Lesson Plan
Teacher: Ms Robertson
Date: 20th March Lesson:2
Class Information:
Student Name
Target
Akhtar, Salman
C
Bachra, Rajinder
C
Casey, Sarah
A
Fabian, Zoe
A
Fraser, Rebecca
B
Kingham, Katie
A
Linstead, Claire
B
Martin, Natalie
C
Poulter, Hattie
A
White, Daniel
B
The class is made up of high achieving
students who show a real interest in
Psychology.
There are four ‘A’ target grade students, based
on their GCSE performance.
According to CAT’s scores Zoe is the only
‘Gifted’ student.
In their January modules, Sarah was the only
student to achieve an A. Katie achieved a B,
and Zoe and Hattie both C’s.
Topic/Context:
The students are currently studying the 3rd module of the AS. They are just about to come to
the end of one half of the unit that looks at Social Psychology. The last topic of Social
Psychology is Ethics, and they are starting it this lesson. They will be relating the Ethics back
to studies that they learnt in earlier lessons.
Learning Objectives for pupils:
 To understand the background of ethical guidelines for psychological research
 To know three ethical issues: deception, informed consent, and protection from harm
 To be able to describe and explain the ethical issues in studies of social influence and
obedience
 In addition, gifted students should be able to research current BPS ethical guidelines
and use them to evaluate the ethical acceptability of social influence and obedience
studies.
Homework:
Homework will be set next lesson as it develops the work that they will be doing in the lesson.
Starter (10 minutes):
Show photos of Nazi medical experiments on rotation.
Ask students to consider: “What’s wrong with this?”
Discuss what students feel is wrong with each example – ask students whether the
participants had consented to the experiments and whether they were suffering psychological
and/or physical harm.
Those responsible for the horrific experiments carried out by Nazi’s in the IIWW were tried in
Nuremberg and the outcome was the ‘Nuremberg code’ on which psychological organisations
have based their ethical codes for Psychological research.
Display website for those who are interested in finding out more:
www.ushmm.org/research/doctors
Teaching sequence;
Teacher led (5 minutes): Introduce: Over the next three lessons
we will be looking at the 3 main ethical issues that are addressed in
ethical guidelines: Deception, Informed Consent and Protection
from Harm.
Group Q & A (10 minutes): For each of the ethical issues:
1. When does it arise in psychological research?
2. Why is it an issue?
Ethics1discussion.iwb
Page 1
Student Independent Work (25 minutes):
Ethics1discussion.iwb
All students will: describe the ethical issues with Milgram, Asch and Page 2
Zimbardo’s experiments
Most students will: explain which aspects of the research that relate www.bps.org.uk
to the ethical issues
Some students will: research the British Psychological Society
Ethical Guidelines in more detail and pick out other guidelines that
affect the Milgram, Asch and Zimbardo studies.
All A grade students to do task using the computers. Ask these
students to also use www.bps.org.uk. They should search for and
download the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct. They should skim
the document and pick out at least two other ethical guidelines and
use them to assess either Milgram, Asch and/or Zimbardo.
Plenary (10 minutes):
Students look at a replica of Milgram’s consent form. They should imagine that they are
members of an ethical committee at Milgram’s university, and highlight aspects of the form
that break ethical guidelines.