Blog
Here you will find blog posts by EFPTA members on various issues relevant to psychology education in high schools in Europe. You are invited to contribute! Please contact us at info@efpta.org with your draft or idea for a blog post. Help is available with English translation if needed.
Scroll further down to see the archive of EFPTA's Annual Newsletters, which this blog page now replaces, as we will no longer produce an Annual Newsletter - instead, we hope that this new blog page will provide an opportunity for more members to contribute to EFPTA activities! That said, we are keeping the archive here as there is a wealth of information in these old Newsletters, much of it still highly relevant today.
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May 2024 - Lyndsey Hayes, psychology teacher in England, writes: How the psychology teachers’ association and the psychologists’ association support me and my students in the UK
I joined the Association for the Teaching of Psychology (ATP), UK in December 2014 and was honoured to become a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society (the UK’s national psychologists’ association) in September 2020. My students and I have benefitted from my membership of these communities in many ways:
Firstly, I have formed close friendships and received unconditional support from many psychology teachers across the UK and Europe (including EFPTA members-you know who you are!) since attending my first ATP conference at the University of Lancaster in 2015. This support has been invaluable to me as I have often been working as a psychology department of one! Not only were the ATP conference workshops useful for refreshing my subject knowledge but it is great to mix with like-minded people who are never too busy to answer technical questions on topics, such as ‘how do I help students who are less confident in maths to understand inferential statistics?’
I have also had the rewarding experience of being a member of the ATP committee since July 2023, as well as editing the “ATP Today” magazine in February 2024 - it has been so inspiring to read articles and ideas from other students and teachers about the world of psychology, which I have then explored with my students! This experience has also given my students the unique opportunity to improve their subject skills and university application statement by writing for the ATP magazine!
Secondly, I was honoured to be nominated as ATP Representative on the BPS’ dedicated teaching committee in December 2023. During this time, we have worked together to break down barriers between the university and pre-university teaching communities. For example, the committee launched the Pre-tertiary Education Psychology Teacher of the Year award in October 2023 to celebrate the work of pre-university teachers in schools. Moreover, my colleagues, Deb Gajic and Helene Ansell, who are both former ATP committee members, collated resources from psychology teachers and collaborated with colleagues at the BPS to produce the excellent and popular online resource, called the ‘Teacher’s Toolkit’. (https://shorturl.at/bfsT7 )
The materials are free to access and are intended to be useful whatever specific psychology course students are following. These resources have significantly contributed to my excellent track record of student outcomes and have greatly supported my students in writing effective applications to their chosen universities. They particularly praised the sections on careers and writing personal statements. We have also found the BPS online events such as the "Psychology Careers Festival" and “Meet the psychologist” useful for making their university choices and tailoring their university applications to their chosen courses (in many cases, psychology).
Finally, my students and I have greatly enjoyed discussing ways of using the weekly BPS Research Digest and monthly articles in the BPS magazine, “The Psychologist” to boost their critical thinking skills and marks for longer essays in their final examinations!
Lyndsey Hayes, CPsychol, is a Psychology Teacher at LSI Independent College, London, and Westminster Tutors, Independent Sixth Form College, London
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Inaugural EFPTA Blog!
Harriet Ennis, Blog Editor
April, 2024
Feeling empowered by EFPTA
In November 2023 I had the opportunity to join the European Federation of Psychology Teachers’ Associations (EFPTA) as a Board member, representing the ATP (England & Wales) and attending the Board meeting in Edinburgh. What a fascinating experience! I can’t wait to go to the EFPTA Conference in Helsinki in April 2024 and find out much more about psychology teaching all over Europe.
What stands out from my experience meeting colleagues from across Europe?
Well, I already believe the following: All young people would benefit from psychology teaching throughout their education, from specialist educators, and I think it a shame that many leave school without gaining the valuable knowledge, insights and skills, which studying psychology would bring to their lives. Not to mention the effect this would have on society and humanity as a whole! If you are still reading - I am aware that I will most likely be ‘preaching to the choir’ at this point…
Anyway, like you, I am so busy day-to-day (in my case teaching Psychology A-level and Biology and Personal Health and Social Education) and I can’t tackle this problem by myself. However, meeting educators from EFPTA from many different countries and comparing their teaching systems has left me feeling empowered. What might we do about adding to psychology teaching throughout our curricula, as a collective?
It's important to gather and share up-to-date information about what goes on in different countries in relation to how psychology is taught, discover similarities and differences, share models of best practice and personal experiences of teaching psychology, and learn from each other. EFPTA does this in various ways: each member country has a page on the EFPTA website, and at the Helsinki conference Board members will display posters about psychology teaching in their countries.
Now, this new blog page – of which I am the Editor - offers great opportunities for such sharing: I call on you to write a short blog about your own observations, your country’s ‘story’ regarding psychology teaching and your own teachers’ associations.
Harriet Ennis
Head of Psychology, Bootham School, York, UK
EFPTA Newsletter 2021-22
Find a wealth of news and reports in the 2021-22 Newsletter! Read about the keynotes and workshops at the EFPTA 2021 conference - which was very successful in spite of being fully online - and the EFPTA webinars in 2021 and 2022. There are also reports from the ATP 2021 international conference - which went ahead in person! You will find updates from national associations of psychology teachers, and other items of interest to everyone involved in psychology education.
EFPTA Newsletter 2018
Take a look at our 2018 Newsletter! Read reports from our Reykjavík conference which took place in April 2018; as well as two great keynotes there were workshops on many aspects of psychology teaching - students' experiences, ethics, teachers' CPD, role of psychology in career choices, to name just a few. You will also find interesting articles by contributors from Norway and Sweden, shedding new light on psychology teaching in those countries.
October 2016
EFPTA Newsletter 2016 is published! Enjoy the photos and reports from the Prague 2016 conference, which was attended by delegates from a record 14 countries. Thanks to everyone who wrote reports on the many workshops as well as the Keynotes. Read the update from the President too, to get a good overview of recent EFPTA activities.
September 2014
What an exciting year 2013-14 has been for EFPTA! Read all about the 10th Anniversary conference in April in Berlin, attended by around 100 psychology teachers and students from 10 European countries. You’ll also find a report of EFPTA’s contribution to the prestigious ICAP conference in Paris, in July, and news of new links with the APA’s group for high school psychology teachers in the USA.
September 2013
What's been happening in psychology education across Europe in 2013? Read reports from Member countries, including new Members .....Bratislava November 2013..... planning for Berlin Conference 2014...... Member countries' events ....EFPA and Paris 2014...
September 2012
EFPTA Copenhagen Conference, April 2012 - full reports....EFPTA is represented on the new Board of Educational Affairs at EFPA....EFPTA research with psychology students and teachers is presented in several countries....psychology teachers from many countries attend the ATP Conference in England, July 2012... find out about all of EFPTA's exciting activities during 2011-12!
November 2011
EFPTA at the European Parliament.... A Europe-wide collaborative student project.... EFPTA members at the European Congress of Psychology in Istanbul, June 2011..... Dortmund Spring School, March 2011, for European psychology students.... As you can see, EFPTA has been very busy in 2011 - read all about these activities, and more besides, in the Newsletter.
September 2010
In Bratislava, Slovakia in April 2010 the European Federation of Psychology Teachers' Association (EFPTA) held a conference under the name Teaching Psychology in Europe Beyond University: Sharing good practice, learn from experts!
Around 60 participants were registered from countries all over Europe, from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, Germany, England, Scotland, Spain, Holland, Austria, Finland, Denmark and Iceland.
September 2009
This issue of the EFPTA's Newsletter focuses on the ATPS/EFPTA conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, 17-18th of April 2009. There we had many interesting lectures and presentations and you can read brief summaries of them in the following pages. Here is also an article about the influence of psychosocial well-being on school drop-out, written by the new president of EFPTA, Hans Reijnierse.
January 2009
This issue of the EFPTA's Newsletter focuses on the conference held in Helsinki, Finland, 7-8th of November 2008. Here you can read summaries of the various lectures, results from our workshop and an account of our visit to the International school of Tikkurila.
September 2008
This issue of the Newsletter focuses on the seminar held in Cardiff, Wales, in April 2008, bringing summaries of the various lectures, but first Jari, the president of EFPTA outlines the history of EFPTA and brings his vision of its future.
January 2008
This issue of the Newsletter focuses on the conference held in Bologna, Italy, in November 9-11 2007, bringing summaries of the various lectures. First Jari, President of EFPTA, writes about the new constitution of EFPTA, secondly Dorothy Coombs, Vice President of EFPTA, also gives information about the new constitution and the
Bologna conference, and thirdly there is a notice by Joe Cocker about the Cardiff seminar in April 2008.
September 2007
This issue of the Newsletter focuses on the conference held in Reykjavik, Iceland, in April 2007, bringing summaries and excerpts of the various lectures. One special theme was Adolescence.
January 2007
This issue of EFPTA's Newsletter has two different focuses: the seminar held in Dortmund in November 2006 and interviews with psychology teachers across Europe about their work situation.