AQA Psychology for GCSE: Student Book

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Jean Piaget believed that a child’s intelligence developed from them discovering things for themselves and they needed to explore objects and situations to learn about them. Piaget also believed that children needed to be ready to learn and that they could only gain new concepts and understanding if they were at the right stage of their development as predicted by his stage theory of cognitive development. Twins share exactly the same genetic makeup whereas non-identical twins do not. If identical twins are found to have similar characteristics then this is seen as evidence that supports nature as the cause.

A students ability to store the information is ultimately more important than how they learn this information. Willingham believed that students should be taught using the best method based on the content they were being taught. This guide basically gives you a dedicated step-by-step overview on how the subject can be approached and broken down complimented by the content we have created on in our books and online content. Is psychology a hard GCSE? Our experienced educators and subject experts have carefully crafted the content to ensure that it is accessible and easy to understand, without sacrificing depth or accuracy. With summaries, explanations of key terms and exam-style questions at the end, our textbook is the perfect resource for both classroom learning, teaching and independent study. Piaget’s cognitive development theory and its stages have been heavily criticised. Other psychologists have shown that the ages Piaget said children could learn certain tasks we're incorrect. More recent studies have shown how babies develop object permanence before eight months (Hughes “Policeman Doll” study 1978) and children can lose their egocentric thinking and conserve before the age of seven (McGarrigle and Donaldson’s Naughty Teddy study 1974). There is also now the belief that children enter the formal operational stage much later than age 11, and some never reach this stage at all. Aim: McGarrigle and Donaldson conducted a study to see if children developed conservation skills at an age that was earlier than Piaget’s theory predicted if the change to the materials (counters) was accidental.This textbook provides an excellent balance of information, application and evaluation that will allow students and teachers to access the course content, while still accessing those top grades. I would definitely recommend this textbook to anyone studying psychology and in my opinion it is a must have to achieve the highest possible grades. Identical twins may be treated similarly by people such as parents or peers and therefore their behavioural similarities may be due to nurture (and being treated the same) rather than their genes.

The layout is very student friendly and the activities and suggestions for further reading will really consolidate a student's knowledge and ensure they are well prepared for the examination. It is written with students in mind and the language and layout are very student friendly.... Many potential students often ask "is psychology a hard GCSE subject?". The tutorial above will hopefully answer this question but in short, the answer is no, GCSE psychology is not a particularly hard subject to learn provided you revise sufficiently and learn the key theories and how to evaluate them. Animal studies have been used to demonstrate how nurture is important for early brain development. One study compared two groups of rats with one group having toys to stimulate them while the other did not. The results found that the rats that lived with the stimulating toys developed bigger brains and showed better problem-solving skills compared to rats living on their own without stimulation. This shows how nurture can affect brain development.

Is psychology a hard GCSE?

We've included exercises and practice application based questions across each topic at the end of every textbook to help students improve their understanding. Perfect For Studying or Teaching This meta study demonstrated that even when identical twins were reared apart, they displayed very similar IQ levels and this was stronger than siblings reared together.

Other criticisms of Piaget’s theory focuses on how he conducted his experiments. For example, in the conservation tasks, he asked children the same question more than once before and after the counters had been moved. This could have resulted in researcher bias as the children may have believed that their first answer may be incorrect and so changed this. Mark Jones is Head of A Level Psychology at a large and successful FE college in Bristol. Mark has many years' examining experience and has also worked as an advanced practitioner, liaising with teachers and colleges to help improve performance.Other researchers have found evidence to support McGarrigle and Donaldson’s findings when replicating Piaget’s conservation of numbers study. In one such study psychologists asked the children only once in terms of how many counters there were and the study was conducted in complete silence. They showed children two rows of counters and then spread one row out asking the child only once “is there the same amount in each row?”. This study found that more 6yr olds got the answer correct than Piaget had found demonstrating that children can conserve before the age of seven (7). For example, children may be encouraged to play with water and discover for themselves which objects float and sink. Children may also be given science problems to solve either on their own or in a group to allow them to learn from their experiences. Teachers can also look to present opportunities for children to learn new concepts only when they are at the right stage of intellectual development and ready to learn. Children may be provided with materials and taught in a child-centred way where they discover answers for themselves. Piaget's Four Stages of Development This book is extremely useful to students taking the new AQA specification. The layout and presentation of the book is stunning: each chapter is explicitly linked to the specification in the form of logical learning objectives. The book summarises the content in a user-friendly manner for students while providing an interesting range of discussion points and depth of content for high achieving students. This book provides a series of ‘building skills’ activities designed to help the students apply their knowledge while carrying out a range of interesting and related practical experiments. Identical twins may have twins that appear to have similar characteristics and it can be easily thought to be down to nature but this may not be the case. Dave Berry is an experienced psychology teacher and examiner. He regularly leads face-to-face and online training courses for a major awarding body. Dave teaches psychology at Bolton School, Lancashire.

People believe that if you teach a student in a way they learn best based on their preferred learning style, they should learn better. Despite these criticisms, Piaget’s theory has enjoyed a lot of mainstream support. His experiments were easy to replicate and his research had a major impact on early years education where his ideas are still used to this day. We've created a detailed study guide on how GCSE psychology students can study for the subject here. Ruth Jones is a practised teacher with examining experience and is Head of Psychology at a school ranked 'outstanding' by Ofsted in its last two inspections. Ruth also has a Masters Degree in Education.Our brain and its capabilities have allowed us to learn complicated languages, communicate complex messages to one another, discover the sciences and even reach other worlds through the development of advanced technology. Willingham disagreed with this and believed that learning styles do not exist in the ways suggested. As part of his learning theory, he pointed out that there was no experimental support for their existence or effectiveness. Other research studies have also shown that teaching in a students preferred learning style has no effect on their exam results. After some trials, the actual experiment was conducted but this time with two policeman dolls with the child tasked with placing the boy doll in such a way that neither police doll could see it. The experiment was conducted three times so that a different section of the grid was left as the only hiding place each time.