It is known that first-year retention rates are a cause for concern within higher education. One way in which to tackle this is to consider how institutions can best prepare new students for the transition to university. The current paper details a project from the University of the West of Scotland where first year psychology students enrolled on…

Drawing on our own experience, we reflect on the documented challenges of undergraduate supervision faced by qualitative researchers, and extend this discussion by further considering the issues raised by supervising projects that engage with critical perspectives. Concerns are identified regarding the dominance of traditional psychological…

The following paper makes the case for a recommended practice of depositing undergraduate student dissertations into Higher Education Institute (HEI) institutional research repositories. In discussing this, the reasons for doing so, and a comprehensive discussion of the benefits and challenges (motivationally, logistically and ethically) for the…

A tutorial-based flipped classroom approach was implemented to support small group teaching in very large cohorts (350+). The key aim was to provide individualised support for students in research methods, whilst promoting flexibility and inclusivity through a blended delivery model. Benefits included improved student experience and performance,…

Internships for psychologists are intended to provide grounding and training for practice in the field. We posit that this, though certainly bringing focused attention to content and competencies, is best completed within collaborative working relationships intentionally nurtured between educational and practice settings on behalf of the intern to…

Mentoring between psychology undergraduate students and A-level psychology pupils, from widening participation (WP) backgrounds, was run as action research over four academic years. The key aims were to support potential new university students' transition into higher education (HE) and current students' transition out of HE into work or further…

This paper explores: (a) the impact of psychology education governance on our understanding of subjectivity and (b) how this functions for neoliberal capitalist structures. The ways-of-knowing, power relations and perceptions of subjectivity are approached through texts selected from official documents governing the curriculum, and qualitative…

The number of PhD students in the UK is growing exponentially, and in an increasingly competitive labour market, postgraduate research students are facing unprecedented pressure to demonstrate a range of skills within and beyond research management. Due to the popularity and broad-ranging nature of the discipline, psychology students will face…

There is a wealth of literature that attests to the benefits of retrieval practice in the long term retention of academic material (see Roediger & Butler, 2011 for a review). Unfortunately, there is also evidence indicating that students rarely report using this method of study (e.g. Karpicke, Butler, Roediger, 2009). The authors have piloted…

Adult providers as well as further and adult education colleges are a major part of an economically driven society improving skills for developing careers as well as for new interests and jobs. Further education (FE) colleges deliver courses that not only meet the demands of school leavers but also serve the wider community in terms of delivering…

Positive psychology is based on the notion that people are motivated to develop into their best selves and reach their maximum potential. Martin Seligman, a pioneer of positive psychology, defines it as "the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want…

This paper overviewed some of the research that had already been conducted in schools to support student wellbeing and reported back on research that the author had conducted in her own school, evaluating an intervention that aimed to help Year 12 students cope better with stress. The results showed a small but significant improvement in students'…

In this article, Hartley notes the difficulties of using questionnaires to assess the efficiency of new instructional methods and highlights nine issues that researchers must consider. Hartley continues the discussion about the use of questionnaires and suggests that psychology teachers can help improve the teaching of psychology by drawing…

Although academics are accustomed to writing articles and books, they much less frequently write textbooks. When they do, they likely find it much harder to do well than they ever would have imagined. This difficulty is likely to surprise them, because they have considerable experience in writing research articles and in teaching. I argue in this…

This paper describes the development and delivery of an innovative approach to teaching qualitative research methods in psychology. The teaching incorporated a range of "active" pedagogical practices that it shares with other teaching in this area, but was designed in such a way as to follow the arc of a qualitative research project in…