Sometimes I feel like a little kid running excitedly across a field towards a fancy new playground when I’m planning for this new course. Other times I feel like the field’s littered with landmines. A false step and I might blow up my leg, or in class I might miss something that has big ramifications down the line for students. This is so true in the class practicals. Let me explain something that’s easily missable so you can tip-toe through the landmines.
The practicals are exciting to plan for and the mind races with possibilities. However, just like real researchers who have to balance validity, ethicality and practicality, we’re faced with the exact same balancing act in IB classrooms. While some studies would be fascinating to conduct, practically speaking they’re problematic. Others are ethically sound, but dreadfully boring. Here are my thoughts on the class practicals.
Teacher Leads, Students Participate
I am not planning my class practicals for students to conduct. It’s a lovely thought. Wouldn’t it be nice if the course wasn’t so jam-packed with content that we could? I will figure out other simple lesson plans that can be practical, like getting students to do their own correlational studies and experiments in learning and cognition. But for a practical that’s on the exams, I just won’t risk it.
Like with most inquiry-based ideas, it falls down if we have very specific assessment criteria for which students have to meet. If we give student choice on their topic for the class practical, not only does this open up a can of ethical and practical worms, it also jeopardises their ability to answer Question 4 in Paper 2. This brings me to my next point.
Plan Backwards from Question 4
Paper 2, Section A is on the class practicals. The last question requires students can explain how they could use an alternative method to study the topic in their class practical. Sounds easy, until it’s not. This is a six mark question so it’s important students can explain this easily in exam conditions. I think this question will trip up a lot of teachers in the first few years. The biggest problem I can see is when you try to apply the class practical topic to observational methods.
For example, the guide gives the following possible examples for a class practical experiment on learning and cognition:
- Loftus and Palmer (1974) car crash
- Masuda and Nisbett (2001) attention with analytic and holistic thinkers
- Tversky and Kahneman (1974) anchoring bias
- Music and memory/Mozart effect (Rauscher et al., 1997)
I’m excited to use this meme for anyone that can show me how these experiments could be done observationally.
Sounds fun. But if you can design a logical observational study on one of these cognitive topics, then I owe you a coke. Personally, I can’t. Even if I could, I think they’d be very difficult for students to explain in an exam. Imagine if they’d done a practical on leading questions and the misinformation effect and then asked about how to do this with an observation, or even an interview for that matter. Heck, even a questionnaire. What would that look like? A researcher sitting in a room watching people misremember things? An interview asking questions like “tell me what you don’t remember correctly?” It wouldn’t work.
Some serious mental gymnastics need performing to bend these topics to observational methods – it’s just not worth it. My advice is to plan out your class practicals carefully beginning with Question 4 – could the same topic easily be studied using the other three methods? If not, choose something else.
It does seem odd that we’ve gone to class practicals because of ethical concerns regarding students running experiments. But now they’ve instead of vanilla experiments on cognition, they’ve got the option of running studies using observations, questionnaires and interviews on things like mental health and relationships. These are far more fraught with ethical peril than the old IA.
My Plan
All my practicals are designed to be (a) teacher led, (b) easy to conduct in one lesson, (c) easily replicated using the other three methods. Moreover, I’m planning a standalone unit that’s all about research methods for SL and HL students. I think the best way to teach for Paper 2 is in a 25 lesson unit that covers the practicals, the methods, and evaluating research with concepts. Otherwise, where do we find the time to teach methods for Paper 2, Section B?
An outline of my 20 lesson unit on research methods. This covers everything for Paper 2 in a logical way. It also frees up 10 hours in my course (since we’re given 30 hours for the practicals). It also covers evaluation and concepts which are crucial for Paper 1 essays.
Example Practical
My experiment on cognition is going to be on attention. More specifically, it’s a simple experiment on the mere presence of a smartphone and its effect on attention using the trail making task. A simple experiment to conduct in 30 mins. It’s an easy topic to study using the other methods, too. An observational study could be in a non-participant, overt naturalistic classroom observation with a researcher in a classroom making notes on how technology affects attention (e.g. through visual signs of time on or off task, or with a behaviour observation scale). I can even do the other two methods in class. For an interview, it’s a simple 10 minute focus group interview in class with students to discuss how technology affects their attention. For a questionnaire, I could give them the “smartphone addiction scale” and the “attention control scale.” We can then see if the scores are correlated.*
Can you see any other loopholes in the class practicals?
*The inclusion of questionnaires/surveys as a standalone research method here is disappointing. I think a better alternative would have been correlational studies. There are very few studies in psychology that use survey/questionnaires in isolation without part of some bigger research method.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.