¿Á½ºÆ÷µå´ë ½ÇÇè½É¸®Çаú ȨÆäÀÌÁö ÀڷḦ Á¤¸®ÇÏ¿© ¿Ã¸³´Ï´Ù.

Studying Psychology at Oxford

http://epwww.psych.ox.ac.uk/general/ug/booklet.htm#Top

You will spend the first two terms doing three introductory courses, on which you will be examined at the end of your second term in Oxford (an Examination called "Prelims"). You will, of course, have to pass this examination before commencing work for finals (called "Schools").

For Prelims you will offer three papers; if you intend to read P.P.P.(Àü°ø,ÇÐÀ§°úÁ¤Ãß±¸ÇÑ´Ù¸é), one of these papers will be in Physiology or Philosophy, and usually the other two will be in Psychology and Statistics.

If you intend to read Experimental Psychology(Àü°ø,ÇÐÀ§°úÁ¤Ãß±¸ÇÑ´Ù¸é), you will also offer three Prelims papers. One of these will, of course, be in Psychology, and another in Statistics. It is usually advisable to take the Neurophysiology or the Physiology 3-term Prelim paper (from P.P.P.) as a third option. The Neurophysiology paper is an introductory one, intended for students without Biology A levels.

If you have come up to Oxford to read P.P.P. and decide, while you are here, that you want to read Experimental Psychology instead (or vice versa), you can ask to change after having taken Prelims. It is also possible to change to P.P.P. or Experimental Psychology from some other subject, after you have passed Prelims in that subject.

The Psychology paper in the Prelims course attempts to introduce people who have had little opportunity to study the subject to the Biological Bases and to some of the larger questions about Perception, Cognition, Human Development, Individual Differences, and Social Interaction, which have preoccupied experimental psychologists.

Psychology

Physiology [3-term Prelim]

Philosophy

Statistics

End of second term at Oxford take "Prelims" [third term for Physiology]

Pass Prelims. People joining from other subjects start here.

For the third, fourth and fifth terms take "Core" topics in psychology.

These are followed by a 2nd year examination, which counts towards your Final degree class.

For the next three terms take "Advanced" options in psychology. These include a research project and a library dissertation.

Last term at Oxford, take Final Exam ("Schools")

After Prelims - The Final Honour Schools

¡¡

fter Prelims, over the next three terms, you will study a number of "core" topics in psychology. Each core topic consists of 16 lectures, 2 tutorials and 2 classes. These will be followed by a second year examination, which counts towards your final degree class.

a) Biological Foundations -

Brain and Behaviour;

Biology of Learning and Memory;

Psychological Disorders.

b) Human Experimental -

Perception;

Memory, Attention and Information Processing;

Language and Cognition.

c) Social, Developmental and Individual Differences -

Social Psychology;

Developmental Psychology;

Individual Differences.

¡¡

A course in Statistics and Experimental Design is taken alongside these core topics.

¡¡

You will also carry out your own research project and/or a library dissertation at this stage (if you are taking either of these).

Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology (PPP). ÇÐÀ§ °úÁ¤

After Prelims, if you are taking the PPP degree, you will take a combination of topics in psychology, philosophy and physiology. Most students choose to take a bipartite degree, by combining psychology with philosophy or psychology with physiology, and devote half of their study time to each of the topics. However, it is possible to study all three subjects or, indeed, study philosophy with physiology.

The topics you choose to study in PPP will depend upon how much you wish to focus on psychology, philosophy and physiology. For psychology you may choose from the topics outlined above for Experimental Psychology.

¡¡

History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant;

Knowledge and Reality;

Ethics;

Philosophy of Mind;

Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Psychology and Neuroscience;

Philosophy of Religion;

The Philosophy of Logic and Language;

Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Criticism;

Continental Philosophy from Descartes to Leibniz;

The Philosophy of Kant;

Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein;

Formal Logic

Topics in physiology are:

Biochemistry: Molecular Mechanisms of Disease;

Neurosciences

Circulation;

Respiration;

Physiology of Epithelia;

Endocrinology;

Cell Biology;

Immunology;

Pharmacology;

Developmental Biology;

Cellular Physiology;

Popular choices for PPP students are: a) Ethics; b) Philosophy of Mind; c) Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Psychology and Neuroscience; d) Neuroscience; e) Pharmacology; f) Endocrinology; g) Immunology.

¡¡

¡¡

As this is a department of experimental psychology, you will not learn all your psychology through tutorials and lectures. You will be required to perform experiments in psychology throughout your course. Initially, you will work with particular members of staff on topics which you will determine jointly with them. These practical classes prepare you to perform your own piece of research in your final year (this is compulsory for EP students).

Students work on a wide range of topics, for example:

Reading problems in children ...

The personality of heavy smokers ...

improving one's sporting skills ...

... and so on. Your final year research project could well form the basis for original research which you may pursue after graduating.

Computer-based material plays an important part in many of the practicals; previous experience of computers is not necessary. There is also the opportunity to learn about the role of computers in psychology in more depth, by taking optional courses, and the University offers a full range of short general computing and Information Technology courses. The Department has a well-equipped computing room providing general computer facilities for word processing, data analysis, etc.

After your degree in Experimental Psychology or PPP

At present, about 90 undergraduates a year take degrees in Experimental Psychology or P.P.P. Obviously most of these people do not become career psychologists but use psychology as a general degree.

It is not, generally, possible to earn a living as a psychologist if one's only qualification is an undergraduate degree in the subject. For nearly all professional jobs in the subject, further qualifications are necessary, At present, some 15-20% of our undergraduates go on to take second degrees (usually a D.Phil., Ph.D. or M.Sc. degree). These are usually based on independent research done under supervision at some academic institution. They are usually preludes to careers in teaching and research in one or another branch of psychology at a university.

There are also a limited number of vacancies in applied research of various kinds in laboratories attached to industrial organizations or in government research establishments.

Undergraduates reading P.P.P. do not, of course, always develop a main interest in Psychology. It is quite common for them to be more interested in Philosophy or in Physiology; many of them go on to do further graduate work in these subjects, and perhaps to teach these subjects at university level at some time in their careers. It is quite common for students who have read Physiology and Psychology to continue to take necessary medical qualifications before, perhaps, returning to the subject as neurologists or psychiatrists.

Clinical Psychology is another popular option with students, who usually go on to work within the National Health Service after three years' postgraduate work at a training centre approved by the British Psychological Society. Career prospects in Clinical Psychology are excellent, and they compare well with most professions.

Small numbers of students take further Masters courses in Educational Psychology or Occupational Psychology, and finally work for local government or in industry. Some students also become social workers or join the Probation Service. There are occasional "specialist" jobs in industry, usually in selection, training, and personnel management, for which an undergraduate degree in Psychology is considered an especially useful qualification.

The P.P.P. degree has been established for some time, and employers in Government and Industry appear to rate it highly as a general education, since it provides more than elementary comprehension of the scientific method as a tool for making decisions and understanding complex relationships. In this respect, degrees in Experimental Psychology are equally "Marketable".

¡¡

The British Psychological Society (BPS) is the professional body in the UK representing psychology and professional psychologists. The BPS also publishes a wide range of material, from career guidance to research journals.

The undergraduate courses in Oxford have been structured to ensure recognition by the BPS as conferring the Graduate Basis for Registration. Such recognition is necessary for entry to most postgraduate professional courses in Psychology which are practice- rather than research-based in their training mode. Students on a first degree course in Psychology are entitled to become Student Members of the BPS, which can have advantages for students who wish to go on to professional training in Psychology.

Those taking PPP who wish to qualify for BPS registration will have to study at least 50% psychology as part of their degree.

Further information can be obtained from the British Psychological Society.

The teaching staff of the Department of Experimental Psychology includes Professors, Readers and University Lecturers. These people are responsible to for teaching in the Department, and have a commitment to carry on research.

They are also, in most cases, Tutorial Fellows of undergraduate Colleges. This means that they direct the work of undergraduates reading their subject in their own College, tutoring them personally or arranging for others to teach specialist topics which they may not cover themselves.

Teaching is carried out primarily by means of tutorials, organized by Tutorial Fellows. The Department of Experimental Psychology is responsible for providing courses of lectures on all parts of the syllabus. Besides this, the Department organizes weekly research seminars at which well-known visitors talk about their research, and many other more informal seminars at which younger research workers talk about their work in progress (there are probably four or five of these seminars available each week). The Department provides necessary library facilities, and also tends to be used as a convenient meeting place. Refreshment facilities are available, and are much used.

Counting all three undergraduate years, there are about 275 students to be taught in the Department at any one time. Fortunately, the group of twelve Tutorial Fellows is supplemented by other senior members of the Department.

While there is no particular virtue in size for its own sake, Oxford undergraduates are very lucky that the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford has become one of the largest centres for research in psychology in the world, and has an outstanding international reputation. Many post-doctoral workers, distinguished in their fields of research, are now attached to the Department. While the primary concern of these people is their research - whether carried out in collaboration with tenured members of the Department, with research groups of their own, or as independent individuals - they are generous with the time which they are prepared to give to undergraduate tutorials, lectures and demonstrations.

This is a special feature of teaching at Oxford. Individual undergraduates have a great deal of time devoted to them by many different people. It is not merely possible, but quite usual, for undergraduates to be taught particular topics in lectures and tutorials by people who are currently making significant contributions to the fields of research for which they speak.

Another advantage of the Department, from the point of view of undergraduates, is the number of distinguished visitors it attracts. Very distinguished scientists from abroad visit us for periods of time, varying from a few days to a year or more. They make a very real contribution to the intellectual life of the Department. It is not merely a matter of undergraduates having a chance to catch fleeting glimpses of people whose names they read in textbooks. Visitors invariably give formal and informal seminars and lectures to which undergraduates are very welcome. More to the point, they are very glad to talk to undergraduates, informally, at coffee- and tea-breaks and at other times.

A final advantage of belonging to a very active department is the availability of young contemporaries. The Department of Psychology in Oxford has admitted an average of 16 research students a year, over the last three years. These are young people who have recently completed their undergraduate degrees and who are working for M.Scs. or D.Phils. They stop in the Department for varying periods of time, usually no less than three years. The presence of some 60 young people, actively engaged in research and contributing much by teaching, is stimulating for the intellectual life of the Department. It also allows undergraduates, by informal contact with young near-contemporaries, to discover what it is like to actually determine and solve research problems in many areas of this subject.

¡¡

Oxford ´ëÇÐ ½É¸®Çаú¸¦ µé¾î°¡±â À§Çؼ­ Àоî¾ß ÇÒ Ã¥µé

Suggested Reading for Entrants Intending to Read Psychology

Hayes, N. (1998). Foundations of Psychology: an Introductory Text. (Nelson)

Eysenck, M. (1996). Simply Psychology. (Psychology Press)

Eysenck, H.J. & Eysenck, M.E. (1995). Mind Watching (Prion)

Atkinson, R.L., Atkinson, R.C., Smith, E.E. & Bean, D.J. (1993). Introduction to Psychology (Harcourt/Brace & Co.).

Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. (Allen Lane)

¡¡

Hubel, D. (1988). Eye, Brain and Vision (W.H. Freeman), or

Gregory, R. Eye and Brain (paperback), or

Baddeley, A. (1993). Memory: a User's Guide. (Penguin)

Donaldson (1978). Children's Minds. (Fontana)

Argyle, M. (1994). The Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior. (Penguin)

Greenfield, S. (1997). The Human Brain: a Guided Tour. (Science Masters)

¡¡

Nature, Science, Scientific American and New Scientist are journals in which a number of articles on psychological topics appear. Back copies of the Scientific American contain excellent articles on a wide range of scientific topics, and there are several collected volumes of published articles.

¡¡

A grasp of elementary algebra, particularly elementary probability theory (combinations and permutations), what is meant by logarithms, powers etc., and some knowledge of elementary coordinate geometry (particularly the equations for curves), elementary set theory and elementary statistics, is useful. If you have little or no statistical background, the following books are recommended:

Graham A. (1992). Teach yourself statistics. Hodder and Stoughton [Includes basic maths].

Rowntree D. (1991). Statistics without tears. Penguin.

Coolican H. (1996). Introduction to Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology. Hodder and Stoughton.

¡¡

Pagano, R. (1990). Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences (West Publishing Co.).

Bailey. N. (1995) Statistical Methods in Biology (paperback), (Cambridge Univ. Press). chapters 1-5.

¡¡

¡¡