Students are required to produce one practical report and one assignment.

Before students can start their research they are required to complete an Application For Psychological Research Form. (see form) This is in order that we as a department can ensure amongst other things, that our students proposals are ethical, and workable eg. not multivariable.

In the departmental handbook we provide students with details on how to write a psychology practical report, as well as a checklist of essential items. We also give students an exemplar practical report. From September we plan to provide a commentary for this which will point out good practice. Also included in the handbook is a practical coursework markscheme which we ask students to use to assess their own work on the coursework assessment form (see form) before it is assessed by their teacher. In the past we have also asked students to write a practice piece of coursework based on a class practical before submission of their actual coursework, although this is under review.

Students will also have a number of coursework lessons which will cover writing hypotheses, experimental design, sampling techniques, measurement, descriptive and inferential statistics.

We also provide details of what is required in an assignment in the departmental handbook, along with an assignment markscheme. Again, as with the practical coursework, we require students to assess their own work before they submit it to their teacher.

In assignment lessons we would start by looking at where the best sources can be found, and advise our students that the following magazines and newspapers generate the most useable sources, Sugar, B, Chat, Take A Break, Woman, Bella, That's Life, Marie Clare, Cosmopolitan, The Sun, Mirror, Daily Mail.

We have two documents which help students produce their assignment. One is a planning document, and the other a template. We have an ongoing departmental debate about whether a template should be necessary !
(See Assignment)

We also provide exemplar assignments.
(See example)

As a department, we have opted in the past to deliver health and environment.

Under the previous specification each option contained 7 syllabus areas, which meant that students would receive 14 packs in total on each of these areas. This constitutes a frightening amount of paper, given our early concerns about ensuring that our students had 4 studies for each guidance note. These packs were made up from the main textbooks on the two specialist options. The material in the pack is meant to generate a range of classroom activities based on:

* identifying what findings mean

* evaluating studies using a range of criteria

* comparing and contrasting studies on these evaluative criteria

* generating applications from research

If you look at the specialist choices markscheme it will become clear that everything that goes on in lessons is geared towards how marks are awarded in the exam. For an example of one of our teaching packs see Environmental Disaster. (Acrobat pdf fomat)

Students need a great deal of help in producing essays which fully satisfy the markscheme, and one way that we deal with this is to provide the students with an essay planner (see form) which they would complete and submit with their essay. We are aiming to incorporate self assessment here too, and the form will need revising in the light of the new syllabus.

We would aim in the second year for students to complete 6 paper 5's and 4 paper 4's (not now in the new specification) as a minimum.

Second year students are frequently overwhelmed with the amount they have to revise, and are reassured by the OCR's guarantee that two exam questions will be taken from the syllabus and one from the guidance notes on each option. What this means in practice is that students tend only to prepare for general questions. For each of the 7 syllabus areas we might ask our students to choose 4 to 6 studies which demonstrate breadth of selection from the guidance notes. They would then work on identifying and defining 4 evaluation issues, and on each one they would compare and contrast all 4 studies. We would also focus on generating applications from within each of the 14 syllabus areas, and supporting these ideas with psychological research.