Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Open University’ Category

Although the course texts themselves aren’t overly massive, there are a number of other resources that look like they could take the workload up a fair bit (e.g. the workbook and SPSS) so I’m making an early start on revision for the course with a view to produce a version of my ED209 style of notes as I go along. I’ll be producing a PDF version of these notes in due course.

The exam will be asking for definitions of what are listed as key topics throughout the books and I’ve highlighted those in the notes. As with ED209, my aim is to produce an average of about a page of so of notes for each chapter i.e. something that is of a useful size for revision.

Chapter 1, Identities and diversities, runs to 44 pages and is partly an introduction to psychology and the social sciences and partly a proper start on the course itself following the introductory chapter which is essentially a whistle-stop tour of 21st century psychology and how the subject got to this point. The essay in TMA1 is based around this area of the field, in particular asking how social identify theory and social constructionism describe identity and consequently these notes will probably be a bit better for those two topics.

The chapter starts off with how one might find out what someone considers their own identity to be and introduces the Twenty Statements Test in which participants are given 12 minutes to write 20 statements about themselves. The categories which people provide to this fall into a range of categories including characteristics (e.g. gender), social roles, personality, interests and tastes, attitudes and current state (e.g. “I am tired”). Although it’s very popular it has the downsides that only answers that come to mind and there are many things that only get mentioned when they go wrong (e.g. disabilities).

Moving on to embodiment it considers the changes that can be made in our identify in terms of clothing, body building, plastic surgery, and brain damage and the changes that this can make to our identity. In terms of clothing it mentions group identities formed by similar clothing. Disability receives its first mention in the context of the social model of disability which states that the consequences of disability aren’t purely down to the biology but rather due to social limitations e.g. buildings requiring legs to access rather than being wheelchair accessible.

Understanding personal identity introduces several theories notably the psychosocial theory of Erikson which links the aspects of psychological identity social identify and in particular our core identity which is literally what is at our core, what makes us “us” and runs throughout the other identities that we may have in different contexts i.e. our core values and beliefs. Erikson, working with WW2 veterans saw identify being created by way of resolving conflicts that arise throughout our lives. Notably, these conflicts arose in adolescence when typically we are involved in negotiations with others with a psychosocial moratorium period where we are trying our various social roles which eventually gets us through our identity crisis but, if we do not establish a solid identity at that point can lead to a drifting identity involving role diffusion. During this period we can become identified as part of various groups which can give rise to conflict with those outside our group. Marcia went on to develop the Identitity Status Interview which is a semi-structured interview that explores the commitments and crises that people have at various stages of their lives, identifying identity diffusion (low commitment, low exploration), identity foreclosure (high commitment, low exploration), moratorium (low commitment, high exploration) and identity achievement (high commitment, high exploration).

Moving on, we come to Social Identity Theory which considers how people come to be identified with some groups and not others. This addresses the limitations of the Erikson/Marcia approach in that 1) they considered the personal & social identities linked yet their theories treated them separately and 2) they didn’t consider the large-scale groupings such as race/gender/etc. Yet again, this arose out of WW2 but looking at the Holocaust rather than veterans. This considers personal (e.g. parent/child) and social identity (e.g. man/woman, black/white) to be separate with a social group being made up of people who shared a common identification. This led to the concept that you needed to both know who you are and also who you are not. His approach used experimentally established groups generating concepts such as the ingroup, outgroup and minimal group (the minimum conditions required for the group to form which, perhaps surprisingly, created conflict even in groups decided by the toss of a coin). Notably, there was discrimination in favour of the ingroup even when there was no benefit in doing so. Elliott (1968) used the blue eye/brown eye categorisation in a class setting as a segregation demonstration.

The third identify theory is social constuction does not have a single originator and considers that our identities are artificial constructions between ourselves and others that we meet in social situations. It recognises that a single individual can have conflicting identities e.g. one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist and, of course, these identifies can change with time. Moreover, how we describe ourselves in our life stories changes over time and different cultures will reflect different identity constructs (e.g. collectivism vs individualism). These identities can even change for different audiences that we are telling our stories to i.e. we can have multiple, potentially conflicting, identities at the same time (e.g. Judge Thomas was black, a man and conservative).

So how do these theories cope with explanations of disabilities? There’s the issue of calling people disabled vs calling them people with a disability for a start. Erikson/Marcia with their core identity would highlight the profound change in identity that can happen with someone who becomes disabled i.e. they have suddenly changed identity to a disabled person thud provoking an identify crisis. SIT and social construction allow more for changing identities as one goes through life e.g. in a special school, autism isn’t a particular identity if many of the children are autistic.

For the exam, the key topics for this chapter are highlighted above and are:

• Social identity theory (SIT)
• Social constructionism
• Minimal group
• Embodiment
• Core identity

Next up is Evolutionary Psychology which, all being well, will be available in a few weeks.

Citing this:

Stewart, J A (2014), Exploring Psychology DSE212 Identities and diversities, Foreign Perspectives, 15 October 2014 [Blog], Available at https://www.foreignperspectives.com/exploring-psychology-dse212-identities-and-diversities/2014/10/15/opinion.htm (Accessed dd mm, yyyy)

Well, it’s all over. That’s the final exam for my Life Sciences degree too and I’m already wondering how I’ll get through life without biology to make it interesting.

The report question turned out to be a doddle and was pretty much exactly what I had expected so it was a doddle to do and my figures fitted in with it quite well too. A fairly easy 20-25% I think.

Next I did the data handling question which was entirely public health though, as usual with these questions, you could have had a good stab at it without having done the course. Based on a norovirus infection this year and looking at some trends and why school kids would catch it. Another easy 20-25% I think.

Finally there were the short answer questions. Ten from twelve and as usual from all over the course. It was easy enough to choose the first five or six and easy to eliminate two (did anyone do the two ten part ones?). In practice, there turned out to be several easy ones in my second choice group when I looked at the in more detail. I’m not so sure of the overall marks on this section which is a pity as it’s the section that largely determines the overall grade.

It felt like quite a reasonable paper apart from the two ten part questions which I suspect few will have answered.

As the Infectious Disease course is the last one for my Life Sciences degree, I thought I’d beef up the amount of dedicated revision time that I had for it.

That means that I’m a full-time student for the next week.

It doesn’t mean that I’ll be doing 12 hours a day revision mind you as my brain tends to run out after a while. The basic game plan is to drop the kids off and head on somewhere quiet where I’ll be able to do several 45-60 minute stretches before lunch, another slot after lunch and one or perhaps two after I pick them up again.

In principle, that should leave me with loads of time to do it all but the problem is that there’s loads to be done. My notes are 30 pages, I’ve another 10 of detailed diagrams, the glossary runs to 50 pages and so does the Q&A. Not to be forgotten is the research question which has oodles of studies though I’ll likely limit myself to 10-20 pages of reading for it. Having said that, I’ll only be skimming the glossary and Q&A so in reality it’s the 40 pages of notes and diagrams plus the 10-20 of the research question which doesn’t sound so bad but every one of them is very information rich.

One other complication is that for the answer to the research question you need to have two diagrams or tables and I’ve not yet seen any doable ones for it.

Over the weekend, I managed to complete phase one of my revision for the exam next week. That entailed finishing off the notes for the final book of the course so now it’s onwards to the next stage of the revision.

First up this week is a look at the research question and gathering together the information that I think will be required to answer it. I’m also going to have a look at the three examples of this type of question that I have from the specimen exam paper and the two past papers. I’m not going to look at them in a whole lot of detail though – just enough to get a feel for what kind of questions might come up.

Next up  is a look at the specimen exam paper I think with a view to ensuring that the notes that I have are sufficient to answer the majority of the questions. I say “the majority” rather than all as, although clearly being able to answer all would be better, I’ve not looked at any of the papers yet so I don’t now how viable it is to know everything that might be necessary. In parallel with that I’ll be going over the notes that I have at the moment and adding bits & pieces to them as necessary to answer the questions on the specimen exam and, later, on the two past papers that are available.

Then there’s an assortment of information to glance at which includes the 50 pages of the glossary, an equally chunky FAQ and a number of diagrams on topics that one of the other students produced this year. I’ll probably confine my revision of the case studies to those diagrams as I don’t think I will be able to slot in the time to go over them fully and I don’t think it’s necessary anyway.

After that, it’s some serious going over the notes that I’ve produced over the last month or so in the hope that enough of it will stick to answer ten of the short questions and any required background for the data handling question.

Early days for this, but given the experience of ED209, I plan to start early.

Exloring Psychology (DSE212) formally starts in a couple of weeks but I’ve been reading the texts for a while now in teabreaks and I’m about a month ahead with the reading at the moment. That said, there are also other non-textbook items to look at including the workbook (not too onerous so far), assorted videos (some of which were in the Coursera psych course last year) and a number of audio recordings. In terms of volume of work, it seems less than SK320 but there are six full-size TMAs to be done, albeit with a spare week for each, of which the first is due the first week in November.

I’m hoping to do my ED209 style notes for this as I go along but we’ll see how the time works out with that idea. Tim’s notes aren’t great for DSE212 as they were for an earlier version of the course and he hadn’t really gotten into gear with his note writing then but David’s DSE212 toolkit looks reasonable, if rather large (it runs to around 250 pages!). I’ll be aiming for something in the middle ground.

At the moment, my plan is to run up notes as I get through each chapter as I did for ED209 and produce the overall guide like the ED209 one along with the ED209 PDF style notes.