PLAT 2006 Widening Participation and Debate in Psychology

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PLAT 2006Widening Participation and Debate
in Psychology

• Joy Coogan Chris Pawson
• UEL

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Overview

• Widening Participation
• Level 0
• Psychological Debate
• Evaluation

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Widening Participation

• What does this mean?
• Who do we want to educate?
• How can we encourage them?
• What needs to be changed?

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Assessment Issues

• We recognised an over-reliance on essays as a
  means of assessment on current BSc programme
• Critical thinking is a key psychology benchmark,
  but is not formally treated as a necessary skill
  for development

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Why write Essays?

• Race (2001) proposes that the advantages
• of essay writing are
• Allow for student individuality and expression
• Can reflect depth of student learning
  (demonstrating understanding and grasp of
  material)
• A measure of students written style (important
  written communication)

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Level 0

• What do we want them to know?
• Broad definition of critical thinking

the propensity and skills to engage in activity
with reflective scepticism focused on deciding
what to believe or do. (Halonen Gray 2001)
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Level 0

• Halonen Gray (2001) suggests the following
  general strategies of course design in order to
  encourage the development of critical thinking.
• Introduce psychology as an open-ended growing
  enterprise
• Introduce assessment that goes beyond
  memorization
• Credit good examples of spontaneous critical
  thinking
• Endorse a questioning attitude

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Level 0

• How can we teach them to be independent?

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Why Debate?

• Allows students to be rewarded for their
  individuality
• Calls upon students grasp of material (but
  perhaps more effectively because they must put it
  into their own style of expression rather than
  regurgitating any read material in an essay)
• Helps to coach some crucial aspects of clear
  written communication due to the requirement of
  researching and structured presentation of
  evidence

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Why Debate?

• Provide students with the opportunity to
• 1) synthesise information in their own framework
  of understanding
• 2) read beyond lectures and in a deeper style to
  use in proposition
• 3) improve critical thinking because they may
  have to critique any information
• 4) develop verbal communication skills
• Alford and Surdu (2002)

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Psychological Theory

• Discovery Learning
• (De Jong Van Joolingen, 1998)
• Collaborative Learning
• (Van der Linden, Erkens, Schmidt Renshaw, 2000)

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Debating

• How to Debate Practical Information?
• Students read classic paper
• As a class they critique the paper
• Propositions are given
• Teams are randomly allocated to proposition or
  opposition
• Teams gather information for their side of the
  argument from classic and modern papers
• Teams formally debate

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Debating in Action?Any debate argument needs to
be SEXI

• S
• EX
• I

• Statement of argument
• Explain what is meant
• Illustrate the point with evidence

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open debating sessions are necessary to drive
forward the discipline
Sarah, Joanne, Paula, Celia
Mohammad
Naeem
Bridget, Cherrelle, Saelina, Karenjeet
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Assessment

• How to measure debate?
• Content
• Argument should be relevant, persuasive, clear
• Strategy
• Arguments should be presented from the strongest
  to weakest and each team member should state
  their argument. The team should rebut the most
  important arguments of the other team
• Style
• Individuals should use correct terms, should be
  heard clearly, use a varied voice and use humour
  or excitement appropriately

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Evaluation

• Has critical thinking been improved?

NO
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Student Development

• Debating (means of 60.29 67.67)
• t (20) -4.57, p lt.001
• Essays (means of 46.71 53.24)
• t (20) -2.55, p .009
• These figures are not what they seem

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Student Evaluation

• Mid-Module
• Stop Start Continue
• Stop nothing
• Start more interesting readings
• Continue - debating

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Student Evaluation

• End of Module Feedback
• Positive aspects
• Negative aspects

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Learning how to argue points across that I dont
normally agree with
Helped me to critically analyse both sides of
argument
The debates provided a more detailed aspect of
what the topic is about
The debating was great. At the beginning of the
summer I was a bit worried about doing them, but
I extremely enjoy them now
Boosting my confidence in speaking in public
Debating is more active, not boring
I found that after reading, we had to discuss
what we read, this enabled me to understand better
Helped me to gradually improve on my essays
The main point I found interesting was that after
the debates when I was listening to Tony Blair I
found it so easy to point out the wrong things he
said and think about it the other way
It debating has made me want to have evidence
for something before I speak. I used to say
something without being able to back it up with
evidence, I have learnt the importance of evidence
POSITIVE COMMENTS
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The readings were a bit of a bore at times
Some way of monitoring that every member is
contributing both time and effort to the
arguments.
Sometimes its hard to find research on specific
topics
NEGATIVE COMMENTS
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Any questions?

• Contact Joy Coogan
• J.Coogan_at_uel.ac.uk

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References

• Alford, K.L. Surdu, J.R. (2002) Using in-class
  debates as a teaching tool. Proceedings from
  Frontiers in Education Conference, Boston, MA 6-9
  November 2002
• De Jong, T. Van Joolingen, W.R. (1998)
  Scientific discovery learning with computer
  simulations of conceptual domains Review of
  Educational Research 68(2)179-201
• Halonen, J.S. Gray, C. (2001) The critical
  thinking companion for introductory psychology
  (2nd ed) Worth publishers
• Race, P. (2001) The lecturers toolkit (2nd ed)
  London, Routledge
• Van der Linden, J.L., Erkens, G., Schmidt, H.,
  Renshaw, P. (2000) Collaborative learning, in
  P.R.J. Simons, J.L. van der Linden T. Duffy
  (Eds) New learning. Dordrecht Kluwer Academic
  Publishers.