Hartstone Why Teach Psychology

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome to this talk. I expect that there is a mixture of first time teachers of psychology as well as some old hands. I wanted to begin by telling you about about myself and then about what I plan to talk about today. I began work as a teacher in 1972. My last year was 1991. 20 years. Retrained as a psychologist. Never lost my interest in the possibilities of teaching psychology at high school level. Psychology is very interesting and personally rewarding career, though not better paid than teaching.
• #3: Many students will want to know about the possibilities of working as a psychologist. So I am addressing that first. But most of the thousands of students who study P will not work as psychologists. Nevertheless they can gain from studying psychology. So I want to talk briefly about how P is positioned in SACE. And about how P is structured as a SACE subject. As a psychologist I do not tend to address old childhood concerns, but rather to look at the knowledge and skills people need in the present to change their behaviour and thinking to build better lives. So I have great enthusiasm for teaching the basics of mental health self care to all, as well as the benefits of learning more in depth about the sorts of central life concern addressed in SACE P.
• #4: First some facts and figures about psychology as a career in Australia. 16,500 psychologists are members of the Australian Psychological Society. 11% are students. 74% are women. As well there are another 400+ psychologists registered to work in SA but not members of the Aust Psych Society. 67% women averaging 43 years old 33% men averaging 52 years old. So women are an increasing majority in Aust Psychology.
• #5: Academic Psychologists conduct research and teach in universities. Forensic Psychologists work with police, the law and legal processes, and in correctional services Clinical Psychologists diagnose, treat   and prevent a wide range of mental and physical health issues. Organisational Psychologists specialise in the areas of work, human resource management, training and development, and market research and advertising. Counselling Psychologists help individuals and groups with personal wellbeing, relationships, work, recreation, health and crisis management. Community Psychologists help people achieve their goals in areas such as welfare and community projects. Health Psychologists promote the prevention and treatment of illness and may work within the health care system Clinical Neuropsychologists assess and manage individuals with brain impairments. Educational and Developmental Psychologists provide children and adults with assessment, intervention and counselling services for learning and developmental issues across the life span. Sport Psychologists help people involved in sport and exercise maximise their performance, enjoyment and participation.
• #6: It is a fair commitment to study Psychology to the levels required for a career. First year psychology is a very popular subject at all of the 3 universities. By Honours level there are probably 100 -120 places in SA. The TER required for a course that offers the 4 th year is in the high 90s. About 30 to 40 places for clinical psychology masters total. About another 30 to 40 places for other specialty areas: Organisational, Forensic, Health, New area of military psychology Any questions?
• #7: I came across this Internet quiz. Here are the first 5 quiz items……
• #9: I cannot tell you how I scored on it. Nor how it was scored. But it is pretty transparent. And also pretty nasty in my opinion. It used to be teen magazines. But now the internet is the way teens look for information and for ways of understanding who they are. There are so many levels that I could critique the validity and integrity of this quiz that I expect I would bore you at great length. But I am concerned also about the attitudinal shaping that is implicit in such exercises, regardless of the score or outcome. What do you think? Is this really what people and our students access?
• #10: Is this really what people and our students access? Here is a linked site. Here are the topics offered on this site. Here are the most frequently viewed and searched links….
• #11: Some of thisin encouraging. Healthy meals for example (Is this driven by wanting to balance protein, vitamins etc? or by body image concerns?)
• #12: So I guess I am hinting at 3 questions about the real world. I have these questions in the back of my thoughts during this talk. I recognise that I have picked a vivid example. But there are innumerable little instances of attitudes and behaviours that are not for the better good of an individual or of the group, or society. And the teenage years are years when developmentally people are building patterns and habits of connection, making their own self image, developing self confidence and shaping their futures.
• #13: Here is the background to how SACE conceptualises learning for real life in secondary schools. You probably know it well???!.
• #14: While P straddles the humanities and sciences SACE conceptualises P as a science. Here’s how.
• #15: So there is an argument for P as a science and many students welcome the opportunity to study this more humanistic and personally relevant science. It is the personally relevant aspects of P that make it attractive to many students, but which also entail some particular difficulties in teaching P.
• #16: It is the personally relevant aspects of P that make it attractive to many students, but which also entail some particular difficulties in teaching P. More about this later… Literacy and numeracy are both considered important in the real world.
• #17: I won’t read this out to you, but you have a copy in the paperwork.
• #18: I won’t read this out to you, but you have a copy in the paperwork. But as far as being relevant to our students, I do not think they study Pyshcology to gain Literacy and Numeracy skills. in a nutshell…
• #19: What is attractive to many students who study P at secondary or tertiary levels is its relevance for their personal development.
• #20: This is my summary of how SACE Psychology can be relevant to personal development in the real world.
• #21: The combination of personal relevance, discussion of behaviour and attitudes and the developmental stage of adolescents does mean that teaching P, like the clinical practice of P and research into P is associated with strong ethical concerns.
• #22: In Real World Psychology, that is the practice of Psychology as a profession Ethics are a serious and comprehensive matter. The Aust Psych Soc Code of ethics is 32 pages long. All members must endorse it. There are 3 main areas. The first group will be recognisable to experienced teachers of psychology as relevant to the teaching context.
• #23: The second group appear more administrative but also impact on teaching psychology. The matter of competence, Record keeping Professional responsibility Delegation of tasks Psychological assessments And Research ethics
• #24: Personal and professional integrity extends beyond non-exploitation to prompt responsibility for the far reaching consequences of what is done or is not done. Also the same as a teacher?...
• #26: A recent TIME magazine cited the statistic that 20% of current divorce cases in US courts cited evidence gleaned from Facebook. People release information that may later embarrass or compromise them.
• #27: The teacher of Psychology at all levels has a responsibility to do what can be done to protect their students. This means some element of “saving them from themselves”. Adolescence is unfortunately a time when teasing and bullying are rife. I have clients who cite bullying and teasing in their teenage years as a very traumatic time which shaped their poor self image and low self esteem into their 30s, 40s, and older. In addition teenage years are those when people form their self image in relation to peers. They are at their most sensitive. The frontal lobes are not yet fully myelinated to give the protection or amelioration of logic. But the limbic system, the emotional part f the brain is sensitised by hormones, increasing responsibilities and expectations. And bombarded by more insistant media pressures to be sexy, thin, strong, a rebel, an achiever……. Teasing and bullying may occur, but NOT IN MY CLASSROOM. NOR OUTSIDE THE DOOR EITHER!
• #28: Confidentiality is fiercely guarded in Professional Psychology. At times it feels hampering and fine degrees of decision making can surround it. For teachers also this is a strict priority.
• #29: Imitative behaviours are well documented. Even for extreme behaviours like suicide attempts, homicides (school killings in US), Regrettable but true. Even Media respect this and refrain from reporting many suicides and extreme behaviours for fear of the imitative responses. What age do you think that body dissatisfaction has been identified in Australian girls? 6 Wanting to be slimmer. A colleague of mine with interest in research and treatment of body size dissatisfaction found that treatment is not so simple. The classroom program that resulted in lessened body dissatisfaction at 13 was ineffective at age of 15. It just refreshed the issue. Tricky stuff.
• #30: In addition to this advice to teachers students need to be reminded of their ethical responsibilites and warned about the hazards of enthusiastic endorsement of psychological symptoms.
• #31: And to extend these concepts a little further out into the real world, I would like to refer to Daniel Siegel, a P researcher in California who has focused on the biological level of brain functioning and the basic process level of how the mind uses the brain to create itself. His work is about identifying what makes a Healthy mind.
• #32: This probably looks familiar to you. While I do not draw up such a table in my clinical work this 4 level assessment is important to understand psychological problems and disorders as well as in designing and implementing treatments. The SACE curriculum statement fleshes out these 4 levels of interpretation in relation to examples. For example…
• #33: Interpersonal aggression: In working with an angry client I will consider: Biological: The role of adrenaline in Fight or Flight responses Basic processes: How people react to these biologically driven “instinctive” responses. How early life experiences , critical events and recent circumstances have played a part in shaping an individual’s usual responses, for example to criticism, or to threat, or to insult, or to being dismissed or ignored. And at a socio cultural level how this has become supported or maintained and problematic in the person’s life in their social roles, eg in relation to work, study, peer group, family..
• #34: At a biological level identifying biological processes and reactions can involve pain, fear, unpleasantness caused by the research itself. For example taking a blood sample to determine the level of adrenaline in an angry person not only involves discomfort, possible danger to the person with the needle, influencing adrenaline levels due to the fear and pain of being injected. Can it be done another way? What are the ethics of labelling people? How do our personal cultural biases influence how we identify issues to research, interpret results, or understand the distress or unhappiness of those from different cultures, or even from different families?
• #35: It might be possible to use the four levels of interpretation, integrate them and make an informed response. However this question usually encompasses more than an appeal for an identification.
• #36: I wonder how many teachers have experienced this sort of appeal for help? Identifying and labelling is tricky but planning interventions has an extra level of complexity. Which level to focus on first for instance… And how to integrate the levels of interventions. I want to extend further into the real world to consider the work of Dan Siegel on personal development for well being.
• #37: I think that being aware of our own processes, and of our own awareness, are abilities that can be fostered, even prompted by learning P. .
• #38: These capacities are developed via abilities that further develop the Healthy Mind’s capacities.
• #39: An outline of the subjects offered at Stage 1…. The Introduction to Psychology is specified at Stage 1 and Stage 2. Within this area we hope students learn to become critical thinkers in relation to psychological, and other, information. To distinguish between: what has an evidence base and what does not. As well as how large an effect size is involved, what are the exceptions and what sometimes are the processes that are significant.
• #40: And in Stage 2 again. I am more familiar with Stage 2 because of my involvement with Penny Spencer in Psychology For South Australia Stage 2. My particular interest areas were Learning Personality and the Healthy Minds chapters The structure of these content areas is interpreted and presented in keeping with the 4 levels of P interpretation.
• #41: So how does the P teacher make SACE Psychology relevant to these abilities?
• #42: What we hope our students Learn from SACE Psychology. I have 2 examples from “real World” life and real world Psychology for us to consider
• #43: Here are some background questions. Any opinions? An investigation was done by Australian researchers recently into the effect of drinking alcohol to relieve feelings of sadness.
• #44: Here is what they did… Selecting participants…
• #45: Setting up the study…
• #46: The investigation intervention…. What do we expect from our real world observation, experience and knowledge?
• #47: Let’s examine the data… You will notice a final row in the table. This measured how intoxicated subjects perceived themselves to be.
• #48: Not only was there no difference in mood change between alcohol drinkers and Placebo drinkers. They both reported equivalent levels of intoxication. NB: for the statistics buffs I have given means and standard deviations, but not the full statistical values and probabilities but you can look it up if you are interested. There were significant ethical concerns in this study. What do you expect?
• #49: There were significant ethical concerns in this study. What do you expect?
• #50: So here were the conclusions. And the relevance for the real world 20 per cent of males and 17 per cent of females aged 14-17 years were classified as regular weekly drinkers one-third of 14-17 year olds had put themselves at risk of alcohol-related harm in the past 12 months on at least one occasion, and this is similar to the overall population rate of 34.4 per cent (AIHW 2002). For both men and women aged 14 and over, about 9% consistently drank in excess of guidelines for harm from the chronic effects of alcohol
• #51: My second example, just very briefly, concerns mental health literacy and attitudes towards those who suffer from mental disorders. Here is the study. Here is what they did…..
• #54: Attitudes and therefore behaviours can be shaped and influenced.
• #55: Thank you