The Psychology department at DSTC aims to help students develop a love of learning about understanding how the mind can influence human behaviour as well as developing our students into well rounded active citizens. 

Through the study of a broad range of topics such as mental illnesses, social influence and aggression and relationships our students develop tolerance, awareness and respect towards other individuals. 

Students are challenged in class to consider alternative ideologies and concepts, as well as how behaviour affects various and diverse cultures and upbringing experiences.

We aim to develop students' higher level skills of evaluation by looking at strengths, limitations and other discussion points such as comparing and contrasting viewpoints throughout the course. This allows them to understand the complexity of psychological issues and move away from simplistic answers towards more developed discussions.

As students enter Key Stage 5 they will use a number of skills learnt in Key Stage 4 as a foundation to develop higher level thinking skills. Students will use skills developed from subjects such as English when report writing, along with analysing and evaluating texts written by famous and current psychologists.

They will incorporate skills learnt in Key Stage 4 maths when looking at research methods and how data is collected , manipulated and interpreted in Psychology. Science knowledge will help students when looking at the biological approach and developing an understanding of genetics and brain structure from a psychological viewpoint.

In KS5 Students will study AQA A level Psychology (from Sep 2020), which will allow students to study a broad range of psychological topics. Students will open up many future pathways through the transferable skills they develop throughout this course such as statistical analysis, presentational skills, academic writing, understanding academic literature, being analytical as well as interpersonal skills.

Students will be encouraged to become independent learners in the hope that they will become interested in researching for themselves the theories and methods that are discussed in relation to current research and information. Studying psychology at A level can lead to students taking University courses in social sciences or psychology as well as a number of occupations that involve areas of statistical analysis, report writing and communication.