The Psychology curriculum at Westfield Academy

In Psychology, we aim to enhance our students’ knowledge and understanding of the world by delivering a curriculum that considers content from the specification, yet making real links to the wider society that the students’ belong to and recognise. By adopting this approach, students engage more with the topics, build their confidence, have a deeper understanding of the content and are keen to achieve; this instils the philosophy of Westfield Academy: to Believe, Strive and Achieve. 

To ensure that all of our students thrive in our courses, the delivery of Psychology begins with a ‘Foundations’ topic that introduces all learners to basic terminology and key theories that acts as a baseline for each subject. This is both at KS4 and KS5 to ensure all students are able to access the course and reach their full potential.  We then build upon this, layering students' knowledge in a sequential way that suits the needs of our students. To solidify what students have grasped, connections between other subjects are made to increase the depth of their understanding, such as the Holocaust in History and Obedience in Social Influence. 

There is a smooth transition between our KS4 and KS5 curriculums. The delivery of the KS5 courses is designed to revisit some aspects of the KS4 criteria to enable those that are new to the courses to progress; students then delve deeper into further analysis of these topics. Students at all key stages receive a variety of learning opportunities, from guest speakers, to visits to museums. This all serves to aid the personal development of our students; this is a strength of our curriculum.

The core skills that students adopt in psychology are:

• Building knowledge and understanding of key perspectives in Psychology 

• The application of knowledge to a range of contexts

• Analysis and evaluation of theoretical ideas

• Interpretation of data and research

• Practical application of concepts to our everyday lives

The development of these core skills permits our students to successfully progress to higher education and careers in their future.

The OCR GCSE in Psychology is designed to inspire and engage learners by providing a broad, coherent, satisfying and worthwhile course of study which develops an understanding of the ideas and values that characterise 'self' and others. It includes areas of study such as cognitive development, and clinical and social behaviour. During the course, students will cover memory, perception, communication and social influence.

Psychology in the sixth form 

The Psychology curriculum at KS5 aims to provide students with an understanding of how to conduct research in Psychology to test theories about behaviour. The curriculum also aims to develop students' understanding of their own and others' behaviour, introducing theories of specific behaviours such as memory, social influence, attachment and phobias and OCD. Students should be able to outline core theories to explain criminal behaviour, how we develop depression, schizophrenia, OCD, why some people become a criminal, memory and social influences on behaviours. Students should also be able to understand how and conduct their own research to test their own theories of behaviour.

The Psychology curriculum is organised and sequenced so that students start with the foundations of Psychology. Approaches is covered first because the six core approaches explain all behaviour and are a reoccurring theme in explaining the specific behaviours covered in later topics. This means each topic builds on prior knowledge.

Psychology is a popular subject at Westfield Academy and many students go on to study it further at university. This allows students to pursue careers in counselling, human resources, education and within the medical field.