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FOUR Practicals, ONE TopicClass Practicals Made Easy

Travis Dixon

The IB’s recommended a different practical for each of the four contexts. However, they recently confirmed that this is only a suggestion. There’s nothing stopping us from running the four practicals on the same topic and context. In this blog post, I’ll outline one potential idea for running four practicals on one topic – technology and attention (Learning and Cognition).

From the IB: “The allocation of research methods to contexts is a recommendation. There will be no penalty if students choose to conduct an interview, for example, in the context of human development rather than health and well-being. However, students must engage with each of the four methods.” (TSM, pg. 48).

Class Practicals: Technology and Attention

Questionnaire

#1. Questionnaire: Prevalence of attention symptoms.

Context: The following is designed to be a simple survey led by the teacher and conducted in one class session.

The questionnaire may be the easiest practical to conduct, but the hardest to write about.

Aim: To investigate the prevalence of attention symptoms in a sample of IB Psychology students.

Procedures: 

Questionnaire tip: The only aim a questionnaire class practical can have is to describe the prevalence of something. That’s because the IB warns that “Care should be taken not to confuse data collection tools with research methods.” They go on to say that “…a questionnaire used as part of an experiment is a data collection tool. The experiment is the research method.” (TSM, pg. 55). With this in mind, the only aim I can see for any questionnaire is to measure prevalence or general trends of a particular behaviour.

Coming Soon: All materials needed for these four practicals will be included in our Research Methods Teacher Support Pack.

Experiment

#2. Experiment: Smartphones and attention span

The Trail-MakingTest is a simple and enjoyable way for students to measure attention.

Context: This is another simple study led by the teacher in one class period. It’s inspired by this experiment (link).

Aim: To see if the mere presence of a smartphone affects attention.

Procedures: 

Tip: I think it makes sense to use one of the HL extensions for the practicals. Why not? The three HL topics are technology, culture and motivation. Of these three, I think technology lends itself best to class practicals.

Interview

#3. Interview: Focus group interviews of technology in the classroom and attention. (See similar peer-reviewed study here).

The focus group interview’s probably the easiest to conduct, but the key is having a good interview schedule.

Context: This is designed to be a teacher-led focus group of 5-8 students (with other students observing the process).*

Aim: To understand adolescent perspectives on the effects of technology in the classroom on attention and learning.

Procedures: 

*Alternative: If you have a large class, this practical could be run by the students. Create groups of 4-6 students – 1 interviewer and 3-5 interviewees. They could create the interview schedule as a group.

Tip: Students don’t need to write thorough summaries of the results of the class practicals in Question 1 – only the aim and procedures. However, they do need to relate the practical to one of the concepts (Qu2). Understanding how data is analysed will be highly relevant to this question.

Observation

#4. Observation: Observational study of classroom technology on attention.

The observation is the hardest practical for me to provide a blanket approach – it really depends on your context. Please adapt as you see fit.

Context: This is a participant observation of the effects of classroom technology on attention. It’s designed for students to gather data over the course of one school day and then analysed thematically in the following IB Psych lesson.

Aim: To understand the impacts of classroom technology use on attention in IB students.

Procedure: 

*Going beyond this would raise ethical issues. Strictly speaking, you would need to gain informed consent from all subjects being observed and gain teacher approval. For practical purposes, I suggest the data comes primarily from autoethnographic methods with some observations of IB Psych classmates. However, if you want to make it more like a genuine naturalistic observation then real classroom observations are best. Perhaps asking other teachers if Psych students can sit in on their classes and observe would work.

While it’s not a peer-reviewed study, ideas for this practical can come from this blog post (link).

Note: The observation practical scares me because of the ethical implications of observing people without their knowing, or the practical implications of gaining consent. This (in)famous study in Zurich always comes to mind (link).

 

Class Review Activity

Students need to be prepare to discuss any of the concepts in relation to these four methods. This can be pre-prepared by students ahead of time by making notes for each concept and each practical. Another way of doing this is to use a selection of key research terms and have them explain how they’re relevant to all methods. Some useful terms include:

Final Thought

The class practicals represent an opportunity for students to engage in some amateur psychological research. This is great since their IA is a proposal, not an actual study. However, there are very real practical realities to consider when designing and teaching an IB Psychology course, not least of which is the amount of content, assessment and marking to complete in the time allowed. This is why I’ve suggested this approach to the class practicals. It’s also why I would defer to a teacher-led approach, rather than green-lighting students from the beginning. That said, I think it would be great to give students the opportunity to conduct their own research for the class practicals once they’ve shown sufficient understanding, motivation and independence in the whole class research.

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