Major Incident Investigation, and Geo-profiling. During the day sessions are presentation based and in the evening students are split into groups for interactive sessions.

You can find more details on their website www.insightconferences.co.uk

Posted in Conferences, Insight Conferences by Mark Holah | No Comments »

Books for AQA psychology

Nelson Thornes is the official partner for AQA psychology and they have an AS book due out for AQA (A) in March 2008. The authors are Simon Green, Rosie McGinley, Julia Willerton, Jane Willson and James Bailey

There is more information here.

The AQA (B) AS book is also due in March and the authors are Mark Billingham, Sarah Ladbrook, Sue Standring and Regina Teahan

There is more information here

I will add more information here about AQA books when I have the information. I am sure there will be many non-endorsed books on the market too.

Posted in Books, Resources, aqa by Mark Holah | No Comments »

Books for OCR psychology

This will be the first of a number of posts on which books are going to be available for the new specifications.

As you may know, the awarding bodies all now have their own “official partners” and for psychology OCR have gone to bed with Heinemann

Heinemann are to publish an AS Book (available from March 2008) and an A2 book (available from September 2008).

Apparently, both books come with a free CD, which will have “a wealth of extra exam preparation in an exciting interactive format” and the A2 book covers all four of the options.

For a whopping £250 each you can also buy an A2 Psychology Planning and Delivery Resource File and CD-ROM, and an AS Psychology Planning and Delivery Resource File and CD-ROM

You can find more details here where you can also view a sample of the books.

Of course, there will be many non-endorsed books available for OCR psychology. So far I have noticed that their will be a new edition of the wonderful Introducing Psychological Research by Banyard and Grayson which will cover the new studies for AS and has an extended chapter on methods and statistics. I have already ordered my copy, which is due out in December.

As more books become available, I will let you know.

Posted in Books, Resources, ocr by Mark Holah | No Comments »

The ATP Annual General Meeting

The Association for the Teaching of Psychology

The Association for the Teaching of Psychology is still taking bookings for the Annual General Meeting on 17th November 2007, at Staffordshire University.

This one-day event includes a series of continuing professional development talks and workshops around the theme of Psychology, Health and Learning

The AGM is free to members.

For more details visit www.theatp.org/events/index.html

Posted in ATP, Conferences by Mark Holah | No Comments »

Philip Allan Psychology Student Conferences

The very popular one-day student conferences for 2007 are as follows.

AS AQA (A) Psychology
Unit 3: Revision Day London, 29 November 2007

AS AQA (A) Psychology
Unit 1: Revision Day London, 3 December 2007
Manchester, 30 November 2007

AS AQA (B) Psychology
Revision Day London, 23 November 2007
Manchester, 12 December 2007

AS/A2 OCR Psychology London, 19 November 2007

AS/A2 Psychology London, 10 December 2007
Manchester, 28 November 2007

More details here
http://www.philipallan.co.uk/content.aspx?Page=1DCONF19:

Posted in Conferences, Philip Allan by Mark Holah | No Comments »

Offender Profiling and Beyond

Professor David Canter and The International Academy for Investigative Psychology are hosting two conferences for 6th form students on offender profiling and investigative psychology.

The Cambridge conference is on December 10th 2007 and the Liverpool conference is on December 12th 2007.

According to the blurb the topics include:

Offender Profiling – Professor Canter tells how it all began
Stalking - celebrity cases
Predicting Domestic Violence
Serial Killers
Geographical Profiling – ‘Jack the Ripper’
Eyewitness Testimony
Offenders’ Life Stories
9/11 Studying the Terrorist aftermath

And include:

Presentations from World Experts
Careers Relating to Psychology and Crime
The Role of the Forensic Psychologist
Ask the Experts

Here are more details.
http://www.ia-ip.org/temp/index.php?page=6th-form-ug#event1

Posted in Conferences by Mark Holah | No Comments »

OCR Marking

The following article was posted on TES in September, although I have only just spotted it. I was aware that the journalist Warwick Mansell was researching the article but missed it when it was published.

The main concern is regarding the inconsistent marking of the core studies 2 (2541) paper for OCR psychology and the article also raises concern about the marking of OCR coursework (2543).  Unfortunately, as yet, there have been no responses to the article on the TES web site.

Soured by 3 years of erratic marking

Warwick Mansell
Published: 14 September 2007

A comprehensive is considering abandoning A-level psychology after what it says have been years of erratic marking by an exam board.
For the third year running, Wootton Upper School in Bedfordshire is in dispute with the OCR board over its grading of psychology AS papers, and it also has concerns over A2.

Juliet O’Callaghan, head of psychology, said the school could opt to teach critical thinking instead because of widespread concern about the OCR’s psychology marking.

Mrs O’Callaghan’s 59 students averaged E grades in the OCR’s essay paper, compared with Bs in a short answer module and an investigation paper.

Yet last year, the opposite was true. Students performed two grades better (averaging Cs) on the essay paper than the investigation and short answer paper, where they averaged Es and Ds respectively.

In 2005, the essay paper was again the top performer, with students averaging C grades compared with Es in the short answer module and Ds in the investigation.

Mrs O’Callaghan said bad marking rather than changed teaching standards must be to blame, since she had taught all parts of the course to all students over all three years.

The results of re-marks appear to back her case. In 2005 and 2006, the school challenged the marks of a total of 65 students and two-thirds improved their grades when their papers were re-marked.

Mrs O’Callaghan is also unhappy about external marking of A2 coursework. This summer, two students asked for a re-mark and both improved their overall grades from a B to an A.

An OCR spokesman said the board could not comment because it was still considering the school’s case.

Another sixth-form college approached by The TES has also had problems with this year’s psychology AS essay paper. Its students scored Us on average, compared with high Cs in the other papers.

A teacher at the college said he had spoken to three other large institutions, all of which had uncovered the same problem.

http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2434571

Posted in Specifications, ocr, tes by Mark Holah | No Comments »

Blogs

Like most psychology teachers, I simply do not have the time or inclination to read numerous psychology journals but still like to keep up to date with the latest research which is relevant to my teaching. Thankfully Christian Jarrett, editor of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, has created an excellent blog for psychology teachers and students. On the blog Christian provides wonderful summaries of recent research and links to the actual research articles if you want to delve deeper. The blog now has a regular readership who are more and more starting to make comments about the articles. If like me you become a fan of the digest you can subscribe to the blog and you will find that there are a number of ways that you can do this.

We asked Christian about his incredibly successful blog and this is what he had to say.

So many journals, so much new research, but so little time? Fear not - the British Psychological Society’s free Research Digest service trawls through the world’s journals so you don’t have to. Each fortnight the BPS sends out an email crammed with fun reports on the latest psychology studies relevant to the A-level syllabus. Also, recent additions to the service include - ‘Extras’, which are links to eye-catching studies that didn’t make the final cut; ‘the Special Issue Spotter’, which flags up new journal issues that are devoted to a specific topic; and ‘Elsewhere’, which gives you links to psychology-related magazine and newspaper articles that are freely available on the web.

The Research Digest is also available online as a blog, allowing you to comment on featured research and to subscribe by RSS feed. Some of the reports in the Digest - such as the case of the man who became a human chameleon after suffering brain damage, or the experiment that showed wiggling your eyes back and forth can improve your memory - have become so popular they’ve been picked up by other media organisations around the world, like the New Scientist blog, the American news channel MSNBC, and even German internet TV.

On top of all that, the Digest occasionally features guest articles specifically tailored for students. There are links to these on the blog. So far there have been features on psychophysics, twin studies, psychology podcasts and using the web. Forthcoming is an item on psychology studies conducted in virtual worlds, and a guide to systematic reviews. Also, every now and again the Digest hosts special anniversary projects. Last year, to mark its 3rd birthday, the Digest asked the world’s leading psychology bloggers to discuss an experiment from the last three years that inspired them or that changed the way they think. Later this year, another project is planned to coincide with the 100th issue. The topic is top secret but is guaranteed to be fun - - if you don’t want to miss it, make sure you subscribe to the Digest email or blog!

If you are a teacher of any of the psychology specifications you should find Christian’s blog invaluable. However if you teach the OCR specifications Jamie Davies has set up psychblog.co.uk which is a blog similar to Christian’s but with a focus on research which relates to the OCR specifications. As with Christian’s blog you can also subscribe to psychblog to ensure that you do not miss any new research.

Posted in BPS, blogs by Mark Holah | No Comments »

South West Conferences

Cara Flanagan and Mike Cardwell run an excellent psychology conference company called South West Conferences.

One of their upcoming conferences that has caught my eye is the one where Professor Zimbardo will discuss his research with special reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment and his recent book The Lucifer Effect, and also answer students’ questions.

The conference will run on the afternoons of Tuesday 18 March and Wednesday 19 March, 2008 in London and will also include talks by Phil Banyard, Cara Flanagan and Mike Cardwell.

For more details visit the SouthWestConferences web site.

Posted in Conferences, South West Conferences by Mark Holah | No Comments »

New GCEs for 2008

This is certainly not new news for many teachers, but here are the urls for the new AS/A level specifications starting in September 2008.

AQA (A)

AQA (B)

OCR

Edexcel

WJEC

I know that many teachers are using the forthcoming changes to inform their decisions about which specifications they will be teaching in 2008. We would love to know what you think of the changes. The awarding bodies certainly do seem worried and are pushing the boat out in telling us how wonderful their new specifications are.

Posted in Specifications, aqa, edexcel, ocr by Mark Holah | No Comments »