Psychology

Vision statement

Psychology creates an opportunity for students to combine their scientific and analytical skills with a focus on behaviour and interpersonal interactions. This creates an exciting combination between rigorous research methods skills and more creative essay writing that will leave students with a broad set of abilities that can be used in a variety of different contexts after they have finished their course. Students will study a broad grounding in the basics of psychology allowing them to understand more of the behaviour that they see around them and explain some of the difficulties that they and others may experience throughout their lives. The study of psychology also keeps career paths open, meshing nicely with a broad range of other subjects/careers from biology to marketing and everything in between. 

Our Students on Psychology

What makes you feel most confident about studying Psychology?

• Classes are very engaging, everything is explained well and slight tangents always add to my curiosity and knowledge. 

• Its a very engaging subject, you get to use lateral and analytical thinking which can be far more fun that rote learning

• The resources available and the way that the lessons are structured

• It is taught in clear and understandable topics, each with studies that allow you to think about why people act how they act

What do you enjoy most about studying Psychology?

• Talking about complicated ideas and theories

• The variety in topics and applicability to real life

• It’s a very varied subject where you cover lots of different topics and issues

• How interactive the lessons are and the variation (each lesson is taught in multiple ways).

• Psychology has helped me understand more about myself and my own behaviour. I enjoy analysing other peoples behaviour particularly on family/friends

What has surprised you about studying Psychology

• How lots of what we study can be applied to real life especially when things that we have studied pop up outside of school 

• The broad amount of theories and research to explain behaviour, most of which I’d never thought of before

• The variety of content and the approaches that we learn about 

• How much variation there is between cultures, as someone from two very different cultures it can be fascinating to see how people act in different cultures.

• The amount of new topics I never knew about, psychology has broadened my knowledge to explore new and interesting content 

• Very interesting, I really like Maths/computer science/physics, psychology is really different but I really enjoy it

• How much it has changed the way I think about all my other subjects

A typical Psychology Lesson

• Our students start with a retrieval practice activity, designed to connect their learning from previous topics to the current lesson’s content

• The students work from comprehensive booklets which have been specifically designed by Swan teachers for our students’ needs

• This often involves reading as a class to ensure understanding, as well as paired discussion tasks, and independent work

• Explicit exam question practice and the development of exam skills, for example forming chains of reasoning, source analysis, and developing evaluation skills, are regularly built in to lesson time

GCSE KS4 Curriculum Map

A Level KS5 Curriculum Map