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PSY-10054 - Module Specification
School of Psychology
Faculty of Natural Sciences

For academic year: 2026/27 Last Updated: 16 September 2026

PSY-10054 - Exploring and Applying Psychological Topics
Coordinator: Michael Mcgreary
Lecture Time:
Level: Level 4
Credits: 30
Study Hours: 300
School Office: 01782 733736

Programme/Approved Electives for 2026/27

None

Available as a Free Standing Elective

No

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

n/a

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2026/27

Building on ‘Understanding People’, this module expands on core psychological topics as well as more specialist areas, such as health, forensic, sport, business, educational, and clinical psychology. Student are given opportunities to explore and reflect on different areas of psychology they may not yet be aware of and consider how this could inform their future career routes

Aims
The module will expand on the core topics introduced in other modules, as well as more specialist areas. The module will explore developmental, social, biological, and cognitive psychology as well as forensic, health, sport, business, educational, counselling, clinical psychology and the history of professional psychology. Students will be given opportunities to explore and reflect on different areas of psychology they may not yet be aware of and consider how this could inform their future career routes. Each session will be applied in nature and will include time dedicated to a psychological career in that area, as well as including a key question to prompt reflection around the career and psychological theory. For example, in the educational session, the question may be around becoming an educational psychologist and how they would use psychological theory in this role.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Describe how psychology is used in different professional psychology practices and apply techniques to a real-world challenge: 1,3
Examine and reflect upon the responsibilities of different professional psychology practices: 1,2
Describe and apply the skills used by different professional psychology practices
: 1,2
Apply reflective techniques to assess and enhance their own professional skills development: 2
Demonstrate how the subdisciplines in psychology can be applied to address and inform key psychological topics in practice: 3
Describe critical evaluation techniques that can be used in order to render informed judgments about scientific research: 3

Study hours

Interactive lecture - 46 hours (23 x 2-hour session).
Asynchronous learning - 23 hours (23 x 1-hours worth of work)
Independent learning and assessment preparation - 231 hours.

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment

1: Presentation weighted 30%
Individual Presentation
Students will choose one area of applied psychology from the module, outline a key challenge in the area, and how professional psychologists may support in addressing that challenge. Students will need to include a summary of the problem identified, including information on why it’s a problem worth investigating, and outline an appropriate psychology profession that would work in the area to address the problem, including a summary of the profession, with considerations of qualifications, experience, roles and responsibilities, and psychological skills used. The recorded presentation should take 5 minutes.

2: Portfolio weighted 30%
Professional Practice Skills Portfolio
Students will choose one professional psychology roles and reflect on a provided job description. The role must be different to the role chosen for the presentation. The students will reflect on the job description compared with their own current skills. They will consider what skills are needed in the chosen profession based on the job description. They will reflect on what skills they feel they already have and how these were developed, as well as areas they need to develop during their degree and how they would go about doing this. Students will also prepare their cover letter and CV for their chosen job. 1000 words

3: Report weighted 40%
Critique of applied psychology
Students will be given a brief applied claim in an area of psychology from the module (e.g. Peer victimisation has no long term effects on bystanders). They will be asked to explain the key elements of the claim in their own words (e.g. what is bullying, different bullying roles, types) and identify what areas of psychology the claim links to (e.g. educational and developmental psychology), and which professions are likely to work on this area, to demonstrate an understanding of how subdisciplines of psychology could interact. In this section, they will be encouraged to bring in both foundational and contemporary citations. They'll then need to find 2-3 pieces of evidence from the last 5 years that are relevant to the claim, either supporting or challenging it, and expand on these in more depth, summarising what the evidence found, the methods they used, and critique them before coming to a conclusion around how confident they are in the applied claim based on the evidence they have found. They will be asked to include an appendix summarising their search strategy, demonstrating appropriate literature searching skills, including what databases they used, some example search terms, any inclusion/exclusion criteria. They will be provided with key questions to answer and a table to complete with the information above to keep it concise. 1000 words, not including the appendix.

The University undertakes a continuous review of its teaching and research provision to ensure programmes are of a high quality and changes may be made to modules where it is necessary and reasonable to do so. Please be aware that minor changes to modules, such as a change to an individual assessment, can occur up until enrolment, although we endeavour to give you as much notice as possible of any changes. Details about the circumstance in which changes are made to programmes can be found in the Student Agreement, available at: https://www.keele.ac.uk/legalgovernancecompliance/governance/actcharterstatutesordinancesandregulations/studenttermsconditions/

Last Updated: 16 September 2026