We often hold a Sixth Form Psychology Conference, in collaboration with Oxford Brookes University. This is a lovely event for the students and staff, and last summer’s conference took place in the brand new John Henry Brookes building at Headington Campus. Over 100 students and their teachers from eight local schools took part in presentations, talks and workshops by the Psychologists/Researchers at Oxford Brookes outlining their current research.
This is a very inspiring opportunity for the Sixth Form Students to hear about the sort of work that researchers do in an applied way, as well as see what students just a few years older than themselves are involved in. One of the Third Year students talked about his research project in “Using Visual Illusions to Examine the Processing of Speech”; a fascinating presentation and award winning research study linking nicely to what we are learning in lessons and extra-curricular activities. We also attended an interesting workshop on “Fair-weather friends, foul-weather friends and bullying” where students got a chance to actively interact and recap their knowledge in the field of Social Psychology and the Social Identification Theory and Meta Contrast Principle. Towards the end of the day, the students attended a session on “Speak your mind: the Psychology of Language”, where they looked at the different skills involved in communication and why acquiring spoken and written langue can sometimes be difficult. Professor Harris gave a very captivating and interesting plenary session in her research into helping deaf children read.