Section outline

  • Orienting

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    Homunculus blueThe USQ Psychology in Schools (PSY in SCHLs) OpenDesk connects psychology teachers with USQ psychology staff and students. It shares resources and offers ideas to support using the QCAA Senior Secondary Psychology syllabus. Participate as a guest or self-enrol to access our teaching, assessment, and research expertise.

  • Common Background Theory and Practice

    All the madatory pracs are based on a common set of assumptions and processes that are determined by the scientific method. These videos start by providing a rationale for why the discipline of psychology adopts the scientific method as its way of knowing the world. We then explain the scientific method in its most general form and then go into detail about how this translates into conducting a research investigation. The "Theory Videos" are in the following order:
    • Problems with Cognition
    • The scientific Method
    • From Concepts to Variables
    • Types of Investigations 
    • Hypothesis Testing and Statistics
    • Evaluating the outcomes of your experiment.
    The "Data Manipulation and Graphing" videos are aimed at developing your skills in being able to manipulate, present, analyse and interpret the outcomes of a research investigation. These videos complement the theory videos, in that they allow you to follow the process (and numbers) that feature in the "theory videos". These videos are in the following order:
    • Means and Standard Deviations
    • Graphing
    • Manipulation and graphing for correlational investigations
    • Conducting statisical Analyses
    We have also included a cheat sheet ("cheetsheet") that might be useful to teachers and students alike. It gives a table of common excel functions, a table that indicates what are the appropriate statistics to use, and a series of questions that step the student through the research process.

  • Mandatory Practical: Human Consciousness and Sleep

    Mandatory practical: "Use a correlational research design to conduct an investigation into the relation-ship between normal hours of sleep and one other variable (e.g. listening to music, food before bed, amount of exercise in the day, reading on electronic devices)" (QCAA, 2019 v1.3, p. 28). A collection of resources from Professor Gerry Tehan. 

  • Mandatory Practical: Emotion and Motivation

    Mandatory practical: "Use an experimental research design to investigate the effect of watching emotive (e.g. a scary movie) versus informative (e.g. an advertisement for toothpaste) stimuli on emotional responses (measured as changes in heart rate)" (QCAA, 2019 v1.3, p. 37). A collection of resources from Professor Gerry Tehan.  

  • Mandatory Practical: Memory

    Mandatory practical: "Use an experimental research design to investigate the effect of learning environment on memory, replicating aspects of the 1998 investigation by Harry Grant et al." (QCAA, 2019, v1.3, p. 44). A collection of resources from Professor Gerry Tehan. 

  • Mandatory Practical: Stereotypes and Behaviour

    Mandatory practical: "Use a correlational research design to investigate the relationship between stereotypes and behaviour by replicating the 1996 investigation by John Bargh, Mark Chen and Lara Burrows (Experiment 2)" (QCAA, 2019, v1.3, p. 63). A collection of resources from Professor Gerry Tehan. 

  • Marzano's Taxonomy

    Marzano’s and Kendall’s taxonomy informed syllabus objectives and assessment objectives in the QCAA Senior Secondary Psychology syllabus. This resource aims to help teachers operationalise the taxonomy so to structure actions that boost student learning efficiency and assessment effectiveness.Â