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I am interested in exploring the the area of clinical psychology- here, in IB curriculum it is abnormal psychology and research related to it. Apart from thiis specific area I do enjoy teaching the basic -biological, cognitive and cultural aspects in order to analyse human behaviour. Because this is the main theme of human science/social studies - no single factr can cause a specific behaviour/ or
I had posted it before but did not write my name

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I am interested in exploring the the area of clinical psychology- here, in IB curriculum it is abnormal psychology and research related to it. Apart from thiis specific area I do enjoy teaching the basic -biological, cognitive and cultural aspects in order to analyse human behaviour. Because this is the main theme of human science/social studies - no single factr can cause a specific behaviour/ or

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In my situation, since we are an IB candidate school I am working on the course outline. There are few areas which i would like to seek more clarity on linking TOK , ATL in my course outline.Teaching certain   concepts HL and SL and the distinction between the two.
I am  excited  on working on the research also interested learning more about the IA- experimental study on how I can help my students understand the process of their independent experimental study.
Abnormal Psychology has always been my area of interest so I would like to learn more about how I can incorporate teaching approaches to make Abnormal Psychology classes more interesting. Since we study about individual differences we also try and link this process of understanding human behavior that every individual is unique this is one thing I always want to understand and explore.

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I am interested in learning more about:
1. Health Psychology- because it fits perfectly with my academic and professional background: I graduated from and have worked at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a degree in Health Policy and Management, a certificate in Health Communication and one year research experience focusing on workplace health (best practices on workplace based health program setup and implementation). I'm interested in learning more about what role psychology plays in health and applications of knowledge in promoting health- things that I've briefly touched upon in the past but could systematically investigate now and in the future.
2. Psychology of human relationships, especially personal relationships. I sometimes talk one-on-one with students experiencing mental uneasiness with their study and relationships, and I always feel that more professional knowledge on this would make me a better counselor. It helps with my personal life too.
3. Abnormal psychology - I personally have suffered from depression, general anxiety disorder and eating disorders so I understand the importance of identifying these problem and treating them. The AP curriculum I teach touches upon these topic areas but I believe the IB curriculum provides a more in-depth view of them and asks students to take actions instead of passively receiving the information.

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I currently work in a secondary school within a Catholic school system and many of our administrators and superintendents espouse different and varying views on LGBTQ+ issues, particularly transgender students, of which we have many. Truthfully, there is a similar disparity in opinion/perspectives amongst the student body themselves. Given the religious underpinnings of our school board, the fact that many of our students are practicing and devout catholics, it in unclear how any issues pertaining to sexual or "abnormal" psychology could/should be addressed within my context. Although I am very confident in my abilities to convey curricular content and assess in an effective way, the sexual aspect of humanity as it relates to myriad perspectives, including the above as well as the psychology of human emotion and the psychology of religion, among other, presents distinct challenges for my own pedagogical practice.

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I am interested in learning more about:
a) The internal assessment. Getting my students to conduct a  independent research studies on this scale is something that I have never done with my students (but   enjoyed greatly when I was one). I would like to learn more about the  different types of studies that more experienced teachers have seen be successful and also how to structure / scaffold the IA to allow students to develop independence and critical thinking.
b) I am very interested in the subject I know least about, 'Cognitive Processing in the Digital World'. This is a subject which I have wondered about but one for which I have never done any research. Well, now's the time. This is relevant to all of us, but especially the 16- to 18-year-olds we will be teaching who may barely even remember a time before tablets and wifi.
c) Finally, I am interested greatly in the work of Tversky, Kahneman et al. on cognitive biases and am happy to see that I will finally be able to teach this in the Cognitive Approach. I would like to learn more about how I can use real-life events relevant to Turkish students to hook them into this fascinating subject.

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My situation is a bit different.  In the United States, I have a history degree and a teaching degree, but not specifically any degree in Psychology.  I have taught the course for 10 years as a theory class.  The topic that is always foremost in the minds of my students is that of abnormal psychology, specifically on mental illnesses.   I have covered this in a more broad spectrum, but I see from the curriculum guide there are specific categories that are defined.  I am interested to hear how others approach abnormal psych.
I also love teaching about the various methods of research and studies utilized by psychologists.  I have used the Milgram Study, the Stanford Prison Study, Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes to name a few.
I am interested to learn:
1) how other educators in the IB Program  cover these categories as far as breadth and depth?
2)  How do you effectively select what options to cover?
3) Ethics is always an interesting topic. Do you teach this in conjunction with other parts of Psychology, or do you treat ethics independently

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In my case, I am very interested in learning more about Health psychology. This is one of the options of the Psychology Curriculum. The reason why it is more interesting for me is just because back in days when I was studying the degree I did not study much about this field. Nowadays, the importance of being physically healthy is very well expressed in the society, however, we cannot affirm that the psychological health has in the society the same relevance.

Related to the idea above, I am also interested in Sport psychology. The reason is very similar.

Anyway, I am interested in all almost every single element of the psychology curriculum.

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For me, this is actually a double question.
A. Areas which interest me personally and I know quite a lot about it so I will very much enjoy discussing it with students.
A1. Reliability of cognitive processes - understanding this theme helps to be open minded, critical thinking and compassionate, because we can realize our limits as humans.
A2. Psychology of human relationships - particularly role of communication and conflict resolution - with obvious connection to IB mission statement.
B. Areas which interests me and I want to know more about it during the workshop because I know very little about it.
B1. External assessment - I would like to have very precise understanding of how external assessment looks like so I can help to prepare my students for it.
B2. What would be the best way to talk about ethics during teaching psychology and also generally how to design a ethical and at the same time useful research - which is connected to internal assessment.

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So, my situation is a little tricky. We are a candidate school and our consultant visit is in the beginning of Aug'17. We were asked to be ready with our course outline by then. I have worked on a course outline with immense support from the new psychology guide and an IB Psychology teachers Facebook group. But to be honest there are a lot of intricacies of the syllabus I have limited clarity about.

Few of these areas in addition to the aspects I am interested are:
1. There are a lot of connections between various topics. How do we link them and is there any guidelines to help us do so? How do we select the various studies for better understanding of the syllabus?
2. I am extremely confused regarding the Internal assessment & the links to TOK, ATLs, International Mindedness & development of IB learners profile, which are required to complete the course outline and bring a purpose to your teaching too.
3. How do I do justice in choosing the options?

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1. Psychology of human relationships is one of the areas that I find very interesting and will be challenging because I will be teaching at an all girls religious school. I am wondering what is the best approach to teach this area since credibility and trustworthiness of a study and ethical considerations are important especially addressing one of the topics--social responsibility. There are several approaches suggested in the syllabus but being my first time teaching psychology I would like to get suggestions.

2. Internal assessment is another area that I would like to learn more about. Do teachers choose the method to assess since the IB uses several methods? Which method has proven to be more accurate to assess the work of the students?

3. Sociocultural approach to understanding behaviour is also very interesting since we must take into consideration the cultural influences on decision-making. In some societies religion dictates the behavior expectations and I wonder how the influence of social media impacts behavior in these societies. I am very interested to get my students to research and present their cases.

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1. I am wondering how can we link all the research methods and processes to the core of the program, and how to make it easier for our students to learn and graso the main aspects of each method without making it boring.

2. I have a blurred idea on how to get to the optional part of the course, but do not really see how to give those options to my students when I have 20 people in the same classroom, but with different interests.

3. I would love to know about the assessments and how to guide my students on what to expect!

:)

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1. Reliability of cognitive processes

- I can remember first studying psychology at school and being blown away by the idea that our memory could be so easily distorted; that eye-witness testimony was so unreliable; that our confidence in our beliefs could be swayed by minority or majority influence; that language used in being questioned as a witness could completely change how we perceive and remember an event. I can only imagine the fun that teachers and lecturers have being the first to deliver these concepts, and I think any student would automatically and immediately examine their own beliefs and see the world completely differently. This could end up in pretty much any direction through student-led inquiry.

2. Cultural origins of behaviour and cognition

- This was never covered in any great detail when I went to school or university, and I can imagine this will be such a key component of DP psychology, so naturally I am most curious about this. Marian’s point that many of the studies we covered at university would have been conducted in European or Western countries has in particular piqued my interest here.

3. Ethical considerations

- To me, ethical considerations of studies and experiments were hugely interesting when I first started studying psychology. While the ethical checklist and guidelines are clear, I feel students will be interested to see for themselves why we have ethical guidelines in the first place. Certainly, the factual (“the Stanford Prison experiment and Little Albert experiment would never take place today”) is easily demonstrable, and then there is the 101 debate about the ethical issues with the Milgram experiment and other key introductory studies.

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1. I am very interested in all the links that may exist between all the different content areas. I know students will score better on their long essay responses if they can explore these links, but intrinsically as well, I am intrigued to further explor, for instance, the role the amygdala (biological) might play in the formation of flashbulb memories (memory being a cognitive process), and also how different cultural experiences affect those same memories.
2. I am also specifically interested in the addition of the topic of pheromones to the syllabus. I'm familiar with some research on the topic, but it's never been something I've spent a large chunk of time teaching to a Psych class. I expect that my students and I will be exploring some research on pheromones and attraction, which should also tie in nicely to some of the content dealing with the Human Relationships option area.
3. Not an area of personal interest, but definitely an area that I'll have to bone-up on is the use of inferential statistics. I've only taught Psych SL, and until now, that's only required students to use descriptive stats in their IA. Now I see they'll have to use inferential stats ... and I'm definitely intimidated by that. Never had to calculate them myself, never had to teach anyone else how to do more than interpret their end results. But knowing how to read and understand p-value is a lot different than actually using it.

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1) Biases in thinking and decision-making

Central to being international-minded is being able to identify and reflect on our own biases and how it impacts our decision making. If the ultimate goal is to create individuals who are able to create a better world, then they need to be able to ensure their ways of thinking and actions takes into account their biases and seeks to overcome them though inquiry and collaboration.

2)The influence of digital technology on cognitive processes and

human interaction

I am intrigued by this topic because it s a perfect example of how as our societies/culture change so does our cognitive processes and human interaction. What is the impact on social media? cell phones? wi-fi?

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1.  The psychology internal assessment is an area of interest that I would like to learn more about because it is supposed to expose students to provide students with a practical application of psychology.  What is the best way to scaffold student learning so that they are successful with this endeavor?
2.  The psychology external assessment is a second area of interest that I would like to learn more about because it represents the culmination of their learning in the course.  Although I have seen the rubrics for how Paper 1 and Paper 2 are graded, I have heard rumors that there are a certain number of studies that students must cite to receive full credit.  Learning what is required for student success on the external assessment is a second area of interest.
3. The distinction between SL and HL is another area of interest because although I read the distinction in the IB Psychology Guide, I still have questions. For example, is SL only a one-year course and HL only a one-year course? The model my school uses for SL and HL psychology seems to be different than other schools, so I'm curious about this topic.

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•	Thinking and Decision making (Cognitive approach to understanding behavior) – these cognitive processes have always fascinated me because of the in depth capacity of the mind to think and make decisions. 
Whether it is a small decision of eating chocolate or ice cream to the big decisions of pursuing Psychology or not, the mind never ceases to amaze me. This aspect will help students make sense of how important individual differences are. Even though the environment may be similar, every thought process and decision making is unique according to the experiences one has. 

•	Social identity theory (Socio cultural approach to understanding behavior)- in a world where we are constantly trying to achieve companionship of others, we often evaluate ourselves based on how others see us. This part of the syllabus will help each individual ponder upon oneself and might also help one to accept them for the way they are. Societal pressure has been a vital factor in determining the positives or negatives of an individual’s performance. But to what extent it should define the individual is still a matter of debate. 

•	Abnormal Psychology- I find this branch of psychology to be very interesting of full of stories. Every person has an exclusive story to tell behind the problem she/he faces. And the approach to deal with those problems is also different. Having worked in this area, I find myself inclined to know more about this field which will help me to understand people better. 

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1. The effect of Pheromones on behaviour - I love biopsychology and I am excited to be able to include in my teaching pheromones, it is a really contemporary area of study and so brilliant for critical thinking as it's a really debated topic.
2. I'd also like to explore the best way to make links between the core topics and the options topics to reduce the amount of research students have to remember and also to have them to see the holistic links in psychology

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1. overarching theme of ethics - in order for the students to become principled people, it is necessary to infuse ethics into all topics
2. multicausality of behaviour (biological, cognitive and sociocultural factors) - in order to avoid oversimplifying behaviour, these groups of factors are connected with each other and with each of the options (e.g. human relationships)
3. internal assessment (replication of experiment) - one of the best ways to learn something is by doing that, in this case - the research process

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Reading through the syllabus I was most excited about teaching the following topics:
•Biological approach to understanding Psychology
•Abnormal Psychology
•Psychology of Human behavior

1. Biology as a subject was something I didn’t enjoy as a student in high school and in College. But the moment I started teaching Bio-Psychology, I was blown away. It’s an area in Psychology according to my experience, where a lot of students get anxious about learning. Just like me, once the link of human behavior to the Physiological changes in the body and mind is established, the interest towards the unit grows. The mere change of behavior due to hormonal changes at adolescence or the sudden rush of energy in a flight or fight situation are just a few areas discussed in the classroom. I look forward to an interactive classroom discussion under this topic.
2. First question whenever I teach Abnormal behavior to my students has been is to define what normal behavior is. This always stuns the classroom, and a sudden excitement rushes up my spine. Abnormal Psychology has been one of my favorites to teach students. What I am curious about is when making the Unit plan, videos, case studies and research will be included, but are we allowed to take students on field trips to clinics for a more practical understanding of the disorders and the conditions of clinics available in their community?
3. Group dynamics and Socio cultural differences are a personal favorite of mine to explore, and when teaching it, I find Psychology of Human behavior the most interactive. I include a lot of group activities within the classroom as well as outside the classroom. Cross cultural studies have always been interesting to learn as well as to teach.  I feel this is a topic may closely link to the IB profile of being a global citizen who is open-minded and mindful when making decisions. Will it be possible for me to link this topic to the TOK and CAS of IB?