Looking for ready-to-use resources that will save you hours of preparation time? Our extensive collection of FREE worksheets covers every Content, Context, and Concept in the course and we’ve even included the Research Methods and Data Analysis and Interpretation topics.
What makes these worksheets special?
Each worksheet is written to provide complete coverage of its topic. Students will find clear definitions, detailed explanations, and thoughtful discussions that build genuine understanding. But we don’t stop at theory, every worksheet includes engaging questions that reinforce learning and encourage critical thinking.
Flexibility for your teaching
Here’s the game-changer: these worksheets are provided as Word documents, not PDFs. This means you can download them and customize them to perfectly suit your teaching style, your students’ needs, and your specific classroom situations. Edit questions, add examples relevant to your students’ experiences, or adjust the difficulty level: the choice is yours. But they’re ready to use without any edits.
Comprehensive coverage
With one (and often two) worksheets available for every topic, you’ll have everything you need to support student learning throughout the course. From Biological to Sociocultural, from Research Design to Statistical Analysis… it’s all here.
Download your FREE worksheets today and spend less time creating materials and more time enjoying yourteaching.
Here’s a question that’s been bouncing around: ‘What do we mean when we say psychology is conceptual?’
It sounds like academic jargon, I know. But stick with me, because this idea gets right to the heart of what makes psychology such a fascinating and essentially human field.
What ‘conceptual’ means
When we say psychology is conceptual, we’re pointing to something fundamental: the things psychologists study aren’t sitting out there in nature waiting to be discovered, like gold deposits or new species of beetle.
Think about it. ‘Memory’, ‘aggression’, ‘intelligence’, ‘attachment’, ‘depression’… these are all human-created concepts. We invented them. We drew the boundaries. We decided what counts as ‘aggression’ versus ‘assertiveness’, where ‘normal anxiety’ ends and ‘anxiety disorder’ begins, and what behaviors signal ‘secure attachment’.
These aren’t discoveries of pre-existing, naturally occuring things. They’re useful ways we’ve carved up the messy, continuous reality of human behavior.
Concepts change with time and culture
Here’s where it gets interesting. If psychological concepts were natural features, fixed features of reality, they’d be universal and unchanging. And of course, they’re not.
The concept of ADHD didn’t exist 100 years ago. ‘Hysteria’ was once a major diagnostic category; now it’s vanished from our textbooks. Different cultures conceptualize mental states in different ways. Some languages don’t even have a word that maps onto our concept of ‘depression’.
Our psychological concepts are also theory-laden. When we talk about ‘working memory’, we’re not just describing something neutral, we’re buying into a particular model of how cognition works. When Freudians spoke of ‘ego defence mechanisms’, they were smuggling in a whole theoretical framework.
So what’s the alternative?
If psychology is conceptual, what would it look like if it weren’t?
The alternative would be studying human behavior and experience as purely physical or biological phenomena. We’d focus only on directly measurable, observer-independent entities: neurons firing, neurotransmitter concentrations, brain structures, hormone levels, reaction times, genetic markers…
This would be neuroscience or physiology: concrete, physical, and measurable.
The problem is…
The problem is that most of what makes us human: love, identity, grief, creativity, the search for meaning…, these can’t be fully captured by purely physical descriptions.
You could give me a complete neural map of everything happening in someone’s brain during grief. Every synapse, every chemical cascade, every pattern of activation. And yet that description wouldn’t capture what grief is as a human experience. It wouldn’t tell you what it means to lose someone you love.
Living in the tension
This is why psychology occupies such uncomfortable territory. It sits between the natural sciences, which study observer-independent physical phenomena, and the human sciences, which study meaning-laden, conceptual phenomena.
Psychology is both at once. It studies real biological processes and culturally-situated concepts. It measures objective behaviors and interprets subjective meanings. It discovers and constructs.
This creates unique methodological and philosophical challenges. But it’s also what makes psychology interesting. We’re not just measuring things; we’re constantly negotiating what those things even are.
And that’s not a weakness. It’s the nature of studying something as complex, dynamic, and meaning-soaked as human experience.
What do you think? Does recognizing psychology as conceptual make it less scientific or does it make it more honest about what science of the human mind can actually be?
One of the quiet revolutions in teaching IB Psychology is this: our students no longer need to memorise outlines of 200 or more studies, each with two strengths and two limitations. That’s worth celebrating. It makes our subject lighter, more engaging, and far more relevant. Students can now focus on developing critical thinking, connecting concepts, and applying their knowledge rather than playing flashcard games with endless lists of studies.
But let’s not forget: research is the scientific foundation of psychology.
Would you teach ethics in psychology without telling your students about Little Albert and the white rat, Zimbardo’s appalling Stanford Prison Study, or Milgram’s not-so-appalling obedience experiments? Of course not. These are the stories that not only illustrate concepts but also bring to life the ethical debates that shape our subject.
Would we introduce social identity theory without Sherif’s Robbers Cave study? Could we possibly explain observational learning without Albert Bandura’s endlessly punched Bobo doll? And when we turn to methods, what better way to anchor quasi-experiments and neuroplasticity than Eleanor Maguire’s London taxi drivers, or to illuminate the case study method than Henri Molaison, whose memory loss is legendary?
The point is simple: research gives psychology its credibility.
Yes, assessment criteria don’t explicitly require studies by name. Students aren’t graded on whether they remember that it was 22 boys in Sherif’s camp or 72 children in Bandura’s playroom. But to teach any of the IB Psychology concepts with integrity, we must draw upon the research that produced them. Without robust studies and their conclusions, our discipline risks floating away into abstraction, detached from the science that grounds it.
So let’s celebrate freedom from rote memorisation, but let’s also celebrate the research itself. Studies are not an add-on; they are the very evidence that makes psychology worth studying.
Whether you’re in your very first year of teaching IBDP Psychology or your thirtieth, in some ways it doesn’t matter. You’re standing in front of a new set of students. Fresh faces, fresh questions, and—if we’re honest—fresh challenges.
Same but different.
Maybe you’re teaching in the same school you once sat in as a student yourself, or maybe you’re on the other side of the globe—Morocco, Mauritius, Oman, Albania. Again, that’s not really the point. Because teaching, at its heart, is about guiding and supporting your students, wherever you happen to be.
Yes, I know… the year will kick off with a few staff meetings. Some will be useful. Others… well, let’s just say “less so.” If you find yourself in one of those, you could quietly plan a lesson or even play a quick game of chess from the back row. (Not that I’m encouraging mischief, of course.)
Your first lessons aren’t about ploughing through the syllabus—they’re about setting the tone. Letting students (and their parents) know they’re in safe, well-prepared hands.
You might kick off with an introduction to the experimental method—perhaps demonstrating the Stroop Effect to show how something as simple as reading a word can become surprisingly tricky when colour and meaning clash.
Or you might spark a discussion about human behaviour:
Why are some people passionately in favour of immigration to the UK, while others are equally passionately opposed?
Why do some students show up every single day, while others are unfazed by missing lessons?
Why are some people shy while others brim with confidence?
Or perhaps you want to open with ethical considerations—just a quick, engaging chat about Zimbardo’s prison study or Watson and Rayner’s famous “Little Albert” experiment. You could even take your students into the playground to observe younger children for prosocial behaviours—psychology in action from day one.
Whatever you choose, choose something that excites you. That enthusiasm is contagious.
And, you know, take very good care of yourself.
So here’s to the start of your year—new students, new questions, new discoveries. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your teaching style, we’re wishing you all the very best.
At this stage of the two-year IB Diploma course, many teachers are wondering about their students’ final grades, perhaps trying to reconcile what they considered a near-perfect mock exam result and a near-perfect Internal Assessment result with the middley grade that the student eventually received following the actual exam session. Some teachers question their ability to interpret the Subject Guide and the assessment criteria descriptors, but they shouldn’t, especially if they’ve put time and effort into reading and understanding the Guide, attending training workshops and engaging with their MyIB subject community.
During the exam session, the students’ exam scripts are sent to the markers via a scanning centre. The students’ answer papers are scanned and uploaded to the online marking database. Markers, who have received mark schemes and undergone training then access the database and read/mark the exam scripts. They do this quickly to meet deadlines and quotas.
About every 10th exam script is called a ‘seed’; it has already been marked, and the marker’s marks are compared with the existing marks. If the marker’s marks are within an acceptable tolerance range, the marker continues to access the database of exam scripts. If the marker’s marks are too different from the seed’s marks, the marker is diverted for more training, and may return to the database of scripts if/when their marking becomes more accurate/aligned with those of the chief marker (sounds Orwellian, right?)
Each marker is assigned to mark only Paper 1, 2 or 3.
Now the computer takes over. The marker’s marks are moderated to be consistent with the chief marker’s marks. This is an attempt to standardise the marker’s marks through the whole marking session.
A combination of people and computers confirm the mark boundaries. People will pull out papers on the boundaries, read answers and ask if this set of answers is consistent with the Grade 7, 6, 5, etc. descriptors. The computer then adjusts grades to ensure a certain percentage of students achieve a 7, 6, 5… This is called scaling. It can be controversial, especially when assessment is supposedly done with respect to assessment criteria descriptors which are objective and in theory are either achieved or not achieved. Scaling though protects against grade inflation, which can occur when teachers and students learn what is required to achieve a 7 as each set of results occurs, a greater % students achieving the higher grades.
The internal assessment is marked by teachers and the grades for each of the 4 criteria are entered into IBIS. IBIS then selects a sample of high, middle and low scoring IAs and the DPC uploads the digital copy of the selected sample which are then check marked by an experienced and trained/supported moderator. This moderator enters a grade for each criterion and the computer software then adjusts the teacher’s full set of results (not just the sample IAs’ results)… for exam Criterion A marks may be moderated up by a small percentage and Criterion C grades might be moderated downwards by a lot and Criteria B and D may not change. These moderations are applied to a school’s full cohort, pro rata, i.e. taking into account the unmoderated marks awarded by the teacher. It’s an odd procedure based on dubious logic. (It’s really odd when a moderator’s own students’ IA marks are moderated by a different moderator and the marks go down by a lot.)
These moderated marks are then scaled to match an expected % of grades. And yes, that’s also contrary to the philosophy of criteria-based assessment.
There’s a lot to like about this assessment system. Human markers’ grades are checked frequently to ensure they match the chief marker’s standard for each component (Papers 1, 2, 3, and the IA). The papers at the grade boundaries are checked against the grade descriptors. IA moderators’ marks are moderated by senior moderators…, and then the computer applies grade boundary checks and scales marks to meet grade distribution expectations.
And when grades are received students can submit an EUR – an enquiry upon results at several levels… check the component marks were correctly calculated, a re-mark of papers or even the IA which is problematic to understand because a student excluded from the sample may have to find and then submit their IA even if it was not one of the uploaded sample of IAs selected for moderation. That doesn’t bear thinking about for too long though. If the student’s grade (not mark) changes after an EUR the (hefty) fee is refunded, but if not, not, so… that doesn’t bear thinking about for too long either.
The big question that many teachers ask is, ‘Why are the actual grades not as good as the grades I think their students should get?’
We tend to mark our students higher than real examiners because we tend to give our students ‘benefit of the doubt’ marks.
Markers are less patient with difficult-to-read handwriting, while teachers come to learn the students’ handwriting.
Markschemes tend to be written with more detail than the subject guide’s assessment descriptors.
Teachers sometimes base marking on ‘knowledge’ gathered from unofficial, for-profit subscription-based sites and really unofficial sources such as Facebook groups. Psychology has one FB group that is well known for distributing incorrect information – and now you’ve now been warned!
Scaling. It’s quite likely that experienced teachers’ marks are similar to the actual marks, but after papers and IAs have been marked/moderated, the marks are scaled so that the grades are distributed as per IB’s grade distribution ‘formula’ for each subject. The difference (and the cause of so much angst) is likely due to the scaling factor.
In the end though, the grades are just one pillar of what students, teachers and schools achieve. In many ways, that final grade can be distorted, for example, which subjects were chosen to construct the student’s Diploma, which subjects were done at HL and SL, was Language B really a student’s second language or a second first language, how much support was given with the IAs, EE, TOK assessments, how much time went into CAS, etc. What we do know is that most IB Diploma students develop critical thinking skills, they develop an appreciation for internationalism and they appreciate the value of creativity, activity and service. And they all develop in alignment worth the Learner Profile to some extent – becoming better communicators, more open-minded, more thoughtful, more caring… and the IB doesn’t scale these (probably). So… don’t stress too much about the number on the results page. Our students and the teachers’ efforts will always be more than that Diploma score.
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Newsflash: Estonia’s Minister of Education and Research, Kristina Kallas, emphasized Estonia’s proactive and open approach to digital tools in education during a speech at the Education World Forum in London. Unlike many European countries that are cautious about screen time and mobile phone use in schools, Estonia encourages the use of smartphones for learning. Schools set their own rules, and students—particularly those aged 16 and up who are eligible to vote online—are expected to use their phones as tools for both civic participation and education. Kallas notes the absence of problems related to mobile use, crediting Estonia’s digitally fluent society and schools’ autonomy.
Kallas highlighted Estonia’s long-standing digital investment, starting with the 1997 Tiigrihüpe (Tiger Leap) programme, which brought internet access to all schools. Now, the country is embracing AI and smartphone technology as the next evolution in education. Kallas predicts the decline of traditional homework essays and rote learning, pushing instead for a focus on oral assessment and the development of high-level cognitive skills. She frames this shift as essential in keeping pace with the capabilities of AI, warning that if humans don’t evolve cognitively, technology may overtake them.
Yes. The most powerful learning tool ever, so let’s teach students how to make the best use of them. Teaching… it’s what we do.
As teachers, we’ve all been part of the debate: are mobile phones a distraction or a tool in the classroom? Estonia’s Minister of Education, Kristina Kallas, offered a refreshing perspective this week that challenges many of our assumptions. In Estonia, mobile phones are not banned in schools—they’re embraced. Why? Because they reflect the real world students are living in, and Estonia sees them as integral to learning and civic life. Sixteen-year-olds vote online using their phones. It would be illogical, Kallas argues, to deny them the same access in a classroom setting.
This approach got me thinking. In IB Psychology, we ask students to critically evaluate, think metacognitively, and link psychological theory to the real world. What better way to model that than by integrating the very tools students already use to explore and interact with that world? Estonia isn’t ignoring the risks—phones aren’t used during breaks, and younger students face tighter limits—but they are trusting teachers and schools to manage these decisions locally.
The most provocative idea Kallas raised is that AI may render essays and rote learning obsolete. That’s a bold claim. But if AI can generate knowledge quickly and accurately, then the role of education must shift towards helping students think better—to question, synthesise, communicate, and reflect. Isn’t that what we’re already trying to do in the IB?
Rather than fight the tide, maybe we should, like Estonia, ride it. But there’s no maybe about it. We should. We must!Our job, our responsibility, is to help students use them correctly, with integrity and responsibilty and respect.
One of the most exciting features of the new IB Diploma Psychology course is the emphasis on class practicals, which give both Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) students a chance to engage directly with psychological research methods. These activities are more than just experiments, they are designed to support critical discussion of each research approach, helping students build practical understanding while making connections to real-world contexts.
Class practicals are embedded into each of the course’s four contexts: Health and Well-being, Learning and Cognition, Human Development, and Human Relationships. Each context is linked with a specific research method:
In Health and Well-being: Interview.
In Learning and Cognition: Experiment.
In Human Development: Observation.
In Human Relationships: Survey/Questionnaire.
Interview
Each Context in the Subject Guide includes a list of suggested class practicals, but these are examples only and teachers are encouraged to tailor the activities to their own students and their local setting. For instance, under the Health and Well-being context, students could conduct focus group interviews on how peers manage stress, or investigate student perceptions of mindfulness practices after a class activity. Other examples include semi-structured interviews with professionals such as school counsellors or fitness coaches, or interviews exploring links between social media use and self-esteem, or exercise habits and mood.
Importantly, Tom Coster’s Textbook includes dedicated guidance for the In Class Practicals in each context, helping both teachers and students make the most of these learning opportunities.
The In Class Practical is not just a learning activity — it is also formally assessed in Paper 2, Section A, where students respond to four structured questions related to one of the 4 Practicals they completed. These questions test students’ understanding of methodology, concepts like bias or ethics, and the ability to design or compare research approaches.
In short, In Class Practicals bring psychology to life, giving students the opportunity to be researchers themselves and fostering deeper, more critical engagement with the subject.
Here is a free downloadable document describing how to complete the In-Class Practical for an interview. It includes summary notes that students would use to prepare for Paper 2 Section A.
The new IBDP Psychology syllabus introduces “Class Practicals” — and understandably, many teachers are expressing some concern. But there’s good news: they’re not as big a deal as they might seem.
First, students don’t need to each design and carry out four practicals independently. These are class activities, best done together during regular class time or in school, using the 4 research methods to prepare for Paper 1 Section B. The aim is to build understanding of experimental design, data collection, and critical thinking — not to create publishable research.
Each of the four required Class Practicals aligns with a key method in the syllabus: experiment, observation, interview, and survey/questionnaire. Teachers are encouraged to guide the design and implementation, ensuring all students participate and reflect on the process.
If you’re looking for support, Tom Coster’s IBDP Psychology: The Textbook is a must-have. It provides clear explanations, guidance, and a ready-to-use example for each practical. With good planning and a collaborative classroom approach, these activities can be both manageable and meaningful.
Every year, I tell my students that sleep is just as important as revision and study habits when it comes to academic performance. And now, a compelling new study from the University of Cambridge and Fudan University gives us even more reason to double down on that message.
In a study involving over 3,000 teenagers, researchers discovered that those who:
Went to bed earlier,
Slept longer,
And had lower sleeping heart rates,
scored significantly higher on a range of cognitive tests, including reading, vocabulary, and problem solving.
Even more striking? The actual difference in sleep duration between groups was minimal—just 15 minutes between the lowest and highest scoring groups—yet this small variation had a surprisingly large impact on brain performance and function.
Brain scans revealed that teens with the best sleep habits not only performed better but also had larger brain volumes and more efficient brain function.
Despite these findings, even the best-sleeping teens in the study didn’t reach the 8–10 hours per night recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The healthiest group averaged just seven hours and 25 minutes of sleep.
Why? Teenagers face a biological shift toward later bedtimes during adolescence. Add in screen use, homework, social media, and caffeine—and you’ve got a generation of students consistently underslept.
We’re not powerless. In fact, this is where we shine. As Psychology teachers, we can…
1. Teach the Science of Sleep
Incorporate sleep research into your lessons on cognitive development, memory, and mental health. Use this new study to show how even small changes in sleep patterns make a real difference.
2. Debunk Myths
Help students understand that “catching up” on weekends (aka social jet lag) doesn’t undo the damage of sleep loss during the week. Emphasize consistency.
3. Promote Simple, Practical Changes
Share strategies backed by experts:
Encourage regular exercise to improve sleep quality.
Urge students to limit screens an hour before bedtime.
Support healthy bedtime routines, such as winding down with a book, journaling, or light stretching.
4. Embed Sleep into Pastoral Care
Work with your school’s wellbeing or pastoral team to create sleep hygiene workshops, or add sleep content into personal and social education. Oxford’s Teensleep project is a great resource for ideas and activities.
5. Make Sleep “Cool”
Reframe sleep as a performance enhancer. Better memory. Sharper thinking. Bigger brains. It’s the one lifestyle change that benefits everything from academics to mental health—and it doesn’t cost a thing.
Professor Barbara Sahakian, who co-led the study, put it best: “It’s the sleep driving the better cognitive abilities… Small differences in sleep amounts accrue over time to make a big difference in outcomes.”
Let’s empower our students to make those small changes—because every extra minute of quality sleep could mean a stronger brain, clearer thinking, and greater wellbeing.
The new IB Diploma Psychology course requires students to take part in four teacher-guided in-class practicals: an interview, an experiment, an observation, and a survey/questionnaire. We’re looking for issues that feel real and relevant to our students, and few topics are more urgent right now than the mental health crisis among young people.
A recent UN-commissioned study by Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower has revealed a shocking reversal of the traditional “U-shaped” wellbeing curve. Happiness no longer dips in midlife—it now rises steadily with age, while young people are reporting record-low levels of life satisfaction. In six major English-speaking countries (UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), wellbeing among teenagers has plummeted—especially for young women.
Teenager wellbeing
One clear suspect? Smartphones and social media.
This trend didn’t start with COVID-19. It dates back to around 2013 and has only worsened. Young people are reportedly more isolated, less socially engaged, and more exposed to cyberbullying and body shaming.
This is exactly the kind of real-world phenomenon that DP Psychology students could—and should—investigate through in-class practicals. Imagine students designing ethical, small-scale studies examining screen time, social media use, and indicators of wellbeing among peers. It’s relevant, measurable, and personally meaningful to them.
But maybe there are other possibilities, such as a shortage of good quality sleep. Diet? The mass media? The topsy-turvy economy and jobs market? Or maybe the teenage years were never really the greatest time of our life.
We may not solve a global crisis in one classroom, but maybe we will start asking the right questions.
Smartphones? Lack of sleep? Mass media? Music? Exams? Or maybe it’s ‘just a phase’
Note that our Textbook includes a detailed section including examples of the In Class Practicals.
Tom Coster - Psychology 