PsychEd: Free Resources

A rather unprepossessing WordPress blog about A-level Psychology, run by someone called “Ed” (hence the title) and featuring 8 posts in 2 years isn’t the kind of thing I usually feature on the blog.

But I’ve made an exception because, much like the proverbial duck, while there may not be much happening on the surface (which isn’t to say the posts about things like essay-writing aren’t interesting or useful) there’s one heck of a lot of work going-on just under the surface.

And that work involves creating a load of free Psychology resources aimed predominantly at teachers using the Cambridge International Psychology Specification. These, in the main, involve ready-made PowerPoint “lessons” and one advantage of this format is that the materials are relatively easy to edit if you want to add or subtract stuff to your personal teaching taste.

While the materials themselves edge towards the far end of “basic” (pretty much your standard bullet-point list with pictures and video links) the fact that PsychEd has done a lot of the heavy lifting for you in terms of putting together a lesson should probably count for something.

Whether or not it does probably rests on how many of the materials you’re able to use. If you’re following CIE this means pretty much all of them. For other Boards, maybe not so much.

The AS Psychology resources cover stuff that’s pretty generic across most Specifications:

• The bridge from GCSE to AS
• The Biological approach
• The cognitive approach
• The Learning approach
• The Social Approach

The A2 Psychology materials may not be as accommodating, given that they currently (Jan 2025) cover:

• Organisations
• Consumers
• Abnormalities

If you’re not familiar with the AS / A2 distinction this was the situation before the British Conservative government decided to “phase out” (or “abolish” as most people would put it) separate 1^st and 2^nd year exams / qualifications at A-level. Cambridge International, to their credit, didn’t follow suit. In Britain “Year 1” and “Year 2” of the 2-year qualification still pretty much equates to AS and A2 (just without the separate exam).

So let’s hope that’s cleared that one up.

Oh, and if you’re reading this in somewhere like the USA, “A-level” roughly equates to K-12 or, more-accurately, the final two years of High School (think, for example, Advanced Placement Psychology as being roughly-equivalent to A-level).

And finally.

From the looks of things these resources seem to be a work-in-progress, as well as a labour of love.

Although I could be wrong about the former.

But it might be worth checking back from time-to-time just to make sure.