Tag: Edexcel

Visible thinking and complex examination questions

No students were permanently harmed during this lesson.

Since the introduction of the new A – Level psychology specifications, complex essay questions have become a prominent feature of the examination landscape. By ‘complex’ questions, I mean those that  impose several distinct skill requirements that must be addressed simultaneously in order to attract credit. For example, the Edexcel 2018 Paper 2 contained the following question in the ‘Criminological Psychology’ section:

Kylie witnessed a crime and had to go to the police station for an interview. The crime involved a robbery of a shop in a busy shopping centre. Kylie was walking past the shop with her friends when she heard the shopkeeper shouting for help, as the thief ran out of the shop. The police carried out a cognitive interview to gather as much information as possible from Kylie about what she witnessed.

To what extent would the cognitive interview be effective in gathering accurate information from Kylie about the crime she witnessed? You must make reference to the context in your answer. (16)

In order to answer this question effectively, the candidate must evaluate cognitive interviewing in the context of the crime witnessed by Kylie. This means she has to show knowledge and understanding (AO1) of how CI might be used with Kylie (AO2) and make judgements about its probable effectiveness in that context (AO3). This is rather more demanding than the ‘Describe and evaluate cognitive interviewing’ type questions that used to prevail at A – Level.

When these types of question started appearing my initial response was that they were needlessly difficult and represented nothing more than a new set of hoops I needed to train my students to jump through. However, a couple of years into the new specifications and I’m now more inclined to welcome them as a challenge for us and our students to embrace. After all, our task as psychology educators is to support our students in attaining mastery of core psychological concepts, research, methodologies and ways of thinking. Complex questions are a more valid test of mastery than straightforward ‘describe and evaluate’ questions as they are not amenable to a brute-force ‘rote learn the facts and the criticisms without understanding’ approach. More pertinently, it seems to me that by using these types of question as a teaching tool, we can support out students in becoming better psychological thinkers.

Because the context material that accompanies complex questions cannot be predicted in advance, they require students to construct their response on the fly, under examination conditions.  In other words, they have to think. As Dan Willingham (2010) memorably points out, thinking is difficult and students are disinclined to do it even under ideal conditions. The examination situation imposes substantial psychological demands that reduce students’ capacity to think effectively (Putwain & Symes, 2018). Consequently, it is our responsibility to teach our students to think in the right ways long before the exam, and support them in acquiring a degree of automaticity that will allow them to devote their already-stretched cognitive resources to engaging with the content of the question.

The trouble with thinking is that you can’t see it. That makes it difficult for us to explain the sorts of thinking we want our students to do. It also makes it difficult for us to access our students’ thinking processes so we can check whether they’re being directed in the right way.  In recent years, I’ve drawn a great deal on Ron Ritchhart’s notion of making thinking visible to support my students in learning how to think (see Ritchhart et al., 2011). Ritchhart’s approach relies on  manipulables (e.g. sticky-notes) to represent concepts and the use of spatial organisation to represent relationships between them. Together with simple, repeatable dialogues and structures, they present a powerful toolbox for reducing unhelpful cognitive load, establishing transferable routines for dealing with generic subject-specific thinking situations and getting students’ thinking out in the open, where we can see it.

A visible thinking routine for complex essay questions

Here’s how I’ve been using visible thinking to teach students how to address complex questions. I lay the groundwork by presenting a question and asking the students to consider how they should address it and what an answer should do.  For example:

Joe has been convicted of criminal damage.  The magistrate sentencing noted that Joe had been arrested a number of times for similar acts and had a record of disruptive behaviour going bad to his school days.  The magistrate accepted that most teenagers get into trouble but that most seem to ‘grow out of it’ whilst Joe had not.  When asked why he had committed this crime, Joe said, ‘mostly because I’m bored…but sometimes things just wind me up.  That day I was supposed to be meeting my mates but the bus didn’t come so I just lost it a bit, smashed the bus stop up a bit.’  Joe’s father and older brother both have a similar history of antisocial behaviour and offending. 

Evaluate personality theory as an explanation of Joe’s offending. (16)

I encourage my students to adopt a four-question routine to set themselves up to address the demands of the problem:

  1. What do I know about this topic?
  2. What’s relevant in the context?
  3. What am I making judgements about?
  4. How can I justify those judgements?

This type of subject-specific metacognition is best taught by modelling, in my experience. The aim is for the students to understand that, in order to address the question satisfactorily, they need to form a principled judgement (AO3) of whether personality theory (AO1) is a valid explanation of Joe’s offending (AO2).

Students are then given sheets of A3 paper and three colours of sticky note (in my case, green, blue and orange). Pairs or three work well. The visible thinking routine is as follows:

  • First, students recall as many facts as they can that represent the knowledge and understanding required to address the question. They write one fact per green sticky note. These are collected in the centre of the A3 sheet, arranging them such that more closely related ideas are grouped together on the page.
  • Second, the students are then asked to read the context material carefully and look for specific things in the text that relate clearly to the facts/ideas on the green sticky notes. Each of these is noted on a blue sticky note and added to the sheet, near to the relevant facts, but concentrically outward.
Different colours denote different skill elements/assessment objectives.
  • Third, the students are asked to identify material relevant to evaluating personality theory, for example, supporting or challenging research findings, conceptual strengths and weaknesses and so on. Each of these is added to an orange sticky note, again placed near to the relevant application (blue) and knowledge (green).

The students are encouraged to keep thinking and recalling more relevant facts, applications and evaluative points throughout the activity, as each point made and recorded may cue either recall of other material or provoke new links between the ideas, deepening understanding.

Lines of reasoning flow from the centre towards the edge.

The fact that all the ideas are present on the page reduces cognitive load, helps the students think more clearly, and tells the teacher where they can most incisively intervene.  The flexible nature of sticky notes allows the students to think and rethink by trying out different positioning and juxtapositionings of ideas. The different colours allow the students to keep track of the different skill demands of the question, allowing them to spot gaps and deploy material effectively. By now the students should be in a position to trace lines of reasoning about the question by working from the middle to the edge.

  • The final step is for students to reorganise the sticky notes into a linear plan from which they could write their response.  The different coloured notes help here, prompting the students to organise their writing into balanced paragraphs that address all the question requirements.
The linear plan supports thinking about the sequencing of material.

I’ve only recently started using this approach with my Year 13s in a consistent way. They have commented positively on how it is helping them keep track of task requirements and organise their ideas before writing. Of course, the long-term intention is to remove the physical placeholders and the prompts from the teacher that support the process, leaving a purely mental routine that the students can use independently and without prompting. My feeling is that the systematic withdrawal of the various elements will be a fairly straightforward thing to plan, and, at each stage, I can draw attention to what I’m removing and why (e.g. ‘last time I gave you three colours of sticky notes but time I’m not…’) so that the students can establish a conscious rationale for their own thinking when approaching this type of problem.

It’s much more complicated to explain this approach than it is to do it in practice; I hope the accompanying photographs make this clear. I believe that it has the potential to help more of my students access the higher essay mark bands in their examinations. More importantly, I also believe that it can play a part in helping my students to become better thinkers in and about psychology.

Thanks

The concentric planning approach on which this VTR draws was developed collaboratively with Charlotte Hubble.

References

Putwain, D. W. & Symes, W. (2018). Does increased effort compensate for performance debilitating test anxiety? School Psychology Quarterly, 33(3), 482-49

Ritchhart, R., Church, M. & Morrison, K. (2011).  Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding and independence for all learners. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

Willingham, D.T. (2010). Why don’t students like school?  A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Enhance learning and revision with mixed retrieval practice

Image: Eli the Bearded

When given the task of learning or revising material for examination purposes, the majority of our students adopt methods that are sub-optimal. Casual observation suggests they typically use a cramming strategy based on reading and re-reading textbooks or class notes. This strategy does not cause much learning, but repeated exposure to the material does create a sense of familiarity. Consequently, whilst it does little to actually prepare the student, it creates an illusion of learning whereby they think they know the material much better they actually do. Needless to say, this results in wasted effort, poor performance and disillusionment.

However, while it’s easy enough to tell our students to revise differently, much harder to actually get them to do it. There’s a lot to fight against, as our students may be drawing on study habits they have built up over many years and they are often inattentive to advice about studying until they hit some sort of crisis point. In addition, they may have been given relatively little specific guidance in the past on what to do when you want to learn something and the advice they have received may be inconsistent and not evidence-informed.

Cognitive psychology gives us some evidence-informed guidance we can pass on to our students. One principle is that revision must involve retrieval practice, that is, recreating from memory, without prompts, information that was previously learned (see this blog post from The Learning Scientists for more). A second principle is that practice should be mixed. In other words, the questions used for retrieval practice should be drawn from a variety of contrasting areas rather than all coming from the same area (which would be ‘blocked practice’).

It is probably a good idea for us to inform out students of the benefits of mixed retrieval practice and supply them with resources that support it. Here are some resources intended to do this. Each is a PowerPoint slideshow consisting of 250+ slides each containing a single question about Psychology. The order of the questions has been randomised, so the student never knows what’s coming next. The idea is that the student picks a starting point and then works through the questions in series, producing either an oral or written answer before moving on. Where they can’t answer, the student should make a note of the problem area for further study. The question sets cover Paper 1 and Paper 2 of the Edexcel Psychology specification. They would need some adapting for other courses. There is also an instruction sheet for students.

If you want to make your own mixed practice sets, this PowerPoint template contains a macro to randomise the order of the slides. Add as many questions as you want and then:

  • Press ALT+F8 to bring up the macro dialogue box.
  • Select sort_rand.
  • Press RUN.

PowerPoint will then reorganise your slides randomly. I generally do this a few times as I’m not convinced that the first pass produces a very random redistribution. With large question sets it will take a minute or so to work, so don’t panic if PowerPoint stops responding for a bit.

Two notes of caution. First, the majority of studies demonstrating the superiority of mixed practice have used relatively basic tasks involving recall of discrete, concrete concepts in well structured domains (e.g. arithmetic, vocabulary learning etc.) so there is relatively little direct evidence of its efficacy with more complex and abstract material. The contextual interference effect that limits learning from blocked practice is reduced as material becomes more complex (Magill & Hall, 1990). It is therefore probably wisest to use mixed retrieval practice primarily as a way of boosting students’ factual recall of fairly discrete ideas. That said, Blasiman (2017) provides experimental support for mixed retrieval practice with introductory Psychology concepts in university students.

Second, mixed practice is more difficult than blocked practice and results in more errors. Consequently, students using it may feel that they are learning less with this approach and this may cause them to shift back to blocked practice and cramming. They need warning about this, and you’ll need to keep encouraging them. It might be an idea to organise a classroom demo experiment so they can see the benefits for themselves.

Brown, Roediger & McDaniel (2014) give a comprehensive but very accessible account of what cognitive psychology can tell us about learning in education (including mixed practice) in ‘Make It Stick’, which I recommend if you haven’t read it.

Blasiman, R. (2017). Distributed concept reviews improve
exam performance. Teaching of Psychology, 44(1), 46-50.

Brown, P.C., Roediger, H.L., & McDaniel, M.A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Magill, R. A., & Hall, K. G. (1990). A review of the contextual interference effect in motor skill acquisition. Human Movement Science, 9, 241-289.

Resources: biopsychology revision summaries

Kim J, Matthews NL, Park S. Wikimedia Commons.

Here are some brief revision summaries for Edexcel bio-psychology topics (but probably useful to others). They cover: drugs and the brain, evolution and aggression, genes and aggression, brain structure and aggression and hormones and aggression.

Resources: synoptic topics (science, reductionism, ethics, socially sensitive research).

Here are some things I’ve made for teaching synoptic issues recently. There’s an Edexcel bias, so YMMV. There’s an example essay on ethical issues, and another essay on socially sensitive research. There’s also a reading on the features of a scientific approach, a comparison table focused on the features of the scientific approach, a slideshow on reductionism (with activities) and an accompanying reading on philosophical reductionism.

Round-up: criminological psychology

Image: Tony Webster.

I’ve finished teaching criminological psychology for the time being so here’s a round-up of the resources I’ve published here recently on the topic.

Better evaluation with spectacles

One way of developing students’ evaluation of research studies is to use the ‘spectacles’ activity. I got it from Geoff Petty’s (2009) ‘Evidence Based Teaching: A Practical Guide’, which I recommend.  It’s a variant of the jigsaw approach. In ‘spectacles’ students are already familiar with the material they are working with (unlike in jigsaw, where they are typically encountering material for the first time). Students are in small groups, each thinking about the material in a different way. Each way is presented as a different pair of spectacles that brings a different aspect of the material into focus. They are then rearranged into mixed groups where they share their insights with each other in a co-constructive manner.

I most commonly use it when students are developing evaluation of research studies, particularly the key ‘classic’/’contemporary’ studies required by Edexcel’s psychology specification. Students are required to read about the studies in advance. The five ‘spectacles’ groups correspond to the GROVE evaluation criteria I use (Generalisability, Reliability, Objectivity, Validity and Ethics). Generally, 10 minutes in ‘spectacles’ groups followed by 15 minutes in ‘sharing’ groups seems to work well for my students but, obviously, YMMV. As a follow-up I often give out an A3 summary sheet where students can compile an overview of the whole study for revision purposes. Here are a couple of these for Raine et al (1997) and Howells et al (2005).

Provided that students remain directed towards developing a shared understanding rather than simply dictating and copying ideas, it’s an approach with few downsides. See my previous post on Jigsaw for more background.

Petty, G. (2009). Evidence-based teaching: A practical approach. Cheltenham: Nelson-Thornes.

Resources: two lessons on using drugs to treat drug addiction (Edexcel ‘key question’)

Image by Philippa Willitts

Here is a two lesson sequence on an Edexcel ‘key question of relevance to today’s society’ for biopsychology (zip file of all resources). It’s on the question of whether it’s a good idea to use drugs like Methadone to treat drug addiction. It assumes you’ve set advance reading on the topic.  In lesson one the students debate the issue, and in lesson two they plan and write an extended response about it. The lessons are designed to help the students understand what an examiner will be looking for in their responses to this type of question, so teachers of other specifications YMMV.

Resources: Socrative quizzes on choice of statistical test

From what I’ve posted recently you might have got the impression that all I ever teach is choice of statistical test. Believe me, it’s starting to feel that way. Quiz one, quiz two and quiz three are all geared towards the Edexcel specification but could easily be adapted to include a greater range of tests.

Resources: inferential statistical test choice

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Here are some things for teaching inferential statistical test choice and justification. There’s a test choice chart with some exercises, a stats test choice walkthrough (three decisions) and some test choice and justification exercises based around criminological psychology topics.  There is also another Socrative quiz on statistical test choice. These were written with the Edexcel A-Level statistics requirements in mind, so YMMV.

A demonstration practical: correlation between digit ratio and aggression

Source: wikimedia.org
Source: wikimedia.org

It’s blindingly obvious that students will learn things better if we model them first (see Rosenshine, 2012) and most of us are in the habit of modelling all sorts of things, including the sorts of thinking and writing skills that Psychology requires. However, with the recently increased emphasis on practical skills at A – Level (in Edexcel’s specification, anyway) I’ve found myself planning for lots of practical work and it occurred to me that I’ve never modelled the whole process of a practical investigation for my students. Bits of it, yes, but not the whole thing. On reflection, that strikes me as a bit of an oversight. Here is an attempt to put that right. The aims are twofold: (1) to show, all in one, the steps involved in carrying out a practical investigation so that students have an overview of what they will need to do and how it all fits together; and (2) model good research practices and set appropriate expectations about ethical conduct during research. It is based around a  practical investigation that can be done in 45-60 minutes depending on the size of the group.  It’s a correlational study of the relationship between D2:D4 digit ratio and aggression.  There’s a lesson plan, a slideshow, a PBAQ-SF questionnaire for measuring aggression an  Excel spreadsheet for analysing the results and a sheet for students to record their observations during the demo.  I’ve also written an example report, which is pitched for students studying the Edexcel specification (users of other specifications YMMV).

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, Spring 2012.