There are three units:

• Psychological Themes through Core Studies - You will look at ten different areas that psychologists have researched such as memory, responses to people in authority, moral development, understanding disorders, and regions of the brain.  For each key theme you will look at two pieces of research - a classic study and a contemporary study.
• Research Methods - You will become familiar with research methods that psychologists use such as experiments, observation, questionnaires and correlation studies.  You will carry out research of your own and analyse your findings.
• Applied Psychology - You will study Issues in mental health and also look at two of the following areas in which psychological research has been applied in the understanding of real-world problems:

             - Criminal Psychology (e.g. what makes a criminal, police interviews, imprisonment)

             - Environmental Psychology (e.g. aircraft noise, shift work, territorial markers)

             - Child Psychology (e.g. intelligence, brain development, the impact of advertising)

             - Sport and Exercise Psychology (e.g. controlling anxiety, audience effects).

Psychology is an academic subject and will therefore require quiet reading, note-taking and essay writing.  Lessons will be varied and class activities could include the following:

• discussions and debates 
• experiments 
• role-play 
• videos 
• student presentations

This is a linear A level course.  Assessment will be through three exams at the end of the second year of the course.  There will be one exam for each unit, and all exams will be two hours long.  The ways in which you are assessed are quite varied:

• Unit 1 (Research Methods) - the exam includes multiple-choice questions as well as questions in which you are asked to design a study of your own, and questions requiring you to analyse some 'dummy data' that you are given from a made-up study.
• Unit 2 (Psychological Themes through Core Studies) - the exam includes short-answer questions about the detail of the Core Studies as well as a structured essay on one or more of the debates you will study (e.g. the nature-nurture debate; the debate about whether psychology is a science).  You will also be given a novel source (e.g. a newspaper article) and invited to identify the psychological issues it raises, make (evidence-based) suggestions for the people in the article, and evaluate the suggestions you have made.
• Unit 3 (Applied Psychology) - the exam includes structured essays on your two Applied Options (e.g. criminal psychology, and environmental psychology) as well as a variety of shorter questions on issues in mental health.

Unit 1 is worth 30% of the A level as a whole, while the other two units are each worth 35%. There is no coursework. 

• Extra reading – there is a document on the Study Directory with suggestions for relevant Psychology-related novels, biographies, and academic books;
• Extra viewing – there is a document on the Study Directory of recommended Psychology-related films to watch;
• Extra listening – there is a document on the Study Directory including suggestions for Psychology-related podcasts to listen to;
• Extra studying – we encourage students to undertake additional study through free online courses laid on by Universities (i.e. MOOCs);
• Trips laid on by us – we lay on trips to hear lectures from psychologists, trips to the theatre (e.g. to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Rain Man; Twelve Angry Men), visits to Crown Courts, visits to the Freud Museum in Hampstead, and there is also our annual Behind Bars conference. In previous years, we have even taken students to Auschwitz so they can see for themselves the historical background to much research within social psychology;
• Trips that students can organise independently – on the Study Directory, we provide suggestions for Psychology-related visits that students could do themselves;
• Part-time paid work and voluntary work – on our Study Directory, there is a document outlining suggestions for Psychology-related work that students can do (e.g. to enhance their Personal Statements if applying to study Psychology at University). We also have a Careers and Employability Google classroom that students are invited to join, and  through this we inform them about fresh opportunities as and when they arise;
• We always respond positively to local Universities when they ask if we have students who would be interested in taking part in research (and in the last few years students at the College have participated in research being conducted at Royal Holloway, Surrey, Sussex, Reading and Oxford Universities).

Psychology combines well with practically all other subjects.

The skills and knowledge of psychology are relevant to any career involving contact with other people.  Whilst they will be particularly relevant to such careers as teaching, medicine, personnel management and social work, they are also relevant to careers in business, customer relations, the police, journalism, advertising, and the law.  An A level in psychology can help you into work but is also recognised as a sound preparation for university.

Please see below for careers and labour market information for psychology - use the refresh buttons to find out about different courses and careers, and use the left and right arrows to view more detailed information.

You can find the prep work for this course at prepwork.farnborough.ac.uk. 

Q: What’s psychology all about?
A: Psychology is all about people – it’s about what they do, and why they do it.  The way this is studied is by setting up experiments in which one particular aspect of human behaviour is looked at (e.g. helping behaviour, memory, intelligence, what happens if you split someone’s brain down the middle) and then results are collected in and analysed.  It is a very varied subject because any aspect of human behaviour can be looked at – from child development and issues in mental health to criminal behaviour and performance in sport.

Q: What do you do in lessons?
A: Discussion plays a large part of most lessons, and wherever possible we like to bring psychological research to life by watching videos and carrying out replications of experiments with students as participants.  There is also group work, quiet reading, and filling in of the study-packs we have created to help students organise their notes.

Q: What other subjects go well with psychology?
A: Most subjects go well with psychology, but subjects that combine particularly well include sociology, criminology, health & social care, law, modern history, geography, PE, biology, maths, English language, philosophy, and business studies.

Q: What are the exams like?
A: They are really varied.  The Research Methods exam includes multiple-choice questions as well as questions requiring you to analyse made-up data and to design a study of your own.  The Core Studies exam has short-answer questions testing your knowledge and understanding of the research, as well as a novel source (e.g. a newspaper article) that you need to identify the psychological issues it links to.  The Applied Psychology exam is a bit more essay-based, but even in this the essays are broken down into separate sub-sections.  We will give you plenty of practice at answering all of these different types of question, and lots of guidance about how to approach them!

Q: Do I have to be good at maths?
A: There is some maths content in psychology (like there is in geography, biology, economics etc.), but you will already know most of the maths that you need (e.g. how to calculate a mean or draw a bar chart) and it is only a very small part of the course, anyway.  The bits that are likely to be new to you (e.g. statistical tests) are much more straightforward than you might think, and we will teach you all that you need to know.  Do not be put off by this part of the course – instead, see it as an opportunity to keep alive your number-handling skills in a pretty painless way!