​Psychology teachers across the country received the news they had been waiting for last Thursday. The New Zealand Association of Psychology Teachers (NZAPT) completed its application for psychology to be on the list of university-approved subjects in February this year. Now they’ve been given the news they were hoping for with NZQA granting approval for level 3 psychology students to be able to count their psychology course as one of the three they must gain 14 or more credits in to gain entrance to study at university from 2019.
The change is important because it impacts how many students will take the subject and how many schools will offer it. Nayland College psychology teacher and NZAPT chair Hannah Cameron says it was a bit of an anomaly that psychology was left off the list in the first place, alongside more vocational subjects such as hospitality and building and construction . “Our key argument is that psychology is an academically rigorous subject that deserves to have parity with similarly academic subjects, “ Mrs Cameron said.
Mrs Cameron and fellow Nayland psychology teacher Gaye Bloomfield (who is also the former chair of the NZAPT) have been at the heart of the extensive lobbying needed since 2015 to enact the change. It was a long-winded process that involved many steps such as transitioning from unit to achievement standards and the establishment of a teacher working group to work alongside NZQA to develop the new standards.
Universities across the country were behind the change with NZAPT receiving letters of support from Victoria, Otago, Massey, Auckland and Waikato university psychology departments.
Year 12 Nayland College psychology student Ben Dodds wholeheartedly supports the change. “It’s great because it allows people to actually take psychology and not have to worry about getting enough credits in their other subjects if they want to go to university. I’m really pleased,” he said.
“It’s a university course that you can study and also it’s an ever-growing field that’s really important for the future I believe (...). Also, we need some more psychologists in New Zealand because there’s a high demand for that,” Ben added.

Photos below of Nayland' College celebrating with 'psychology themed bake off'. 

As we walk into the F ward students are greeted with display cases that includes a mind blowing range of old medical equipment and remains of the previous buildings.  Around the walls are photos and pictures of the original building, its staff and treatments the asylum used. Students are particularly impressed with the display of coma/insulin treatments and the range of old ECT machines and the very keen eyed students spot an old lobotomy needle in one of the counters. Our guides shared their knowledge and experience of the life on the F ward, the typical patients and the lay out of the room we were standing standing in.
As we moved from the ward into the corridor our students feel the change in the mood when they are led into the confinement room, complete with scratches on the wall. In the room is an original bed with original linen and mattress for students to touch; along the walls are the clothing the patients wore along with a straight jacket. Our students are instantaneously transported back in time, which helps them get a glimpse of life in the asylum.
We moved through the corridor and into the different rooms including a kitchen, observation room, store room and even a hairdressers. Students are met with all sorts of delights such as old doctor ledgers, mobile baths, nursery equipments and an eye opening telephone operator switchboard. Our students begin to understand the range of patients the original asylum housed and the lifestyle of both patients and staff, which challenges their pre existing idea of a dark dungeon-like place. Students are surprised to see that the asylum included sports teams, hairdressers, communal food halls and are blown away with the size of the original asylum.
Finally our tour guides offer a question and answer session, they are regaled with amazing stories of what it was like to live and work in the asylum. One of our guides talks about her time working as a psychiatric nurse in F ward and the patients she treated; with this real life experience she helps student to unpack comparisons with modern health care and treatments.

We visited the Hospital museum as part of our level 3 course, we focus our Key Study on Rosenhan’s ‘Being insane in sane places”. F ward provides an anchor to the study, allowing students to reflect on the methodological issues and impact the study has on diagnosis and treatments.
Opening hours are Tuesday 1pm-4pm but Friends of Porirua Hospital Incl Museum are more than happy to open to school groups.
https://poriruahospitalmuseum.org.nz/?src=nav​ 

Set up in 2013 by our previous chair of the NZAPT is a Facebook group that promotes collaboration around Psychology in New Zealand secondary schools. Typical post on the page are specific questions around teaching and assessments in secondary school psychology, requests for moderation help and up to date psychological resources. Members of the page are; teachers who  offer psychology as a subject,  who teach one psychology standard in another subject or teachers who just love the subject, this page is not exclusive to NZAPT members. 
​If you would like a member type in Psychology NZ secondary schools into Facebook and ask to join the group.

Students at Nayland College, Nelson anlaysed a partner through their approach to decorating a cake. Carefully observing the techniques used, students evaluated their partner's personality using the Myers-Briggs and Big 5 dimensions. Students who were careful and considered, took care and placed the decorations very deliberately may be more likely to be high on the sensing dimension than the intuition dimension. Keen to display your work to peers and show off your talents? Maybe you're an extrovert! Worked hard on your cake and applied lots of time and effort - maybe you'd score highly on the conscientious dimension of a Big 5 test. (All pretty silly fun of course but it got us all talking about the various ways of assessing personality, their likely accuracy. And then we got to eat the cakes!)