School of Psychology

Following a BSc (Hons)Psychology awarded by the Open University and MSc Research Methods (Staffs.) my PhD, entitled ‘The development of an interpretive theory of mind from middle childhood to adolescence’, was awarded by The University of Birmingham (2002).  I was appointed as a lecturer at Keele in September 2004.  As a developmental psychologist I am interested in age-related changes in our ability to deal with uncertainty in different contexts.  In recent research I have been looking at children’s explicit and implicit responses to advertising.  As a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy I am also interested in the learning and teaching of psychology and I have carried out a number of studies in this area.  I am a member of the Social and Developmental Psychology Group, the Applied Psychology Group and the Research Institute for Life Course Studies.

I have several research interests which all coalesce around the question of how an understanding of the nature of knowledge and beliefs develops in children, adolescents, and adults. I would be interested in hearing from students interested in exploring any of the following topics:

Understanding uncertainty – investigating the underlying basis of children’s and adults’ judgments about the legitimacy of alternative knowledge claims, the justification of beliefs and the certainty of knowledge in different contexts. For example, factors influencing adult reasoning about important socio-scientific issues such as climate change, GM foods, etc.

Children’s understanding of Advertising – the relationship between age and ‘advertising literacy’ in children’s understanding of advertising techniques. Children’s explicit and implicit responses to advertising techniques using different media.

Learning and Teaching in  Psychology - students’ expectations and experiences of university study. Differences and developments in students’ beliefs about knowledge and the learning process.

• Rowley, M., Larkin, D, & Hartley, J. (2009). Halfway there! The expectations and experiences of single and dual-honours psychology students in their second year. Psychology Teaching Review, 15 (2), 38-49.
• Robinson, E.J., Pendle, J.E.C., Rowley, M., Beck, S.R., & McColgan, K.L.T. (2009). Guessing imagined and live chance events: Adults behave like children with live events. British Journal of Psychology, 100 (4), 645-659.
• Rowley, M. (2009). “By the end of the course all students should know…”: Setting coherent aims for the teaching of psychology in school, college and university. Psychology Teaching Review, 14 (2), 51-54.
• Rowley, M., Hartley, J., Betts, L., & Robinson, E. (2008). What makes a research domain more 'scientific'? Undergraduate judgments on Biology and Psychology. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 7 (2), 16-25 .
• Rowley, M., Hartley, J., & Larkin, D. (2008). Learning from experience: The expectations and experiences of first-year undergraduate psychology students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 32 (4), 399-413.
• Rowley, M., & Robinson, E.J. (2007). Understanding the truth about subjectivity. Social Development, 16 (4), 741-757.
• Banerjee, R., Yuill, N., Larson, C., Easton, K., Robinson, E., & Rowley, M. (2007). Children's differentiation between beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion. Developmental Psychology, 43 (5), 1084-1096.
• Robinson, E.J., Rowley, M., Beck, S.R., Carroll, D.J., Apperly, I.A. (2006) Children's sensitivity to their own relative ignorance: Handling of possibilities under conditions of epistemic and physical uncertainty. Child Development, 77, 1642-1655

A full list of my publications can be found here PDF

Currently I am programme director for undergraduate psychology courses at Keele and I teach on the following modules:

Year 1

• PSY10018 Individuals and Society I
• PSY10019 Applied Psychology
• PSY10020 The Psychology of Unusual Phenomena

Year 2

• PSY20012 Developmental and Social Psychology

Year 3

• PSY30061 Dissertation Project
• PSY30067 Individual Differences and Conceptual Issues (module co-leader)
• PSY30031 Thinking about Knowledge and the Mind (module leader)
• PSY30029 Abnormal Psychology

I also teach on the Psychology MSc programme including supervision of MSc dissertations.