Year 12 visit Marwell Zoo

After a week of torrential rain, we were lucky enough to have a dry day for our visit to Marwell Zoo. The staff at the zoo reported the lack of animal activity to study earlier in the week, but the animals were active and interesting for us. The students were fantastic and carried out some great studies. One Year 12 student provided the following report:

‘On the Marwell trip I learnt a lot about the observational techniques that are part of our psychology course. I bettered my understanding of conducting an observation through actually doing it. I learnt more about fully operationalizing behavioural categories to investigate natural behaviour and the importance of conducting pilot studies. As a group we worked together to not only collect the data, but to analyse, present and evaluate it as well, reflecting how research is carried out in psychology. I think this trip has helped me evaluate experiments in psychology and understand their strengths and limitations. I also really enjoyed learning about how psychological theory helps in how they keep their animals in the zoo. I found it really interesting in how they use operant and classical conditioning to train their tigers for vaccinations.’

Ms T Marchant, Teacher of Psychology