‘Watching People do Stuff’: An Analysis of Newly Recruited Students' Accounts of Doing a Psychology Degree

Abstract

Learning and teaching researchers have consistently identified a mismatch between student and tutor expectations and goals. With student diversity increasing along with widening access, student perceptions, misconceptions and attitudes may be just as important to learning and teaching psychology as individual ability and knowledge. We set out in this paper to explore the accounts given by newly recruited psychology students of their beliefs and understandings about the subject of psychology and how psychology students learn. Our findings suggest that, although some of these students' understandings are consistent with the psychology undergraduate programme, there are also beliefs that present challenges and opportunities to tutors and programme designers. At the very least, we suggest, that engagement in an exercise similar to that undertaken in this study may be valuable in enhancing understanding and reshaping the beliefs and expectations of both students and tutors.