For love or honour? The case of arranged marriages.

Travis DixonLove and Marriage, Teaching Ideas

The idea of arranged marriages is an inherently interesting topic and one that hits close to home in many cultures. Would (or will) you marry someone you weren’t in love with? This is the same question Levine et al. (1995) asked their participants when comparing across cultures the role of love in forming a relationship. Teaching Tip: I like to …

Lesson Idea: Murder Mystery – Who killed the marriage?

Travis DixonLove and Marriage

The Murder Mystery activity is another one credited to a workshop with the late Paul Ginnis some years back. The details can be found in his book. This idea goes along with the lesson “Negative Communication” in the Love and Marriage chapter. However, the murder mystery is an excellent problem-solving and collaboration activity that can be applied to any content. …

Lesson Idea: Reviewing Studies

Travis DixonRevision and Exam Preparation

I came up with this basic idea yesterday as I was putting together my student workbook for the Love and Marriage unit. In this entire unit (Chapter 5 of the student’s guide) there are four key studies applicable to the following topics: Hormones and behaviour (Bio) Evolution and behaviour (Bio) Methods and Ethics (Evolution – Bio) Methods and Ethics (Hormones …

The Evolution of Attraction: Extra Resources

Travis DixonBiological Psychology, Teaching Ideas

The study of attraction is definitely one of my favourite topics. Because there’s so much interesting research in this field, I thought I’d create this post to “dump” some extra resources that you might find interesting. WARNING FOR STUDENTS: Many of the “studies” in the videos below have been replicated for the purposes of TV entertainment. They are to be used …

Experiment Results: Is an evaluation distinguishable from a discussion?

Travis DixonAssessment (IB), Curriculum, Revision and Exam Preparation, Teaching Ideas

After writing and sharing a recent post, I got some questions regarding the validity of my claim that a good evaluation and discussion are indistinguishable. So I decided to put it to the test by writing an example essay following the essay structure I advise for students and seeing if it was obvious which command term was being used. I gathered …

What is “an evolutionary explanation of behaviour?”

Travis DixonBiological Psychology

Offering an evolutionary explanation of behaviour can be more difficult than it first appears, so I want to show two ways to do this. I don’t teach evolution and behaviour as an individual topic in my course, as there are multiple behaviours that are applicable including fear, aggression (both in Criminology), attraction (Love and Marriage) and fear conditioning (PTSD). This …

Introduction to Psychology: Powerpoint (Chapter 1)

Travis DixonTeaching Ideas

This powerpoint is designed to accompany the introduction unit plan and the student workbook. Feel free to amend or adapt as you wish. You can download the powerpoint HERE!! I added some comments to the slides as well to hopefully make it easier to see how to use them. For those teachers using IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide, you will hopefully …

Key Studies: The effects of mindfulness and meditation on the brain (Desbordes et al. 2012, and Lazar et al. 2005)

Travis DixonBiological Psychology, Criminology, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

These two studies can be used to discuss: The use of technological techniques Neuroplasticity Experimental methods (quasi and true experiments) to study: The brain cognitive processes Lazar et al. (2005)   There have been numerous studies that have compared the brains of Tibetan monks who have thousands of hours of practice in meditation with normal controls. These studies regularly show …

Lesson Idea: Reviewing Year One

Travis DixonTeaching Ideas

Updated, Aug 2020 After two months of summer my students have had every chance to forget almost everything we did in year one. Even when I sit down to my desk to plan the second year I struggle to think what we’ve already covered. For this reason I like to spend the entire first lesson on reviewing what we did …

Lesson Idea: Review Intro to Psych w/ KAHOOT

Travis DixonUncategorized

I love Kahoot, as most teachers do. It’s a great way to review “knowledge,” especially key terms. One of the features I like about Kahoot is that it actually lets you gather some good formative data. If you make sure students use real names (or some other identification so that you know who is who), you can save the results …

Lesson Idea: What do psychologists study?

Travis DixonUncategorized

I like to take my introduction to psychology quite slowly. On the very first lesson I get students to think about the definition of psychology and what they actually study by doing the following activity. There is space for students to write notes on this activity in their workbooks. Step One: Students begin working with a partner and write as …

How to learn anything in three simple steps!

Travis DixonAssessment (IB), Revision and Exam Preparation, Teaching Ideas

I devised this three-step approach to learning for my students last year during exam revision. Find what you need to know Find your knowledge gaps Fill your knowledge gaps This approach helps me articulate to my students the process of learning, which also helps me discuss their progress during assigned revision times. The language of this post is how I would …

Lesson Idea: Thinking critically about correlations

Travis DixonResearch Methodology

When looking at correlational studies and quasi-experiments it’s important, I think, to allow students to make the obvious conclusion first, which is generally one of causation. But a big part of the IB Psychology course is helping them to understand the mantra: correlation does not mean causation.  This activity idea works well as a follow-up to the other activity about causation …

Lesson Idea: Explaining the difference between causation and correlation

Travis DixonResearch Methodology

This lesson works well with in the introductory unit, topic 1.2, lesson (d) “correlation.” The following TED Talk by Adam Grant is really interesting for a number of reasons and it’s well worth a watch. I like to show students the short segment from 8:25 to 10:30 where he talks about how mozilla firefox and google chrome browser users outperform …

Demand characteristics: What are they REALLY?

Travis DixonInternal Assessment (IB), Research Methodology, Teaching Ideas

I was reading another research methods chapter in a new psychology textbook the other day and despite it’s excellent content in research methodology, it still (I think) mis-defined demand characteristics.  The most common definition of demand characteristics out there goes something like, “demand characteristics are when participants are aware of the aim of the research and change their behaviour in a …