WHAT: Psychology GCSE Core Studies

If you’re looking for a relatively simple way to introduce your GCSE students to key psychology studies then the WHAT technique (“a strong, yet simple, way to help your students analyse and understand any research study”) should fit the bill nicely.

And if, for whatever reason, you’re not up-to-speed with the idea, the following link should tell you  what’s WHAT.

And if you found that vaguely interesting you might be similarly vaguely interested in a follow-up post where I created a PowerPoint Presentation to outline the technique and provide a breakdown of a real study to allow teachers to demonstrate to students how the technique could be used. In this particular instance, once I got started I ended-up creating a Presentation covering 24 sociological studies that I called “Classic and Contemporary” for no better reason than the fact there are no prescribed (or “core”) studies in the A-level Specifications (AQA, OCR, CIE…).

Which is not the case with GCSE Psychology. Obviously.

Because if it was you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be calling this latest PowerPoint Presentation something a bit more catchy than Psychology GCSE Core Studies.

But since the AQA Specification is actually jam-packed with the Core Studies students need to have at least a nodding acquaintance with, my hand was forced into creating 26 slides covering the following “classic and contemporary studies”:

1. Bartlett: Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932) (War of the Ghosts)
2. Bartlett: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932) (Theory of Reconstructive Memory)
3. Gilchrist and Nesberg: Need and Perceptual Change in Hunger (1952) (Study of Motivation and Perception)
4. Murdock: The Serial Position Effect of Free Recall (1962)  (Serial Position Curve Study)
5. Gibson: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) (Direct Theory of Perception)
6. Gregory: Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing (1963) (Constructivist Theory of Perception)
7. Bruner and Minturn: Perceptual Identification and Perceptual Organization (1955) (Perceptual Set Study)
8. Piaget: The Origins of Intelligence in Children (1936) (Theory of Cognitive Development)
9. McGarrigle and Donaldson: Conservation Accidents (1974) (The Naughty Teddy Study)
10. Hughes: Egocentrism in Preschool Children (1975) (The ‘Policeman Doll’ Study)
11. Dweck: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006) (Mindset Theory of Learning)
12. Willingham: Why Don’t Students Like School? (2009) (Learning Theory)
13. Asch: Opinions and Social Pressure (1955) (Study of Conformity)
14. Milgram: Obedience to Authority (1963) (Agency Theory of Obedience)
15. Adorno: The Authoritarian Personality (1950) (Theory of the Authoritarian Personality)
16. Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin: Good Samaritanism: An Underground Phenomenon? (1969) (Piliavin’s Subway Study)
17. Piaget: The Language and Thought of the Child (1926) (Theory of Language)
18. Sapir-Whorf: Theory of Linguistic Relativity (1929) (The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
19. Von Frisch:  The Dancing Bees (1927) (Bee Study)
20. Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) (Evolutionary Theory of Non-Verbal Communication)
21. James-Lange Theory of Emotion (1884, 1885)
22. Hebb: The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory (1949)  (Theory of Learning and Neuronal Growth)
23. Penfield: Study of the Interpretive Cortex (1959)
24. Tulving: Episodic and Semantic Memory Localization Using Gold Radioactive Tracer and PET Scanning (1989) (The ‘Gold’ Memory Study)
25. Wiles et al: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as an Adjunct to Pharmacotherapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression (2013) (Study of the Effectiveness of CBT)
26. Kaij: Alcoholism in Twins (1960) (Twin Study of Alcohol Abuse)

As ever, I’ve included a one-click menu system so you can jump to the relevant study when you want to talk about it to your students without having to wade through loads of slides to find the one you need.

There are also a couple (three, actually) of bonus slides in the Presentation but I’ll leave you to discover what they are…