Jonathan Firth

Publisher summary: Written by experienced teachers and psychology specialists, this clear-cut guide offers an introduction to key principles of psychology and shows how they can be directly applied in the classroom on a day-to-day basis in order to improve teaching and learning. Each chapter covers adifferent area of psychology - from getting pupils to recall more information, work independently, and become more creative to establishing whole school resilience. With an focus on the most reliable and relevant research and evidence, it reveals how an understanding of psychology can have an immediate and real effect in classroom learning and teaching pedagogy.

Exam Board: AQA
Level & Subject: GCSE Psychology
First teaching: September 2017 First exams: June 2019

This Psychology Revision and Practice guide contains clear and accessible explanations of all the GCSE content, with lots of practice opportunities for each topic throughout the book.

Based on research that proves repeated practice is more effective than repeated study, this book is guaranteed to help you achieve the best results.

There are clear and concise revision notes for every topic covered in the curriculum, plus seven practice opportunities to ensure the best results.

Includes:
• quick tests to check understanding
• end-of-topic practice questions
• topic review questions later in the book
• mixed practice questions at the end of the book
• free Q&A flashcards to download online
• an ebook version of the revision guide
• more topic-by-topic practice and a complete exam-style paper in the added workbook

A complete core resource for National 5 and CfE Higher Psychology including the following topics: Approaches to Psychology, Sleep, Psychopathology, Memory, Stress, Intelligence, Research methods, Conformity, Prejudice, Non-verbal communication and Relationships. Level notes are included throughout to highlight what pupils for each level need to know and do.

This report describes the ongoing work of the British Psychological Society Scottish Branch’s (BPS-S) Pre-Tertiary Working Group, which was set up in 2016. The remit of the group is to gather information on all aspects of pre-tertiary Psychology education in Scotland and to identify areas of concern and where support is needed. To date this group has completed two major pieces of work during 2017: an audit of pre-tertiary education providers on their perception of current and future Psychology education provision, and a one-day conference of key stakeholders involved in Psychology education in Scotland, held in Edinburgh on 1st June. In this report we summarise the key findings of the audit, the main themes raised by stakeholders at the conference, and proposals for future actions.

This chapter appears in "Flip the System UK: A Teachers' Manifesto", Routledge, November 2017.

In the ongoing discussion of teacher professionalism and how it is threatened by top-down accountability in education systems, a ‘what works’ approach is sometimes seen as a threat to a teacher agency. In this chapter I argue that instead, research-based expertise in the psychology of memory and learning can help to emancipate teachers and bolster their professional agency. In the context of learning-related cognitive phenomena which are neither intuitive nor accessible purely through classroom experience, this scientific knowledge combined with their unique understanding of their own classroom context places teachers in the best position to make key educational judgements on behalf of their learners.

This feature article discusses whether teacher professionalism can and should include research engagement as part of a broader conception of the teacher's role. The importance of teachers' awareness of research is considered, and an argument is put forward that more active forms of research engagement are likely to have better outcomes in terms of professional learning and skills. The various forms that teacher research could take are briefly discussed, and the establishment of a research centre at the author's school is presented as one possible model for increasing teachers' research engagement. Barriers to teacher research are also considered.

Blogging has been popular for at least the past decade, and is increasingly being used as a learning tool (Deng & Yuen, 2011). In many ways, as a largely-text based form, a blog post does not differ greatly from traditional written work that a student might do. However it offers considerable flexibility in terms of access and editing, and the potential for a more interactive form of learning.
For these reasons, I decided to try replacing over two-thirds of my usual homework tasks in Higher Psychology this year with a blog format. I also had one eye on the potential - with the introduction of a new Scottish Higher syllabus and its more flexible internal assessments - to use blogs for internal assessment in future years.

These talking points were presented as part of the delegate pack at the British Psychological Society event, “Teaching Psychology in Scottish Schools and Colleges: The Future” on 1st June, 2017 in Edinburgh. They aim to raise some of the issues facing Psychology as part of the Scottish curriculum, and act as prompts for group discussion among delegates who included both teachers and policy makers.