Course information
Psychology
Hermitage Academy - County Durham
Waldridge Lane, Chester le Street, DH2 3AD
Course summary

Year 12 Social influence - conformity, obeying evil authority figures, obedience, resistance to social influence and change in society. Memory - models of memory, forgetting, eyewitness testimony and police interviews. Attachment - babies and their caregivers, when attachment goes wrong and early attachment on adult relationships. Approaches - origins of psychology, classical and operant conditioning, cognitive approach and biological approach. Psychopathology - ‘abnormality’, biological, behavioural and cognitive explanations and treatments, phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Research methods - experiments and observations, investigations and presenting, analysing and interpreting data. Year 13 Psychodynamic - Freud and the unconscious, humanistic, Maslow and counselling. Biopsychology - brain regions, split-brain research and recovery after trauma, brain scans and post-mortem examination, bodily rhythms and the sleep/wake cycle. Research methods - case studies and content analysis and features of science. Issues and debates - gender and culture bias, free will and nature/nurture, behavioural laws, ethical implications and social sensitivity. Relationships - evolved partner preferences, romantic attraction, virtual relationships and ‘relationships’ with media personalities. Schizophrenia - symptoms and problems in diagnosis, genes and brain chemistry, faulty thinking and dysfunctional families, therapies, drugs and CBT. Aggression - neural and hormonal mechanisms, genetic factors, ethological and evolutionary explanations, social-psychological explanations, institutional aggression and media influences on aggression.

Entry requirements

Five Grade 9 to 4 grades or equivalent, including a 4 or better in both English language and maths.

How you'll be assessed

Three exams, each accounting for one-third of the final grade. The three exams last 2 hours and are worth 96 marks each. The exams consist of multiple choice, short answer and extended writing questions. At least 10% of the overall assessment will contain mathematical skills equivalent to Level 2 or above. At least 25–30% of the overall assessment will assess skills, knowledge and understanding in relation to research methods.

School Info

About Education Provider

RegionNorth East
Local AuthorityCounty Durham
Ofsted Rating
Gender TypeCo-Educational
AddressWaldridge Lane, Chester le Street, DH2 3AD