What this resource is
This framework re-presents the Diploma Programme Psychology Standard Level course — the guide first assessed in 2027 — as a single, prerequisite-ordered teaching sequence rather than five chapters taught in numerical order. It is built on three convictions: that topics should be taught in the order their dependencies require, that each should be taught to its full depth rather than its minimum, and that the connections between them should be made explicit so that students see psychology as one connected subject rather than eleven separate ones.
The single largest departure from the order of the guide is that research methods are taught first. Paper 2 examines the class practicals directly, the internal assessment is a research proposal, and every study in every context has to be evaluated — so the vocabulary for doing that cannot arrive in Year 2. The intended outcome is a student who can read an unseen study and say what is wrong with it without being led.
Inside this document
- 01The design principle — how topics are classified and ordered
- 02The Teaching Spine — the full 11-topic flow, at a glance
- 03Where the Approaches Come Together — how the applied topics build on the foundations
- 04The Sequence at a Glance — every topic with syllabus code, role and hours
- 05The 11 Topics in Depth — depth, interconnection and practical angle for each
- 06Time Allocation & Pacing — reconciled to 150 hours, finishing by end of January
The design principle
Every topic is classified by the role it plays in the sequence:
- Foundational — self-contained, and a prerequisite for later topics.
- Developmental — extends one or more foundations.
- Synthesis — applied topics that draw several earlier strands together, taught once those strands are secure. The whole of the health and wellbeing context sits here, because explaining or treating a disorder requires the biological, cognitive and sociocultural approaches at the same time.
Psychology has fewer, larger topics than most Diploma subjects: eleven topics across 130 taught hours, so a topic here is a block of roughly two to three weeks rather than a single lesson sequence. That makes the ordering decision more consequential, not less. Three dependencies drive this sequence. Research methods come first because everything afterwards is evaluated with them. Learning and cognition come second because conditioning, schema theory and social learning are the machinery that four later topics reuse. Health and wellbeing comes last because it is the only context that demands all three approaches at once, and because treatment can only be assessed by a student who already understands both the disorder and the theory the therapy rests on. The six concepts — bias, causality, change, measurement, perspective and responsibility — are not a seventh chapter; each topic below names the concepts it carries most naturally, so they accumulate across the course rather than being revised at the end of it.
The Teaching Spine
Prerequisite-ordered flow · 11 topics · Psychology SLTeach top to bottom — each phase is a prerequisite for the next. Colour shows each topic’s role; the pill shows the phase’s teaching hours.
The full 11-topic sequence. Teach top to bottom; each phase is a prerequisite for the next.
Where the Approaches Come Together
How the applied topics build on the foundationsEach synthesis topic (right) can only be taught at depth once its feeders (left) are in place. A gold arrow means ‘is a prerequisite for’.
6. Formation of Identity and the Self
The poverty and conflict research is the hardest sampling case in the course.
8. Interpersonal and Romantic Relationships
Attraction cannot be evaluated before attachment is secure.
9. Understanding Mental Health Conditions
Three approaches, one disorder — all three taught earlier.
10. Psychological Factors in Health Problems
A correlational literature students must be equipped to criticise.
11. Preventing and Treating Psychological Disorders
The last topic because everything in the course feeds it.
How to read this
- Right-hand boxes are the topics that draw the most strands together.
- Left-hand chips are the topics they depend on.
- A gold arrow means ‘is a prerequisite for’.
- Every feeder sits earlier in the spine, so by the time the topic is taught its feeders are done.
- The whole argument for the order in one image: sequence by dependency, not by chapter number.
Each synthesis topic can be taught at depth only once its feeders are in place.
The sequence at a glance
Every topic in teaching order, with its syllabus code, its role and its teaching hours. The suggested Year 1 / Year 2 boundary falls at the end of Phase C and is adjustable.
| # | Topic | Syllabus | Role | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phase A — Studying Behaviour Scientifically (22 h) | ||||
| 1 | Methods Used in Psychological Research | 5.1 | Foundational | 12 h |
| 2 | Designing and Evaluating Research | 5.2 | Developmental | 10 h |
| Phase B — Learning, Thinking and Memory (28 h) | ||||
| 3 | Thinking and Learning Processes | 4.1 | Foundational | 14 h |
| 4 | Memory and Cognitive Processing | 4.2 | Developmental | 14 h |
| Phase C — Human Growth and Development (26 h) | ||||
| 5 | Theories and Processes of Development | 2.1 | Foundational | 13 h |
| 6 | Formation of Identity and the Self | 2.2 | Developmental | 13 h |
| Phase D — Social Behaviour and Relationships (24 h) | ||||
| 7 | Behaviour Within Groups | 3.1 | Developmental | 13 h |
| 8 | Interpersonal and Romantic Relationships | 3.2 | Developmental | 11 h |
| Phase E — Health and Psychological Wellbeing (30 h) | ||||
| 9 | Understanding Mental Health Conditions | 1.1 | Synthesis | 14 h |
| 10 | Psychological Factors in Health Problems | 1.2 | Synthesis | 8 h |
| 11 | Preventing and Treating Psychological Disorders | 1.3 | Synthesis | 8 h |
| Total taught content | 130 h | |||
Scroll the table sideways on narrow screens.
The 11 topics in depth
Each topic carries its teaching depth, its interconnections with other topics, and the concepts and class practical it most naturally supports — the practicals being what Paper 2 Section A is examined on and what the internal assessment proposal is built from.
Showing all 11 topics in teaching order.
Phase A — Studying Behaviour Scientifically
Research methods are the first phase, not the last. Every study in every context that follows has to be described, evaluated and weighed against another, and students cannot do that with vocabulary they have not yet been given. Paper 2 examines the class practicals directly and the internal assessment asks for a research proposal, so the methods taught here are the ones students will use themselves rather than only read about.
1. Methods Used in Psychological Research
- Teach to this depth
- The four methods the class practicals and the internal assessment proposal are built on, taught as design decisions rather than as definitions. Experiments: independent and dependent variables operationalised, control of confounding variables, laboratory, field and natural designs, and the reason random allocation is what licenses a causal claim. Observations: naturalistic and controlled, participant and non-participant, overt and covert, with behavioural categories and inter-observer agreement. Surveys and questionnaires: item construction, response formats, and the gap between a construct and the proxy used to measure it. Interviews: structured, semi-structured and unstructured, and the interviewer’s own effect on the data. Correlational studies, with the co-variation and causation distinction made explicit and then repeated whenever it is threatened. Case studies and their depth-against-generalisability trade-off. Ethics — informed consent, deception, debriefing, protection from harm, anonymity — is taught inside each method rather than as a separate lecture, because it constrains the design rather than decorating it.
- Connects to
- Every study in every context that follows is read through these methods. Paper 2 Section A is examined directly on the class practicals, and the internal assessment asks students to design a proposal using one of these four methods.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Causality and measurement enter here and never leave. Run at least one short practical per method in this phase, so students have their own data to argue about before they meet anybody else’s.
2. Designing and Evaluating Research
- Teach to this depth
- The evaluative vocabulary that turns a description of a study into an assessment of it. Reliability; internal and external validity with the specific threats to each; generalisability and the sampling that supports or undermines it — random, opportunity, self-selected, purposive and snowball — with the trade-off each involves named rather than implied. Researcher bias and participant bias, including demand characteristics and social desirability. Then the qualitative counterparts taken every bit as seriously as the quantitative ones: credibility, transferability, and reflexivity treated as a method rather than as an apology. Students practise applying two or more of these to an unseen study, which is precisely the form Paper 2 takes.
- Connects to
- Applies to every study taught for the remainder of the course. It is the single strongest reason for placing research methods at the front of the sequence rather than in Year 2.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Bias and responsibility. Hand students a study they half-know and have them evaluate it cold, before any model answer is supplied — the errors they make are the syllabus.
Phase B — Learning, Thinking and Memory
More later topics depend on this phase than on any other. Conditioning underpins the treatment of addiction and depression; schema theory underpins the cognitive model of depression and cultural schemas in memory; social learning theory reappears in obesity, in group behaviour and in identity formation. Teaching cognition and learning early means those later topics can use the machinery instead of pausing to build it.
3. Thinking and Learning Processes
- Teach to this depth
- The cognitive and behavioural machinery the rest of the course reuses. Classical and operant conditioning taught with their original evidence and their limits, including reinforcement schedules and the reason extinction matters clinically. Social learning theory through attention, retention, reproduction and motivation, with vicarious reinforcement, and the modelling studies read critically rather than admired. Schema theory as the organising cognitive construct — how schemas form, how they distort encoding and recall, and why they are difficult to test. Dual-process accounts of thinking, with the two systems distinguished by evidence rather than by metaphor. Anchoring and confirmation bias demonstrated on the class before they are explained to the class.
- Connects to
- Conditioning underpins the treatment topic; schema theory underpins Beck’s cognitive model of depression and cultural schemas in memory; social learning theory reappears in obesity, in group behaviour and in identity formation.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Bias and perspective. Anchoring in particular yields a usable class dataset in ten minutes, which then serves as practice material for the evaluative vocabulary just taught.
4. Memory and Cognitive Processing
- Teach to this depth
- Memory taught as competing models rather than as a single account. The multi-store model with the evidence for it and the evidence against it; working memory and cognitive load, with the practical consequences for how students themselves study; and an explicit comparison of the models against the same evidence, which is what the syllabus asks for and what candidates find hardest to do. Brain damage and memory: the case-study evidence, and the inferential limits of reasoning from a damaged brain to an intact one. Cultural schemas and reconstructive memory. Learning and spatial memory. The effects of computer gaming on memory as a current and genuinely unsettled literature, where the honest conclusion is that the evidence does not yet point one way.
- Connects to
- Builds directly on schema theory from the previous topic; the case-study limits apply the methods phase under pressure; cultural schemas anticipate the sociocultural work in the group behaviour topic.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Change and measurement — memory is the clearest case in the course of a construct that is hard to operationalise. A serial-position or cognitive-load practical gives students data of their own.
Phase C — Human Growth and Development
Development is the first sustained use of the biological approach, and the first context in which all three approaches have to be held together. It follows cognition because Piaget and Vygotsky are accounts of cognitive change, and it precedes the social phase because attachment and enculturation are what group behaviour and relationships are later built on.
5. Theories and Processes of Development
- Teach to this depth
- Development approached from the biological level first: brain maturation across childhood and adolescence, synaptic pruning, and neuroplasticity treated as a lifelong rather than a childhood property, with the evidence for each and the limits of imaging-based inference stated plainly. Then the two great cognitive-developmental accounts taught against each other rather than one after the other: Piaget’s stages, with the conservation and object-permanence evidence and the replications that complicate it; Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, with the zone of proximal development, scaffolding and the role of language. Theory of mind: its emergence, the false-belief paradigm, and what atypical development reveals about it.
- Connects to
- The biological content prepares the genetic and neurotransmitter work in the health phase; Vygotsky’s emphasis on the social prepares enculturation, and theory of mind prepares the social cognition in the relationships topic.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Change and perspective. Piaget against Vygotsky is the course’s cleanest example of two paradigms explaining the same observations differently — ideal for a concept-based response.
6. Formation of Identity and the Self
- Teach to this depth
- Attachment as the first relationship: Bowlby’s theory with its internal working model, the evidence from separation and deprivation research, and the consequences of disrupted attachment traced carefully and without overstatement. Enculturation and the development of the self, with independent and interdependent self-construals compared using evidence rather than stereotype. Social identity and peer influence in adolescence. Then the developmental effects of childhood poverty and of exposure to war, taught with care and with the methodological problem made explicit, since these are the studies in which design is most constrained by circumstance and ethics.
- Connects to
- Attachment feeds the relationships topic directly; enculturation feeds acculturation and group behaviour; the poverty and conflict research is the hardest test in the course of the sampling and generalisability arguments from the opening phase.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Responsibility and bias. The ethical constraints on studying vulnerable children make this the natural place to revisit research ethics with real stakes attached.
Phase D — Social Behaviour and Relationships
The sociocultural approach in full. Group behaviour comes before relationships because social identity and cultural dimensions are the wider framework, and both topics depend on social learning theory from the cognition phase and on enculturation from the development phase. The cultural material taught here is also what makes the cultural explanation of depression intelligible in the final phase.
7. Behaviour Within Groups
- Teach to this depth
- Social identity theory built properly — categorisation, identification, comparison — and then used to explain in-group favouritism and inter-group discrimination, with the minimal group evidence and its critics. Conformity: the classic demonstrations, the factors that raise and lower it, and the replication record read honestly rather than reverently. Commitment as a compliance technique alongside the other influence strategies. Cultural dimensions as a framework for comparing group behaviour, taught together with the standard objection to treating a national score as an individual trait. Acculturation and its relationship to psychological wellbeing, including the strategies individuals adopt. Social learning explanations of group behaviour.
- Connects to
- Uses social learning theory and schema from the cognition phase and enculturation from the development phase; social identity and cultural dimensions both feed the cultural explanation of depression in the final phase.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Perspective and bias. Cultural dimensions are the best vehicle in the course for teaching the difference between a cultural explanation and a cultural stereotype.
8. Interpersonal and Romantic Relationships
- Teach to this depth
- Attraction, formation and maintenance across all three approaches at once. Biological: dopamine and the reward circuitry in romantic attachment, with the correlational and imaging evidence and its limits stated rather than assumed away. Cognitive and social: the matching hypothesis with the studies that support it and the studies that do not; self-disclosure and reciprocity in formation and maintenance. Social exchange theory as an economic account of relationships — costs, rewards, comparison level — evaluated for what it explains and for what it cannot.
- Connects to
- Rests on attachment from the development phase and on social identity from the previous topic; the dopamine content pairs with the neurotransmitter work in the health phase as two applications of the same level of analysis.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Measurement and causality. Operationalising attraction is the sharpest measurement problem students will meet, and it makes an excellent questionnaire or correlational practical.
Phase E — Health and Psychological Wellbeing
Placed last because it is the phase that uses everything. Explaining depression requires genetics and neurotransmitters, Beck’s schemas, operant maintenance and cultural variation simultaneously; explaining obesity requires social learning and a correlational literature students must be able to criticise; and evaluating treatment requires all of that plus the ability to read a clinical trial. Taught earlier, this phase becomes a list. Taught here, it is a synthesis.
9. Understanding Mental Health Conditions
- Teach to this depth
- Major depressive disorder explained at three levels at once, which is what makes this a synthesis rather than a topic. Biological: genetic contributions with the twin and family evidence and the concordance figures read properly, neurotransmitter activity and the limits of the monoamine account, and animal models with both their translational value and their ethical cost. Cognitive: Beck’s model, the negative triad, and depressive schemas, drawing directly on the schema theory taught in the cognition phase. Sociocultural: cultural influences on the presentation and reporting of depression, cross-cultural differences in prevalence and diagnosis, operant explanations for the maintenance of depressed behaviour, and the protective role of social support. The topic closes by asking students to weigh the three accounts against each other rather than to list them in turn.
- Connects to
- Draws on schema theory, operant conditioning, cultural dimensions and the whole evaluative apparatus of the methods phase simultaneously; it is the direct prerequisite for the treatment topic.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Causality and perspective. This is the course’s clearest case of three explanations of one phenomenon, and its strongest material for a concept-based extended response.
10. Psychological Factors in Health Problems
- Teach to this depth
- Obesity and smoking as health problems with psychological determinants. The prevalence patterns and the cultural differences in both, treated as data requiring explanation rather than as background. Social learning explanations of obesity, applying the modelling framework from the cognition phase to eating behaviour. The cortisol–stress–weight relationship as a biological pathway, with the correlational nature of most of the evidence made explicit and the direction-of-causation problem examined rather than mentioned.
- Connects to
- Applies social learning theory and cultural comparison; the correlational evidence problem is the methods phase under real pressure, and the smoking material sets up the nicotine treatment content that follows immediately.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Causality and measurement. Stress and health behaviour make an ideal correlational practical whose limits students must then state in their own words.
11. Preventing and Treating Psychological Disorders
- Teach to this depth
- Treatment taught as a test of explanation: if the cognitive account of depression is right, cognitive therapy ought to work, and the extent to which it does becomes evidence about the theory. Drug-based treatment of major depressive disorder and of nicotine dependence, with mechanism, efficacy evidence, relapse rates and side-effect profile. Biological reductionism examined as a serious argument with a real cost rather than dismissed as a slogan. Cognitive behavioural therapy for depression and for nicotine addiction, with its behavioural and its cognitive components identified separately, and comparative and combined-treatment evidence used to reach a judgement rather than a summary.
- Connects to
- The closing synthesis of the course: it needs the disorder itself, the cognitive and behavioural theory the therapy is built on, and the evaluative apparatus for reading a clinical trial. Every earlier phase feeds it.
- Concepts & practical angle
- Responsibility and causality. Treatment evidence forces students to handle relapse, attrition and effect size rather than a single headline result.
Time allocation & two-year pacing
The guide recommends 150 teaching hours for Standard Level Psychology, of which 20 are the internal assessment. This framework allocates the remaining 130 to taught content across all 11 topics; below they are set out by chapter and then paced so that teaching is complete by the end of January in Year 2.
How the 130 taught hours fall by chapter
| Syllabus chapter | Allocated here | Share of taught time |
|---|---|---|
| Chapter 5 — Psychological research and investigation | 22 h | 17% |
| Chapter 4 — Learning, thinking and memory | 28 h | 22% |
| Chapter 2 — Human growth and development | 26 h | 20% |
| Chapter 3 — Social behaviour and relationships | 24 h | 18% |
| Chapter 1 — Health and psychological wellbeing | 30 h | 23% |
| Taught content subtotal | 130 h | 100% |
| Internal assessment (research proposal) | 20 h | — |
| SL course total | 150 h | — |
The guide sets the 150-hour total and the 20 internal assessment hours but does not publish an hour allocation per context, so the distribution above is this framework’s judgement rather than the IB’s. The four contexts are held close to equal, with research methods carried at the front and the health and wellbeing context given the largest single share because it is taught as the synthesis of the other three.
The two-year pacing plan
Built on roughly two-and-a-half to three teaching hours per week across the two years, with the research proposal woven through the terms rather than bolted on at the end. The cumulative column tracks progress toward the 150-hour total; the gold rows fall outside the teaching budget.
| Period | Focus | Hours | Cumul. |
|---|---|---|---|
| YEAR 1 | |||
| Autumn term | Phase A — Studying Behaviour Scientifically · one short practical per research method · ethics and the six concepts introduced | 26 | 26 |
| Spring term | Phase B — Learning, Thinking and Memory · first full class practical written up · IA: topic selection and method chosen | 32 | 58 |
| Summer term | Phase C — Human Growth and Development · IA: research proposal first draft | 32 | 90 |
| YEAR 2 (to end January) | |||
| Autumn term | Phase D — Social Behaviour and Relationships · open Phase E with mental health conditions · IA: proposal completed and submitted | 44 | 134 |
| To end of January | Phase E completed — psychological factors in health problems, prevention and treatment · whole-course concept synthesis | 16 | 150 |
| FEBRUARY – APRIL | Dedicated revision: past papers, short-answer and extended-response drills, unseen study evaluation for Paper 2, and timed mocks (additional to the 150 teaching hours) | — | — |
| MAY | IB examinations | — | — |
Revision time (February–April) is deliberately additional to the 150 teaching hours, in line with the subject guide’s reminder that adequate time must be set aside for examination revision.