This post accompanies my other post about why I think it’s better to aim for depth over breadth in IB Psychology. What is depth? Depth refers to studying a topic by looking at only one or two examples. Examples Studying “Biases in thinking and decision making” by focusing only one on example, e.g., confirmation bias. Studying the effects of one …
Example Essay: Technological Techniques
I’ve been playing around a bit with scaffolding for essay writing, and from what I’ve found, a general guideline for essay structure is as follows: Introduction Core argument Supporting evidence (min. 2 x studies). Counter argument Conclusion Of course, this is just a template and sometimes the structure varies. For example, you might have one study supporting the core argument …
“How many studies do I need?”
By far the two most common questions IB Psychology teachers (and students) ask are: Is this a good EE question? and… How many studies do I need? You can read my answer to the first question about EEs here. In this post I want to address the second question in two ways. First the short answer, that I know many people …
What is “enculturation?”
One of the changes in the new IB Psychology course is the addition of two new concepts in the socio-cultural approach to understanding human behaviour: Enculturation And… Acculturation In this short post I’ll briefly outline the concept of enculturation and provide some general guidance as to how it can be taught in the course. What is enculturation? To quote the …
Teaching Tip: How to cut content and increase understanding
When it’s time to teach the new course, if you’re a bit savvy in your curriculum design you can exploit overlaps, cut content, and best of all – enhance student understanding of psychology. How do we do all this? In this post I’ll walk you through some helpful hints and show you the value of constructing relationship chains. Keeping it Simple …
Key Study: Decision Making, Iowa Gambling and the vmPFC (Bechara et al., 2000).
Context Before reading about this study it’s important to recap the dual processing model of judgement and decision making. According to Kahneman (and others) we have two systems of processing information. System one is fast and unconscious, while system two is slower and considers more factors. The system of processing we use will affect our judgement, which in turn will …
“Is this a good EE question?”
There’s only way way we should be answering this question, in my opinion. And the answer should always be… “Well, it depends.” Let’s first assume that the question in question addresses some kind of relationship between one or more variables and individual human behaviour (or mental processes). If it does this, it’s suitable for psychology. If not, it needs amending. …
IB Psychology (HL) in less than 180 hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options, it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course content in more depth and in less time. Below you can see how I intend on teaching my HL Psychology class in less than 180 hours with the help of my textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. What I should point out …
IB Psychology (SL) in less than 125 Hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course in more depth and in less time. Here are two possible ways you could teach SL Psychology in less than 125 hours with the help of our textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. Course Option #1 with Human Relationships …
Sample SAQs: Memory Reliability
Here are two versions of the same sample answer from this year’s (May, 2017) IB Psychology exam. The question was: Describe one study investigating memory reliability. The annotated short answer response (SAQ) shows you the answer, plus my comments as to why I think this is a mediocre response. Then we have this second excellent annotated example SAQ, which does a better …