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

For academic year: 2025/26 Last Updated: 04 December 2025

PSY-10054 - Exploring and Applying Psychological Topics
Coordinator: Nicola Marsh Room: N/A Tel: +44 1782 7 33317
Lecture Time: See Timetable...
Level: Level 4
Credits: 30
Study Hours: 300
School Office: 01782 733736

Programme/Approved Electives for 2025/26

None

Available as a Free Standing Elective

No

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

n/a

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2025/26

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

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: Assignment 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: Report weighted 40%
Compare and Critique
Students will be given two competing perspectives of applied psychological issues from across the module. The assessment will require students to write a 1000 word reflection on what techniques they would use to evaluate the perspectives and how that would allow them to reach a fair and informed judgment about the relative merits of the two perspectives. Examples of perspectives given to students could be: Approaches to reducing reoffending: punishment vs rehabilitation FBI vs statistical approaches to offender profiling Medicinal vs Purpose in life rehabilitation programmes for drug and alcohol misuse Should listening to music while driving be discouraged? Should lie detectors be admissible in court cases? Social vs medical model of inclusive education

3: 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

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: 04 December 2025