Janeen du Venage

Psychology  Teacher  心理学老师

Psychology is a fascinating subject to study. Luctonians have been delving into how our Memory works, why we remember certain things, and forget others and the different theories that have been put forward to explain how our memory processing system operates. Let’s hope this helps the students come exam time. The Year 12’s are currently learning about human behaviour, in terms of obedience, conformity and resistance.

The more we learn about the mind and human behaviour the more we can improve our teamwork and leadership skills. This aspect of psychology is a core skill of the course and is built upon as we gain more knowledge about the subject.

The Year 10’s and Year 11’s are exploring mental processes, and different theories relating to how we develop, and why we behave in certain ways. Why we think, act and feel certain things, or react in a certain way to an external stimulus. The Year 11’s have been studying Criminal behaviour and the various theories as to why some people commit crime. Underlying all this is the nature/nurture debate, are some people predisposed to become criminals, or is it purely the environment which shapes up. Students have been honing their communication skills as they learn more about the mind, and have to apply their knowledge to case studies, which improves their analytical and metacognitive skills.

The Year 10’s have been studying the different theories related to how we develop perceptions about ourselves, others and the world in which we live. And how this relates to and can be used in education.

After the mid-term exams the Year 11’s will be learning about scientific research methods, including collecting and working with data, while the Year 10’s will be delving deeper into the human condition, learning about psychological problems, the brain and neuropsychology.

Neil Clayton

Psychology  Teacher  心理学老师

“The quiet statisticians have changed our world; not by discovering new facts or technical developments, but by changing the ways that we reason, experiment, and form opinions.” – Ian Hacking

To succeed in psychology, you not only need to be able to understand psychology, you need to be able to understand statistics, too. In psychology, we are confronted with enormous amounts of data. How do changes in one variable impact other variables? Is there a way we can measure that relationship? What is the overall strength of that relationship and what does that mean? Statistics allow us to answer these kinds of questions. From the development of new therapy techniques to evaluating the effectiveness of the techniques upon implementation, it is statistical analysis that provides the means by which conclusions can be drawn.

Cathy, Andy and Alex have been working through how to select the appropriate inferential statistical tests including parametric versus non parametric, nominal versus ordinal and correlation versus difference. They can also reliably use the t-test, Chi-Squared test, Spearman's Rank and the Mann-Whitney U test.

Given a set of data and details of an experimental design, all three of them could happily tell you which test to use, why that test should be used, use the test and interpret the outcome.

With their strong Maths background and my A Level in Maths this has been an enjoyable end to Unit 3!