The AS Course

We follow the AQA Specification B course. The AS course comprises 2 units:

Unit 1: This unit covers three main areas of Psychology:

• It explores the work of the “famous names” in Psychology, such as Freud, Pavlov and Rogers.

•  It covers the biological basis of behaviour and the concepts of gender development

•  It covers the main research methods used in Psychology and addresses issues raised by the use of experimental and non-experimental methods.

Unit 2: This unit covers three popular topic areas within Psychology:

• Social Psychology looks at how the presence of others can influence our behaviour

•  Cognitive Psychology considers how our memory works and the related issue of forgetting

•  The Individual Differences topic explores the nature and possible causes of autism and anxiety disorders (such as phobias).

Method of Assessment

For the AS course, Unit 1 is assessed in January and Unit 2 in May. Each examination is 1 ½ hours in duration and each counts 50% of the final AS grade. They each count 25% of the entire A level grade. If a student is not satisfied with their grade in Unit 1, they have the opportunity to retake the examination in May.

The A2 course

The second year of the course builds upon the material covered at AS. Again, the course is divided into two units:

Unit 3: This unit explores two topics:

• Child development, by considering one aspect of development, either: social, cognitive or moral

•  The nature and possible causes of mood disorders (such as depression) and schizophrenia

•  Criminal Psychology.

Unit 4: This unit draws together all of the material covered on the course, to address the broader issues in psychology, such as:

• The main debates in Psychology, for example the nature v nurture debate or the issue of free will

•  The main perspectives in Psychology and their strengths and weaknesses

•  Research methods and related issues, such as ethics and interpretation of statistical results.

Method of Assessment

For the AS course, unit 3 is assessed in January and unit 4 in June. Each examination is 2 hours in duration and each counts 25% of the total A level grade. The remaining 50% of the final grade comes form the units taken at AS. If a student wishes to improve their performance in units 1 or 2 from AS they may take the unit(s) in either January or June. If a student wishes to retake unit 3, they may do so in June.