February 2024 Psychology subject update

If you use Facebook, there are teacher-run support groups for each of our courses which are great places to ask for advice and share resources - see links below.

For the International A Level course, there is a very active WhatsApp group with an associated Onedrive library of shared resources which is highly recommended.

Finally there is a Pearson support community for GCSE and A Level Psychology where we post resources and where you can comment and ask questions.

• Edexcel Psychology Teachers on Facebook
• Edexcel A Level Psychology Teachers on Facebook
• Edexcel GCSE Psychology Teachers on Facebook
• Edexcel IAL Psychology Teachers on WhatsApp
• GCSE and A Level Psychology Pearson Support Community

We plan to produce a series of short student-friendly Youtube videos over the coming weeks, focusing on exam tequnique and key subject knowledge for students preparing for exams in GCSE, A Level an International A Level Psychology.

Use the form below if you would like to request a particular focus, and look out for details of the videos in a future subject update.

• Video resource request form

Last summer's ATP conference at the University of Kent was a great event and we are looking forward to this year's. See below for a link to their web page giving early details of the event.

• Find out more about this summer's ATP conference

Last summer we consulted with A Level Psychology teachers regarding improvements to the assessment experience for students. We are continuing to listen to your feedback and to work on planned improvements, but we are also looking ahead now to a significant re-development of the specification. There is no definite date for this as yet, and the current specification will definitely be available for the next two cohorts, but we are keen to gather ideas from current Edexcel teachers and other interested parties regarding new specification content and assessment design.

Whether you have ideas for new topics, theories or studies to bring A Level Psychology up-to-date and to align it more closely with students' interests and concerns, or ideas about new ways of assessing students to allow them to better showcase their knowledge and skills, or anything else about a new specification, we'd love to hear from you. Please use the form linked below.

• Complete our short form with your ideas for a new A Level specification

Psychology Review is a quarterly magazine aimed at A Level students. Its articles are a great way to encourage students to extend their reading and thinking around the subject, and it is tailored to the A Level courses of each of the exam boards. Article include tips on exam technique, including for Edexcel A Level Psychology.

• Find out more about Psychology Review magazine

We have recently uploaded video versions of the live exam feedback training we ran in October on the 2023 summer series. You can download all the examplars used, mark schemes and explanations of the marks awarded from the qualification page linked below, along with a pdf document with links to the videos on Youtube.

These resources are all under the 'silver padlock' meaning you will need your Edexcel Online login to access and the videos are unlisted on Youtube. This is to protect the papers for teachers who are planning on using them as mock papers later in this academic year.

Exam Wizard is Edexcel's past paper search tool and paper builder. It allows teachers (with an Edexcel Online login) to search for questions of a particular type by topic or key word. IAL Psychology is not currently supported due to the relatively low number of students taking the course and the considerable expense of uploading the questions from every exam series, however numbers are growing and we are keen to know how much demand there is for this service. If you would use Exam Wizard in your teaching and / or for creating practice assessments, please use the form below to register your interest.

• Register interest for Exam Wizard for IAL Psychology