There is no easy prescription to being successful at Psychology and/or Sociology
A-Level - but there are several factors which will help increase a student's likely
degree of success.
Hard work is essential. Many students choose the behavioural sciences - especially
Psychology - thinking they will be easier than other A-Levels. They aren't!
There's a lot of technical jargon to learn, Psychology students will need to know
a fair amount of Biology. Sociology students will be required to develop some knowledge
in Economics while a good smattering of post-Mercantilism History in the Western
world will be very useful. Both disciplines require the use of Descriptive and Inferential
Statistics (especially on the A2).
Attendance at classes is a must. There is no substitute for hearing it from the proverbial
'horse's mouth' - a nice way to refer to myself! - and having the opportunity to
ask questions or argue a point. Plus, interacting with other students in the class
can help stimulate ideas and embed concepts. I've found most students in the behavioural
sciences are pretty smart folks - once you get them committed! - and, in the kind
of ambience a good teacher can create in the classroom, they will spark each other
off. (Dependency Theory's exposure of ongoing Western exploitation of developing
countries, Sigmund Freud per se, animal research experiments and Evolutionary Psychology
explanations of sexual promiscuity are all great subjects for stirring up heated
debates! And I've found that most students know at least one person who suffers from
Anorexia Nervosa.)
Being fascinated by people and what makes them 'tick' most certainly helps - but
much of the content of the A-Level specifications is a little removed from the kind
of body language analyses used in 'reality TV' like Big Brother or the 'Pop Psychology'
of books like Allan & Barbara Pease's multi-million-selling 'Why Men Don't Listen
and Women Can't Read Maps' (2001). (Both examples do contain valid Psychology - it's
just not the kind of Psychology covered by the specification!)
Mapping
in the 'Real World'
I've found that the most successful students are those who don't
leave it behind in the classroom but take the behavioural sciences home with them.
Using the models and theories we discuss to analyse behaviour of friends, family
and strangers - individually or in groups - helps to make Psychology and Sociology
real. Describing behaviour in, say, TV 'soaps' in technical terms can be a great
way of reinforcing topics and themes we study.
Of course, to use another proverb, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. One
student ended up in a furious spat with her mother when she contradicted her views
on disaffected pre-teens by quoting from the Attachment theories of John Bowlby,
Mary Ainsworth, etc. It took a day or two for mother and daughter to resume their
normally close relations; but the student found that, by arguing from the theories,
she both knew them more and understood them better.
When another student told me she couldn't stop mapping people to the models and theories,
I felt sure she would do well. She scored an 'A' in her next exam!
Applying Psychology to yourself and Sociology to issues in your community takes the
concept of mapping that bit further. For example, I ask Psychology students to identify
3-5 issues in their lives that they would like insight into. I advise that the issues
can remain private to the student. However one student, when we were covering 'Stress',
was so delighted that she now understood why she had panic attacks when parking her
car in a busy street that she insisted on telling the class all about it!
I always suggest that the issues they work with are not too deep. However, making
the behavioural sciences 'real' inevitably does sometimes touch on deep issues. One
student asked me what sort of therapy would be best to wean his brother off gambling;
since his brother was perfectly happy being a gambling addict, nothing short of Aversion
Therapy was likely to be much help - but I recommended Gamblers' Annonymous anyway.
Another student, while revising Stress as a Physiological Reaction, realised just
how stressed she was becoming and so took herself off to her GP . Unsurprisingly,
she did rather well on that exam!
Reading ahead in the text book and reading around
subjects - perhaps by searching on the Internet - will also help develop knowledge
and understanding.
I found it a little disconcerting when one student brought in a pile of prepared
notes into one session and critiqued every fourth or fifth point I made - sometimes
using research studies that weren't in the specification! However, the discussion
she stimulated got everyone engaged. (Again that student did well - scoring a high
'B'.)
Specification
and Exam Requirements
For all that we can make Psychology and/or Sociology A-Level
interesting, thought-provoking, entertaining and practicable, there are still exams
to sit.
During the course(s) teachers should set practice exam questions as homework and
mark them according to the exam board mark scheme. Once students have become familiar
with how to construct answers, it is highly beneficial to do at least some of these
in a set time as per exam conditions.
Students really wanting to do well are advised to do additional practice questions.
They can go to the pertinent exam board web site where they can download both past
papers and their mark schemes.
Students should be given a copy of the specification contents. Although they are
rather dry and technical documents, I strongly encourage students to get to grips
withthem. "Love your specification," was the refrain at one exam board conference
I attended. "At the end of the day, it's what it's all about."
Students do need to read the specification, Especially at Especially at revision
time, they need to ensure they are covering at least the minimum core topics.
Understanding
how marks are applied is critical. While there are some very minor variations between
exam boards on the detail of how a type of mark is applied, essentially they are
the same across all specifications.
A01 marks are given for demonstrating knowledge and basic understanding - eg: for
knowing the stages of Walter Rostow's Modernisation Theory (1960) or the stages of
psychosexual development in Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory and understanding how fixations
at the stages can affect the development of personality traits.
A02 marks are given for being able to analyse and evaluate "in a psychologically
[or sociologically]-informed manner". One student, asked to produce an evaluation
of Psycoanalytic Theory, simply wrote: "Freud makes a lot of sense to me." It might
have done but I gave him zero A02 marks because his commentary was not 'psychologically-informed'.
To evaluate for A02 means using the work of other psychologists and/or sociologists
to critique a model, theory or piece of research. For example, "Lawrence Kohlberg
asserted in 1974 that males more readily reach a higher stage of moral development
(Stage 5) but Carol Gilligan in 1982 claimed that his methodology tested for Morality
of Justice whereas females more readily developed Morality of Care. This was hardly
supported by Lawrence Walker's studies in 1987 when he found little difference in
48 out of 54 instances."
AO2 marks are also given for practical application of theory in the real world -
eg: relating Stanely Milgram’s infamous obedience experiment (1963) to soldiers committing
atrocities on the orders of their commanding officers.
There are often more A02 marks available across the exam papers than there are A01
- yet the exam boards complain year after year about the poor quality of A02 in students'
answers.
My experience is that it is students who have mapped models and theories in the 'real
world' and who have read ahead and around who produce better A02 answers.
AO3 marks are given for demonstrating knowledge and understanding of how research
methods are conducted - both as general concepts (“This is how we do it!”) and as
applied in particular studies. The ability to comment on the how research is conducted
with regard to validity and generalisability, and ethical issues is also assessed
under AO3 marks.
Becoming familiar with your exam board’s application of AO1, AO2 and AO3 and getting
to the point where you can count where you are scoring the marks will help to put
you in charge of your exam performance.
Using
a Tutor?
Theoretically, if the teaching is good and the student attends classes, works
diligently and commits themselves to succeed by using the strategies outlined above,
then they should do well.
For all sorts of reasons, things don't always work out that way. For one thing, in
Spiral Dynamics terms, the RED vMEME often dominates in a teenager's selfplex, leading
to what Erik Erikson termed Diffusion of Time and Diffusion of Industry. Thus some
students stay in bed rather than go to morning classes and don't seriously contemplate
copying up missing notes until the exam is virtually upon them!
Sometimes, of course, there are personality or values clashes between students and
teachers which can have all kinds of unhelpful effects on the student's learning.
Very occasionally, the teaching will not be what it should be - and this is usually
identified through entire classes - sometimes entire yeargroups! - struggling. While
schools and sixth form colleges will take steps to rectify the situation, this can
leave students near to exams without adequate teaching.
In any of these situations, using a reputable private tutor may the best option.
It is, of course, quite an expensive option; so a tutor needs to be chosen with care
- personal referrals are best (I get 2/3 of my work this way) - and parents should
be involved in planning and monitoring the work undertaken.
Once a student starts to fall behind, for what ever reason, if the class teacher
and the student are not able to agree/execute a recovery strategy fairly quickly,
a private tutor should be employed sooner rather than later, to give the student
structured guidance over more time to enable them to recover lost ground.
