As we come to the end of teaching the Higher Level Extension for the Socio-cultural Approach in IB Psychology, we thought it would be useful for the students to attempt to represent what they have learned about Globalisation conceptually.

The idea of Concept Based Teaching and Learning is a strategy I am keen to learn more about, and something I see as incredibly important in the study of Psychology. When IB Psychology students are asked about their experience in Psychology, they always comment on how there are SO many STUDIES to remember. Questions like “how many studies they should know?” OR “Do I include this study for this essay question?” are common. For me, I see this reaction as a false representation of the subject. Yes, studying Psychology involves reading a range of research but IT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT THE STUDIES. With the current G12 curriculum focused on Learning Outcomes, there can be a tendency to teach to or only learn the relevant study for that learning outcome. As a result, students know which study matches which learning outcome, but can lack the understanding of how they connect. Whereas if we focus on an explanation of the concept, a study can be used to demonstrate their understanding of that concept.

Whilst I can clearly see the benefits of taking a concept based approach, I wondered if this was something my students would also be able to see, or whether a more topical approach would be preferred. Before setting my students up to complete a concept map of Globalisation, I had to attempt this myself. With pen and paper (perhaps in hindsight, not the best format for a concept map), I first of all listed the relevant concepts to Globalisation. At first, this was challenging as it was all too tempting to list topic headings rather than the concepts themselves but eventually it felt quite freeing to think about the broader meaning of the content we had covered. My first attempt is the first picture and whilst I felt that I understood the unit and how all the concepts connected, I did not feel that it was the best representation so this is something I would like to work on, using an online programme.

In class, the first step towards conceptual thinking was to write a list of the concepts relevant to globalisation on a post-it note. At first, the students experienced the same temptation to only use the headings from the work booklet. But on questioning ourselves what “the contact hypothesis” was relevant to and what is was trying to explain, we were able to dig out broader concepts rather than a focus on the theory such as in-groups, out-groups and positive interaction. Using the post-it notes as a basis, we began to attempt to organise these concepts, working out how they all fit together. Students added some possible macro-concepts and micro-concepts and attempted to explain the connection by labelling the arrows or processes.

What I found most interesting was not necessarily the end-product of the concept map (as you can see, each group of students made different connections) but the conversations that students had whilst discussing how they fit together and why. It also gave me the opportunity to ask them to explain why they had made that connection, and consequently challenge or confirm why that connection is relevant or understood. On feedback, the students commented that it felt a bit strange to make connections that were all crossed over and felt that it was not neat. But they did seem to appreciate the process of recapping the content in a more meaningful way in comparison to a list of what needed to be remembered. One key aspect that I noticed, was that studies came second to the concepts. Students were analysing which studies were linked to a concept and specifically how this was the case rather than simply categorising them to a topic.

My main question is “Is this concept mapping?”. I would like to know a little more about how concept based teaching and learning works, along with what happens next. I can see that concept based learning does not necessarily start or stop here. How can we maintain a concept approach in Psychology without only focusing on concept maps?