Psychology Alevel

I want to psychology alevel for aqa and I wanted to know if it hard or not and if it's one of the easier subjects to get an a/a* in

Reply 1

username3508100

I did Edexcel, so I'm not sure how much the courses differ but from my experience, there was a lot of content, but a lot of it was interesting which made it easier to learn imo. If you start revising early and keep it up and I'm sure you'll be able to achieve an A/A* :smile:

Reply 2

giella

If you have a good teacher, yes. If you don’t have a good teacher and you’re good at science and self disciplined, yes. If you’re willing to learn and read for yourself, yes.

I occasionally teach A level psychology. I generally find that people who need extra help are the ones who underestimated the course. It’s not a soft subject but people often anticipate that it will be. You need to have good numeracy skills and good verbal skills. You need to understand the explain-predict-manipulate model of scientific processes i.e. that psychologists try to explain behaviour, predict behaviour and then manipulate behaviour. Lots of terminology, lots of stuff to remember and to know why you’re learning it in the first place. When I’ve marked for AQA I’m always puzzled by the number of students who simply regurgitate information without any attempt to mould it into a response to the actual question they’ve been set.
Just approach the subject with some caution. Not to be taken too lightly and you may get a sense that the subject was missold to you if you don’t approach it like the science it is. It’s not just speculating about how people think. It’s a critical study into how people have investigated psychology over time and how their paradigms of thinking about the mind and human thought and development have changed over time and why. It’s not a case of pick a theory you like and wax lyrical about it. You need to be critical, objective and rational about it. I had one student who decided that because he liked humanism as a psychological model he was going to be as critical as possible about every other theory he studied, taking a particular dislike to cognitive and biological psychology, even though they are some of the strongest theories/models. I found out later it was because his mum favoured the humanist model as a therapist. Didn’t make for good exam results.
Anyway, hope you make the right decision. Have a look at an AQA textbook if you can. This will help make up your mind.