Academic achievement can be thought of as the extent to which learning has been accomplished. Previous work suggests that students' self-esteem is impacted by academic achievement, though it is not entirely clear why this is. The current study therefore explored this through interviewing eight psychology students from a Scottish university, before…

We explored whether the academic grade a student sees influences how positively or negatively they interpret written assessment feedback. Specifically, an experimental design was used where N = 94 psychology students each read an identical passage of neutrally worded feedback. Depending upon which of three experimental conditions they had been…

Practice-Based Learning Days (PBLDs) account for approximately one-third of the total university-lead days on Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP) training courses. In this article, I consider a number of challenges facing teachers of PWPs and describe a recent attempt to respond to these challenges by restructuring the content of our PBLDs…

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…

The ability to reason scientifically and communicate research appropriately is central to psychological literacy. Scientific research has little value unless scientists are able to convey results and their consequences clearly to others. In this study, we outline a method of assessing the development of psychological literacy in undergraduate…

Statistics and Research Methods modules are often unpopular with psychology students; however, at Oxford Brookes University the seminar component of the second-year research methods module tends to get very positive feedback. Over half of the seminars work towards the submission of a research-based experimental lab report. This article introduces…

The first cohort of a new MSc programme is due to complete the course in August 2014. During the three-year online course students conduct several pieces of action research in their classrooms. There is little research specifically related to classroom practice in the pre-tertiary psychology classroom. The following describes the rationale and…

Although conventional psychology is often characterised as the science of the individual mind, it is also important to introduce students to the potential interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional nature of psychology. In this paper we outline the design, development, and delivery of an innovative course that employed an ecological framework to…

Patchwork text assessment offers an alternative to traditional forms of assessment that are often focused on single assessment outcomes. Embedded within patchwork text assessment is formative assessment whereby short pieces of work, or patches, are shared with staff or peers for feedback which students can reflect upon and use to amend their work…

This paper describes the introduction of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) into a final-year option module in psychology. The background and rationale for the changes introduced are discussed and the experience of PBL is considered from the point of view of tutor and students. The introduction of PBL considerably increased student attainment in the…

There is a push for universities to equip graduates with desirable employability skills and "hands-on" experience. This article explores the perceptions of students and staff experiences of a research assistantship scheme. Nine students from the University of Worcester were given the opportunity to work as a student vacation researcher…

A series of tutorials was re-designed to further engage students in spiral learning and highlight development of transferable skills. The tutorials focused on self-directed and enquiry-based learning, both of which provided particular challenges to students and staff. The students were randomly allocated a media article related to psychology as a…

In this article, the author shares his response to James Hartley's "Reflections on 50 years of teaching psychology". Hartley concludes that the teaching of psychology has changed relatively little over the past several decades. The author states that his way of teaching now is very different from his way of 1975. This essay is about the…

This article presents the author's response to peer commentary on his article entitled "Reflections on 50 years of teaching psychology." The author is pleased that most of them share some of his concerns about the lack of progress in the teaching of psychology over the last 50 years, and he welcomes the fact that they then go on to raise…

Within undergraduate psychology courses, students often have significant levels of anxiety and negative attitudes toward the statistical element. This has been attributed to poor interaction with teachers, fears about mathematical abilities, and simply being unaware of that portion of the course or its relevance to psychology. To address this, 196…