On a thankfully dry day just before half term, our A level psychology students enjoyed a trip to Paignton Zoo. The study of psychology involves observing, studying and drawing conclusions about both human and animal behaviour, so this trip enabled students to practice their powers of observation.
In their lessons at the Lighthouse prior to the trip they had designed their observation and created appropriate behavioural categories to use. Each student had also decided what type of sampling they wanted to do, either time or event sampling.
The day started with a look at the zoo map and then the students organising themselves in terms of which animal they were going to observe first. The first animal to be observed was the tigers, followed by the baboons. Both students watched the behaviours and tallied the results to learn about inter-observer reliability.
Once the hard work was done students and staff stopped for lunch (chips!) and chatted about how the observations had gone. After lunch we were able to go and see some of the other animals, particular hits were the alligators and gorillas – thankfully not in the same habitat!
