Psychology

A level

It explores so many aspects of human behaviour, it becomes hard not to see psychology all around you in your everyday life!  Rosie Y13

I never had a chance to study Psychology at high school, but since studying it at TGS it has quickly become my favourite subject. It is a fascinating subject with so many real-life applications. It has been so interesting learning about different behaviours in humans and even animals, and different mental processes that happen all the time without us even realising. I love how it has linked the topics of English and Science through the extended writing and the biological reasoning behind the theories.  It is an extremely interesting subject which I would recommend to anyone.  Maddy Y12

What Will I Study?

Paper 1: Social Influence, Attachment, Memory, Psychopathology
Within the topics for this paper, you will gain an understanding of not only how we think our memory works, but just how fallible your memory is and what can influence its accuracy. You will study how the attachments you make throughout your life, and particualrly in your childhood, are formed and how they might influence your adult relationships. Within Social Psychology we will examine the concepts of obedience and conformity, while in Psychopathology you will learn some of the ways we might identify what is classed as abnormal behaviour and how different psychological perspectives account for and treat abnormal behaviour such as phobias, depression and OCD.

Paper 2: Approaches in Psychology, Biopsychology, Research Methods.
In this unit you will learn about the approaches to Psychology including cognitive, biological, psychodynamic and behaviourism and humanistic and how these different perspectives try to explain human behaviour. You will also study how different areas of the brain may control behaviours, what happens when we remove half our brain and why sleep is so important! The final topic in this paper is research methods which will also be assessed in Paper 1 and Paper 3.

Paper 3: Issues and Debates, Gender, Schizophrenia and Addiction.
Throughout the topics in this paper you will examine different explanations for the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia as well as the psychology of addiction applied to smoking and gambling behaviours. In the gender topic you will study how our different psychologists believe gender may develop and how the media can influence this with much of this knowledge building on what you have learned for the Paper 1 and 2 topics. You will also look in detail at the issues of gender and cultural bias on research, the debates of nature versus nurture, free will versus determinism, and reductionism versus holism.

Entry Requirements

Students should have achieved five GCSEs at grades 9-5 including a Grade 5 or above in English, Maths and Science and a Grade 6 in Psychology if taken at GCSE.

Assessment

There are three 2hour exams, each worth 96 marks and 33.3% of the final A level grade. Each exam will include multiple choice, short answer and extended writing up to a 16 mark essay. All exams will be taken in the summer of your second year. There will also be questions accounting for up to 10% of the marks allocated to Mathematical Skills.

Where Next?

Psychology is a discipline widely studied at university and postgraduate level. After completing a Psychology degree, you can go on to careers in fields such as teaching, criminology, the police and armed forces as well as the medical profession or clinical/occupational psychology.