How Can We Manage Developing a Self-Management Project to Teach University Students Experimental and Behaviour Change Skills?

Rebecca will talk about an assignment developed to teach psychology students at the University of Waikato both how to conduct experimental research and how to apply psychological methods to change the behaviour of an individual - themselves! She teaches a 3rd-year paper on Behaviour Analysis where students learn the basics of single-subject research design by attempting to change a behaviour of their own. Students choose a behaviour that is important to them, such as reducing vaping, increasing studying, or learning a new skill. Rebecca assists them in selecting an intervention and they collect data in baseline and experimental phases. They then write the project up as a full lab report. Rebecca will present some of the more interesting projects students have submitted, and what the students have learned through the assignment.

Dr Rebecca Sargisson

Deputy Head of School

Te Kura Whatu Oho Mauri - School of Psychological and Social Sciences

Te Wānanga o Ngā Kete - Division of Arts, Law, Psychology Dr. Rebecca Sargisson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Waikato, based on the Tauranga campus. A dual New Zealand and Dutch citizen, she spent 2 years in a research and teaching position at the University of Groningen from 2018 to 2020.

How can we authentically connect our psychology contexts with matauranga maori ? Is this even the right question to be asking? 

Stacey will talk about how to use your willingness to engage with Matauranga Maori concepts to grow your cultural competence in your psychology classroom. This is an interactive keynote and resources will be sent  out prior to the conference to support your participation. 

Stacey graduated from Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and a Bachelor of Arts in Māori Studies and Criminology.  In 2024, she is again studying at Victoria University. She taught Te Reo Māori for several years before starting a senior Psychology course at Kāpiti College. Stacey is now in charge of the Psychology programme at Aotea College, Porirua, and is the Associate Head of Faculty Social Sciences there.  A special interest of Stacey’s is teaching Psychology (and the Social Sciences in general) from an Indigenous perspective, with particular emphasis on mātauranga Māori and Pasifika knowledge. A favourite topic of Stacey’s to teach is cultural bias - although her students come from a diverse and multicultural community, it helps them to realise that not all peoples’ experiences are culturally responsive. One of Stacey’s go-to reads is Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy: Tātaihono - Stories of Māori Healing and Psychiatry by Wiremu NiaNia, Allister Bush, and David Epston.

Mean, misunderstood, and mistreated: Psychopathy in the wild and in prison

Professor Polaschek, a forensic clinical psychologist, will talk about the modern scientific understanding of psychopathy. Using her longstanding research programme on high-risk violent prisoners, she will consider how some people become psychopathic criminals, whether they can be released safely into the wilds of our communities again, and whether the psychological treatments made available to them are helping them change their psychopathy."Psychopathy is a widely misunderstood form of personality disorder. News media, films and television shows often depict sadists, criminal masterminds and evil dictators as suffering from psychopathy but these depictions bear little resemblance to most of the people identified as psychopathic by scientific methods,"

Professor Polaschek works in the University of Waikato's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Institute of Security and Crime Science. She completed a Diploma in Clinical Psychology at the University of Canterbury and a PhD at Victoria University. Her research expertise includes criminal behaviour, violent offending, imprisonment parole, sexual offending, offender rehabilitation, offender reintegration, family violence perpetrators and what works with offenders. Devon Polaschek | Professor | Te Kura Whatu Oho Mauri School of Psychological and Social Sciences | Director  | Te Puna Haumaru NZ Institute for Security and Crime Science   | Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato  The University of Waikato