I Pick Up The Pen Again

Today is a good day to start my blog again on a more regular basis. The summer holidays are becoming a distant memory as work begins to gather momentum. Its also 8.00 o'clock at night and pitch black; the night's are fair drawing in! Gardening is no longer an option, unless I attach a torch to my hat! And as we are in the last few days of a summer of sport, no more distractions. I've enjoyed the lot! Euro 2004, The Open, Wimbledon and now the Olympics. I am not sportie at all, but I appreciate excellence in anything. This summer I've not been disappointed.

The past week has seen our students begin or return to their courses. Work commences for all Monday next!

Today I met our new HNC intake for the first time, which always signals the start of the new academic year for me. We give our HNC students taster sessions in subjects they might like to do, and this is what today was all about. It was good getting my brain back into gear, as I told them, and reminded myself, what psychology is all about. This will be my preoccupation on an almost 24/7 basis for the next 40 odd weeks or so. Hence the irregular postings during the summer. I was having a wee holiday. But no more!

But www.gerardkeegan.co.uk hasn't been too idle. We have redesigned the Home Page so that it loads faster for those with dial-up connections. We also boast a new animation which is the best yet. A new Get Help section has been opened, and you'll find new photographs of student night outs in the These Were The Days of Our Life bit.

One big milestone was 'finishing' our Research Methods pages. We can now move on and begin to develop psychological processes. We are working on two at the minute, attitudes, and prejudice, which with a bit of luck will be up shortly. Detail of three 'Seminal Studies In Social Psychology' can be found in our Key Studies section, and we've also got six new psychology Hang Man games in Fun Teaching And Learning.

Lots more to come in the months ahead including our top secret project which I can't tell you about just now!

Most work has concentrated on the Psychology Bookstore. As you can see it has been redesigned, and restocked with loads of new psychology titles. We very much appreciate anyone buying a book from Amazon via www.gerardkeegan.co.uk as it helps pay for the upkeep of the site. I'm amazed at the amount of people who think because something is virtual it doesn't cost anything! Not so I'm afraid. The only thing that's free is me and Graeme's energy and time. All others involved want paid!

But back to my reason for being. Students. The HNC today were just a sea of faces. Blurred at that, as my eyesight isn't of the best! I haven't a clue how they will get on. At the minute they are all a tabula rasa, or a blank slate to me. If you attend classes and do what's bid you will pass OK. If you don't you'll come a cropper. If you are enthusiastic and strive to go beyond the bare minimum, you will do well.

Like us all students have their problems. One good thing about being in a college community is that their are people about that can help. Some things we can fix, other things we can't. But in all cases we can give a sympathetic ear. BT say it's good to talk and they are absolutely right.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes - Or Who Watches The Watchers?

The beginning of August always sees me refocus on the teaching year ahead. After all there are only two weeks of the summer holiday left until I go back to the chalkface. With this in mind I went into work the tail end of last week to get some photocopying organised, and to have a look at my mail.

Newly arrived as late as ever were documents from the Scottish Qualifications Authority concerning new subject and examination arrangements for Intermediate and Higher Psychology to be implemented with effect from June 2004.

My heart sinks when I see this stuff. For too long have our students been the guinea pigs of changing examination arrangements in Scotland. While I pray it doesn’t happen I predict meltdown in psychology exams next year. There are very good reasons why I say this. Take the new Higher psychology for instance!

The documentation outlining what we have to teach, and what students have to know for examination purposes is woolly and non-specific. This is a bad idea as then what happens is that your Higher Psychology teacher in Inverness will emphasise different topic content than a teacher in Dumfries. I also strongly suspect that these new examinations are in breach of our candidate’s human rights. But this beef is for a later day.

Where there is guidance as to what we have to teach it is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it’s nonsense!

We have to tell our students for example about the work of a ‘Jane Elliot’. Indeed this person appears in examination questions. Only one snag is that nobody called Jane Elliot has ever been associated with psychology!

I think our psychology experts mean a Jane Elliott. If they do then they might want to know that Jane Elliott is not a psychologist, nor has ever conducted any psychological research. She is a teacher, lecturer and diversity trainer who conducted an exercise in 1970 in her primary school classroom in Riceville, Iowa to expose prejudice and bigotry.

Her conclusion, again non-psychological, is that prejudice and bigotry results from an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors. You study class in sociology, not psychology! Her work has never been published in any psychological journal for critical analysis. It doesn’t figure AT ALL in Richard D. Gross seminal work, ‘Psychology: The Science Of Mind And Behaviour. As far as I am concerned if it’s not in Gross then it isn’t relevant. But it wouldn’t be, as its not psychology. Next thing will be that Big Brother will be on our curriculum!

Interesting though Elliott’s work is, Jane does not claim to have anything to do with psychology. This can easily be ascertained by visiting her website at http://www.janeelliott.com/index.htm, where she can be contacted.

I love psychology, and the good folk who study the subject too much to let downright rubbish pass without comment, however unpopular this makes me in the corridors of power. We are entrusted as teachers to impart correct knowledge to our charges. Lets do so? Otherwise we and psychology become a laughing stock.

I was told a meeting in Aberdeen last Spring that one of the reasons we are now doing what we do in Higher Psychology is to reduce the number of pre-16 pregnacies in Scotland! Psychology claims many things but never that it is a successful contraceptive! This kind of drivel must be challenged and I hope parents, teachers and students, now begin to do so with some vigour.