February 2023 Psychology Subject Update

Ways to stay in touch

Many Edexcel psychology teachers benefit from the support available on specific Edexcel Psychology Facebook groups and we will continue to connect with you there. We have also recognised that LinkedIn has become increasingly popular as a means for sharing professional information and connecting, so I have a new Subject Advisor account and will be posting shortly! See link below.

We also have a Pearson Community page for GCSE and A Level Psychology which aims to allow teachers to collaborate and share ideas and useful information. This is very small currently, but especially if you are not keen to use one of the big social media platforms to connect with other teachers please consider joining. We intend to grow our use of this platform to share more frequent updates.

Examiner vacancies

Becoming an examiner (or Assessment Associate) is a great way to gain a better understanding of what exam questions are looking for and can therefore be a great asset to teachers hoping to prepare their students better. Of course the role is also paid! Vacancies for Edexcel BTEC, A Level, International A Level and GCSE can be viewed via the link below.

We are also recruiting for a Principal Examiner for GCSE Psychology with a closing date of 17^th February – this is a great opportunity to play a role in the development of future papers and lead the marking process.

Video resource for students and teachers on exam technique

We are planning to produce short videos aimed at students and teachers, focusing on exam technique, understanding the demands of questions and interpreting mark schemes. These will in time cover A Level, IAL and GCSE Psychology. Our first short exam technique video, for GCSE Psychology focusing on a 12 mark question on questionnaires, can be viewed on Youtube via the link below. A link in the description will take you to a form where you can request future videos or other resources.

You can also view A Level exam feedback training videos via the channel link below if you have not yet seen this - please do subscribe to get notifications of future channel content!

International A Level Psychology Resource News

Module 2 of a ‘Welcome to Pearson’ series of online training events, this training on 8^th February will focus on the IAL assessment objectives and mark schemes, and may be of interest to more experienced teachers in addition to those new to the course - see the topmost link below.

A Pearson produced IAL Psychology teacher resource pack is expected to be available in April at the latest – we will share details when it is ready for you to use. Until then, we recommend making use of the resources on the qualification site, particularly under ‘Guide’ where you can download a ‘component guide’ and ‘summary of studies’ for each unit. The ‘resource mapping’ document (under ‘Mapping document’) gives relevant pages in the Pearson UK A Level textbook for most parts of the specification, and some links to online resources for those that do not overlap. Of these Simply Psychology is very helpful – see link below. Tutor2U also has many relevant resources aimed at the AQA UK A Level which overlaps with our ‘IAL only’ topics such as conformity, aggression, and cognitive and language development. They are also developing new resources for the UK A Level many of which will be relevant to IAL.

BPS free webinar and teacher toolkit

We have previously mentioned the British Psychological Society’s free webinars aimed at psychology students – registration is now open for the revision and coping with exam stress session on 30^th March, and here too is the link for the maths and statistics session on 9^th February. Finally the BPS Teachers' Toolkit is worth a look if you haven’t seen it before.