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Feeling part of a community of learners has been shown to foster students' engagement and sense of belonging, leading to higher retention and achievement of learning outcomes. The pivot to online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a reappraisal of all aspects of the student experience, including students' capacity and opportunity to engage in meaningful learning communities online. There has been some emergent literature which considers how to facilitate online learning communities in the emergency remote teaching context prompted by COVID-19. However, there is a notable lack of literature which considers how learning communities are defined, understood, and negotiated by students in this unique teaching context. Given how students' perceptions of learning communities contributes to Higher Education policy (e.g. through the National Student Survey), this is important to understand. In the present study (N = 309), we qualitatively investigated students' understanding and definition of the term "learning community" during a time of emergency pivot to online teaching and learning. A reflexive thematic analysis of students' first-hand responses generated three dominant themes: "Feeling connected: Bridging the gap whilst physically distanced", "Feeling included: Visible and valued", and "Feeling together: Mutuality and the shared experience". We discuss the implications for these conceptualisations of an online learning community and suggest ways forward for Higher Education pedagogy.

Psychological literacy is a concept in psychology learning and teaching in Higher Education (HE) that considers how psychology students can intentionally apply psychological knowledge to personal, professional and societal goals. However, despite its prevalence among psychology Higher Education scholars and developers, it is unclear whether psychology students are aware of psychological literacy. In this mixed methods study, psychology undergraduates studying in the UK (N=117) were asked to rate the core eight competencies of psychological literacy, as outlined by the QAA (2019) subject benchmark statement. Overall, we found that students were mostly unaware of the term 'psychological literacy'. However, students did value the attributes that it includes. When asked to define the term, students typically referred to the capacity to understand subject-specific knowledge, with some students discussing the application of this knowledge to everyday life too. Implications for the development of psychological literacy as an emergent pedagogic practice are discussed.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape and disrupt teaching provision in Higher Education, educators have responded with a swift pivot to online teaching for the 2020-2021 academic year. The debate surrounding the pedagogic utility of pre-recorded 'asynchronous' versus live 'synchronous' lecture modality continues to grow among teachers of psychology. We surveyed 279 students from across an undergraduate Psychology programme and investigated their preference for (a)synchronous lecture delivery, perceptions of online lectures, and self-reported lecture-watching behaviours. Overall, our results demonstrated that students enjoy both the structured nature of live lectures and the flexibility of pre-recorded lectures. Live lectures are useful at instilling social connections, but pre-recorded are more useful for understanding subject content. Taken together, students show a strong preference for a hybrid approach to online learning of both live and pre-recorded teaching sessions. However, students highly value enthusiastic, engaging lecturers, which largely outweighs any preference for specific delivery modalities.

In the UK, psychology degrees are designed to equip students with skills such as critical thinking, research methods, and analytical debate. Many of the key skills and subject-specific content that is taught in the first year of a psychology programme is also introduced in A-level and AS-level study of psychology. Therefore, one would expect psychology A-level graduates to be both personally and academically more prepared for the unique challenges of their psychology degree, compared to students who had not studied A-level psychology. Here, we report findings from two mixed-methods studies which suggest that generally, mathematical-based A-level subjects, but not psychology A-level, more effectively prepare students for some of the academic skills required to succeed on a psychology degree. However, studying psychology A-level prepares students well for subject-specific content, which is highly valued in first-year students. We discuss these findings through a lens of constructive alignment, academic preparedness, and successful transitions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a shift to online teaching, which has dramatically affected all facets of the student experience. In this practice report, we reflect on the synchronous delivery of a popular final-year module "Face Perception" in a United Kingdom (UK) psychology undergraduate degree. In the module, students learned via live lectures hosted on the virtual learning environment and content was consolidated interactively using online polls and small group discussions. We collected students' qualitative feedback on the live lecture delivery (n=28), from which we observed three core themes: "technology-enhanced engagement," "logistical barriers," and "togetherness in live lectures." Taken together, this feedback suggests that whilst there are additional technological and logistical challenges that must be navigated in the delivery of "live" online lectures, they can be useful in instilling a sense of togetherness online. This is particularly important, given the threats to student success and engagement that COVID-19 poses.

Research demonstrates the pedagogical value in stressing the 'real world' applicability of subject-specific content in a psychology programme. The move to online teaching prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic has given way to more creative uses of technology to enhance the student experience. In this paper, we demonstrate the value in applied approaches to teaching psychology content, in a way that acknowledges and responds to students' lived experiences. We share a case study of an online seminar, in which students first reflect on their social connections in an online context, before participating in a mock interactive experiment that demonstrates the theory of proximity and familiarity in developing interpersonal relationships. The use of creative, interactive methods to connect social psychology theory to students' lived experiences of learning during COVID-19 may be a useful avenue for future teaching.

Introduction: "Psychological literacy" is a pedagogic approach that promotes the application of psychology knowledge to address societal, ethical, and cultural problems. Statement of the Problem: Psychological literacy is considered to be a core outcome of a psychology undergraduate degree, and scholars have called for more "psychologically literate" forms of summative assessment to reflect this. Literature Review: Throughout the pedagogic literature, scientific blogs have been proposed as a form of assessment that encourages reflection, creative thinking, and perspective taking. Teaching Implications: Here, we discuss the utility of blog writing as a summative assessment which fosters psychological literacy by encouraging students to engage with the interplay between subject knowledge and real-world applications. Conclusion: We reflect upon our experiences of embedding of scientific blogs in two final-year modules at a UK university and offer a commentary in the context of psychological literacy undergraduate outcomes.

A feminist perspective is not only compatible with the history, objectives, and emphases of social psychology, but necessary for its continued vitality' (Lott, 1991, p.505). Social psychology is a core component of the British Psychological Society accreditation of psychology programmes. Typically, the teaching of social psychology relies upon well-established, dominant approaches. However, in recent years, critical, community, and feminist psychologists have provided alternative ways of thinking about the methods, research questions, and epistemological approaches of mainstream social psychology. Feminist social psychology is ultimately concerned with three core aims: (1) the inclusion of women and girls, (2) advocating for diverse, critical perspectives, and (3) promoting equality. I encourage students to think critically about their core social psychology teaching, to promote psychological literacy (i.e. application of content to solving societal problems; Pownall et al., 2021, 2022).

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes to the student experience. Thus, there is a need to centre students' lived experiences in pedagogical research which explores the effects of the pandemic on student life. The current study aimed to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted undergraduate students, with a focus on students' educational experiences, social interactions, and mental wellbeing. Open-ended questionnaires were disseminated to undergraduate students across the UK (N = 53). A student-centred reflexive thematic analysis identified four dominant themes that each relate to students' lived experiences of Higher Education during COVID-19. These were: "variations in motivation" during the pandemic, the "importance of personal connection," a "disconnect between university and the student," and students' "development through adversity." These themes broadly demonstrate the variability in student experiences during the pandemic and, crucially, highlight the need for future education provision to centre personal connections, including between students and their institutions. Lack of interaction with staff and peers, as well as barriers to support, led to feelings of detachment from university. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

National student surveys reveal that feedback is an aspect of the education experience with which students are less satisfied. One method to increase student engagement with their written feedback and to improve feedback literacy is promotion of critical self-reflection on the feedback content. We describe two interventions aimed at improving students' reflective practices with their feedback. In a School of Psychology at a UK research-intensive university, we designed, implemented and evaluated two interventions to improve students' reflection on, and engagement with, their feedback. The first intervention was a feedback seminar, which comprised a modified version of the Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit, adapted for our context and online delivery. The second intervention was an interactive assessment coversheet that was designed to promote self-reflection and dialogical feedback practices between student and marker. We provide a summary of the development of these interventions and share evaluations of both components. Overall, our evaluation demonstrated that these interventions can be a useful opportunity for students to engage with their feedback practices and develop feedback literacy. However, variability in student experiences and inconsistencies across markers, despite these interventions, were barriers to success. We contextualise this with our own reflections and end with recommendations for educators.

Purpose: An important facet of student's sense of belonging is students' relationships with, and time spent in, the university campus. The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion that access to campus "green space", including parks, fields and gardens, may bolster students' sense of belonging, improve well-being feelings and promote place attachment. Design/methodology/approach: The authors surveyed students in different locations (including three green and one non-green campus spaces) across a large UK campus-based Northern institution. 146 students participated in the study in one of the four campus locations. The authors investigated how being in green spaces on campus may impact students' sense of belonging, well-being and place attachment. The authors also qualitatively explored students' perceptions of campus spaces through Ahn's (2017) 10 Words Question measure. Findings: Analyses demonstrate that students surveyed in green spaces reported significantly more positive sense of belonging, compared to students surveyed in non-green campus spaces. Campus location did not impact well-being, however. Students associated green spaces on campus with "calm", "positive emotion" and "nature" words and non-green spaces with "busy", "social" and "students". Practical implications: Taken together, the results of this paper suggest that access to green spaces can be important for campus sense of belonging. Thus, efforts should be made to ensure the sustainability of these important spaces across university campuses. Originality/value: This study crucially examines how occupying green spaces on university campuses may impact students' feelings of belongingness. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that uses field-based methods to understand students' feelings whilst occupying green spaces.

In recent years, the wellbeing of students and staff in Higher Education has received increased attention in pedagogical research. However, the experiences of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), or PhD researchers who teach alongside their doctoral studies, are notably absent from this literature. In this mixed-methods study, we examined predictors of GTA's wellbeing in UK institutions. This demonstrated that greater perceived agency and lower levels of over-commitment predicted higher wellbeing. Other variables, including social identity, role pride, work/life balance, effort-reward imbalance, and perceived effectiveness of teaching, did not predict wellbeing. We also qualitatively examined the identity management practices of GTAs, using a brief story completion task. A reflexive thematic analysis generated two dominant themes (1), the 'paradox of credibility', whereby GTAs reported grappling with a concern to be perceived as credible and worthy of teaching whilst also managing student expectations about their own knowledge, and (2) GTAs' desire to use their staff-student role to engage in 'approachability and advocacy' with and for students. We end with a set of recommendations for Higher Education Institutions that employ GTAs, informed by first-hand accounts of lived experiences.

Feeling part of a community of learners has been shown to foster students' engagement and sense of belonging, leading to higher retention and achievement of learning outcomes. The pivot to online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a reappraisal of all aspects of the student experience, including students' capacity and opportunity to engage in meaningful learning communities online. There has been some emergent literature which considers how to facilitate online learning communities in the emergency remote teaching context prompted by COVID-19. However, there is a notable lack of literature which considers how learning communities are defined, understood, and negotiated by students in this unique teaching context. Given how students' perceptions of learning communities contributes to Higher Education policy (e.g. through the National Student Survey), this is important to understand. In the present study (N = 309), we qualitatively investigated students' understanding and definition of the term 'learning community' during a time of emergency pivot to online teaching and learning. A reflexive thematic analysis of students' first-hand responses generated three dominant themes: 'Feeling connected: Bridging the gap whilst physically distanced', 'Feeling included: Visible and valued', and 'Feeling together: Mutuality and the shared experience'. We discuss the implications for these conceptualisations of an online learning community and suggest ways forward for Higher Education pedagogy., Author(s): Lucy Prodgers [sup.1] , Elizabeth Travis [sup.1] , Madeleine Pownall [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.9909.9, 0000 0004 1936 8403, School of Psychology, University of Leeds, , 4 Lifton Place, [...]

Over recent years, psychology has become increasingly concerned with reproducibility and replicability of research findings (Munafò et al., 2017). One method of ensuring that research is hypothesis driven, as opposed to data driven, is the process of publicly pre-registering a study's hypotheses, data analysis plan, and procedure prior to data collection (Nosek et al., 2018). This paper discusses the potential benefits of introducing pre-registration to the undergraduate dissertation. The utility of pre-registration as a pedagogic practice within dissertation supervision is also critically appraised, with reference to open science literature. Here, it is proposed that encouraging pre-registration of undergraduate dissertation work may alleviate some pedagogic challenges, such as statistics anxiety, questionable research practices, and research clarity and structure. Perceived barriers, such as time and resource constraints, are also discussed.

As coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) continues to disrupt pretertiary education provision and examinations in the United Kingdom, urgent consideration must be given to how best to support the 2021-2022 cohort of incoming undergraduate students to higher education. In this paper, we draw upon the "Five Sense of Student Success" model to highlight five key evidence-based, psychology-informed considerations that higher education educators should be attentive to when preparing for the next academic year. These include the challenge in helping students to reacclimatize to academic work following a period of prolonged educational disruption, supporting students to access the "hidden curriculum" of higher education, negotiating mental health consequences of COVID-19, and remaining sensitive to inequalities of educational provision that students have experienced as a result of COVID-19. We provide evidence-based, psychology-informed recommendations to each of these considerations.

Background: Student transition to university can be a challenging time. Research suggests that providing space for student reflection and goal setting may facilitate this period of transition. Objective: I describe the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project, in which psychology students were invited to write postcards to their future selves. In the postcards, students were encouraged to reflect upon their goals and plans for their psychology degree. Method: I ran the Postcard Project as part of an induction program of a BSc Psychology undergraduate cohort. One hundred and sixty-six undergraduate psychology students completed postcards. Results: In my reading of the postcards and experiences of running the session, students appeared to use the postcard project as (1) a motivational tool, which prompted thinking about future goals, (2) a reflective device, which encouraged reflecting upon previous experiences, (3) and a social experience, which brought students together in unique ways. Conclusion: Facilitating students' writing postcards to their future self may foster social connections and provide educators with richer insights into the student experience. Teaching Implications: I provide tips for conducting this project in other institutions and encourage educators to consider using the Postcard to my Graduating Self Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authentic assessments are designed to evaluate knowledge and skills that are relevant for students' life beyond university, emphasising practical, applied skills. They offer an alternative to assessments that don't explicitly foster transferability of skills. The present study examined undergraduate student perceptions of authentic and traditional assessments (N = 150). We used a qualitative story completion methodology to examine three domains: student's emotional responses to authentic and traditional assessment forms, student's perceptions of how different assessment types may benefit their employability, and student's preferences for pedagogical support with authentic assessments. A qualitative content analysis revealed students generally perceive authentic, novel assessments to be exciting, motivating and inspirational; however, this was accompanied by feelings of uncertainty and unfamiliarity. More traditional assessments (e.g. essays and multiple-choice-question examinations) elicited feelings of comfort and preparedness, but students also felt worried, bored and unexcited by these assessments. Students appreciated creative freedom when lecturers set traditional assessments but would like more consideration of their feelings and need for support in authentic assessments. Hence, we argue, when advocating for authentic assessment, there is a balance to be struck between innovation and challenge, ensuring sufficient support for student's psychological safety and feelings of comfort. Implications for practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversations about the internationalization of psychological sciences have occurred over a few decades with very little progress. Previous work shows up to 95% of participants in the studies published in mainstream journals are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic nations. Similarly, a large proportion of authors are based in North America. This imbalance is well-documented across a range of subfields in psychology, yet the specific steps and best practices to bridge publication and data gaps across world regions are still unclear. To address this issue, we conducted a hackathon at the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science 2021 conference to develop guidelines to improve international representation of authors and participants, adapted for various stakeholders in the production of psychological knowledge. Based on this hackathon, we discuss specific guidelines and practices that funding bodies, academic institutions, professional academic societies, journal editors and reviewers, and researchers should engage with to ensure psychology is the scientific discipline of human behavior and cognition across the world. These recommendations will help us develop a more valid and fairer science of human sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study aimed to explore how pregnant women and new mothers self-report changes to their mood and memory during pregnancy. Researchers have investigated the various changes that women report throughout their pregnancy. Despite this evidence base, there is a notable lack of studies that take a qualitative approach to understanding how pregnant women and women in the postpartum period experience memory and mood changes through their pregnancy. The present study involved a qualitative content analysis of women's first-hand accounts. Of the 423 participants who responded, 118 participants provided textual responses to questions about their memory and 288 participants provided textual responses to questions about their mood. Data were collected online via a free-text survey and analysed using both deductive inductive open coding. A qualitative content analysis generated four overall categories: two typologies of self-reported memory changes in pregnancy ('short-term memory lapses' and 'chronic memory fog') and two typologies of self-reported mood changes ('mood instability and constant change' and 'low mood and parenting anxiety'). These typologies represent unique profiles of the memory and mood changes that women experience during pregnancy and serve to accompany and expand the quantitative literature, which documents the changes women experience during pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a focus in social psychology on efforts to improve the robustness, rigour, transparency and openness of psychological research. This has led to a plethora of new tools, practices and initiatives that each aim to combat questionable research practices and improve the credibility of social psychological scholarship. However, the majority of these efforts derive from quantitative, deductive, hypothesis‐testing methodologies, and there has been a notable lack of in‐depth exploration about what the tools, practices and values may mean for research that uses qualitative methodologies. Here, we introduce a Special Section of BJSP: Open Science, Qualitative Methods and Social Psychology: Possibilities and Tensions. The authors critically discuss a range of issues, including authorship, data sharing and broader research practices. Taken together, these papers urge the discipline to carefully consider the ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings of efforts to improve psychological science, and advocate for a critical appreciation of how mainstream open science discourse may (or may not) be compatible with the goals of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes to the student experience. Thus, there is a need to centre students' lived experiences in pedagogical research which explores the effects of the pandemic on student life. The current study aimed to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted undergraduate students, with a focus on students' educational experiences, social interactions, and mental wellbeing. Open-ended questionnaires were disseminated to undergraduate students across the UK (N = 53). A student-centred reflexive thematic analysis identified four dominant themes that each relate to students' lived experiences of Higher Education during COVID-19. These were: variations in motivation during the pandemic, the importance of personal connection, a disconnect between university and the student, and students' development through adversity. These themes broadly demonstrate the variability in student experiences during the pandemic and, crucially, highlight the need for future education provision to centre personal connections, including between students and their institutions. Lack of interaction with staff and peers, as well as barriers to support, led to feelings of detachment from university. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]