VCE Psychology at Melbourne Museum
Unit 3 Teacher notes
VCE Psychology
In The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth Gallery at Melbourne Museum
Contents
Teacher notes
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Preparing for your visit
2
The exhibitions
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Floor plans
7
Excursion activity: Self-guided program
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Suggestions to teachers for using other activities
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Map of postcard locations
14
Downloadable files
Whistlestop Tour of the Mind
PDF
Feedback to your teacher form
PDF
© Museum Victoria, 2013
Notes prepared by Dr J. Abbott
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VCE Psychology at Melbourne Museum
Teacher notes
Teacher notes
This student program is based on displays in The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth and The Human
Body exhibitions at Melbourne Museum, with additional material designed specifically to support
the VCE Unit 3 Psychology Study Design. The activities were designed with the assistance of
VCE Psychology teacher to allow students to explore and extend their understanding of various
concepts in the Psychology course.
Activities based on a range of topics are provided for use at the museum in the form of a
postcard tour of the Mind Gallery called the “Whistlestop tour of the mind” (available as a pdf
document to download). Activities can be followed up at school as the teacher desires. Teachers
should feel free to choose those activities most relevant to their students’ needs.
Students who are doing only the self-guided trail would be expected to complete all of the
cards within the time available to them. If the students’ time is more limited due to other
activities then they may be directed to complete only some of the cards. There are several
ways that the students can approach the task. Students could attempt to complete as many
cards as possible, do only selected cards, or work in groups where half the group complete half
the cards and then share their answers back at school. The teacher should decide in advance
which approach the class should take.
The accompanying worksheets may be edited by teachers to suit their students’ needs.
Preparing for your visit
Research suggests that school students will learn more in a museum if:
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Pre-visit preparation is carried out, i.e. pre-visit lessons and student orientation;
Some student choice in their learning experiences is taken into account
Students work in co-operative small groups during an excursion
The excursion experience is integrated back at school, utilizing post-visit activities
students sharing their findings in a report or presentation
 Supervising teachers are familiar with the museum site and exhibitions
and/or
Before arriving at the Museum it would be helpful to decide on a number of things:
1. How will the information collected be used back at school, i.e. what work
will be followed up or completed in the classroom
2. How the Whistlestop Tour of the Mind will be completed, i.e. in groups or singly
3. Whether the extra activities associated with some of the postcards will be completed and
how this will be done
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Note: It is the responsibility of the teacher to plan and prepare for the visit to the museum so
that students are aware of the tasks that they will be required to complete during the visit and
what follow up will occur back at school. The appropriate worksheets should be downloaded
and brought to the Museum for student use.
Museum Victoria offers professional development sessions and a free subscription service
for teachers (http://museumvictoria.com.au/Education/MVteachers/ ) with benefits including
free individual entry to our three museums.
All school groups visiting Melbourne Museum must book in advance to ensure access to
exhibitions and education activities: telephone 03 9392 7767 weekdays 8:30am-5:00pm.
A display case of psychiatric medications
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The exhibitions
There are two exhibitions in the Mind and Body Gallery: The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth, and
The Human Body.
The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth is an exhibition based on sensory and exploratory
experiences which addresses the science of the mind while also taking a historical
perspective of mental health, bringing together psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience.
Please note that this exhibition includes many objects, stories, immersive experiences and
interactive exhibits that, although not directly relevant to VCE Unit 3 Psychology, are relevant
to psychology in general and may be of great interest to your students. Please encourage
your students to examine these between their assigned Onsite activities or in any ‘free’ time.
These ‘other’ items include:
Stories
Objects
Immersive experiences
Interactive exhibits and
Issues
Stories
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Objects
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Defining the mind
What is normal behaviour?
Emotions and survival
When emotions malfunction – depression, bipolar disorder
Past treatments – John Cade and lithium, electro-convulsive therapy (ECT),
lobotomy, psychotropic pharmaceuticals, Freud and psychotherapy,
cognitive therapy and institutionalisation
How does our brain experience the outside world?
Are experts born or made?
Using artwork to make sense of experience
When thinking malfunctions – ADHD, schizophrenia
Exploring personality
Group behaviours
How can altruism benefit me?
When interactions malfunction – autism, antisocial behaviour
Developing empathy
Anatomical brain specimens on loan from the University of Melbourne
Isolation cell used at Kew Asylum 1872
Celebration of love: convict love tokens and keepsakes
Electro-convulsive therapy units
Celebration of perception: Braille mah-jong and dominos, rattling cricket ball
Skinner Box
Artworks from the Cunningham Dax Collection: dreams, confusion, trauma and
depression
Artworks created in psychiatric institutions
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VCE Psychology at Melbourne Museum
Teacher notes
Pharmaceutical advertisements from the 1950s (USA) Psychotropic drugs
– e.g. LSD, Prozac, Ritalin
Leucotomes (used for lobotomies in Australia in the 1950s)
Asylum uniforms (1800s and 1900s)
Straitjackets, locked gloves and other restraining devices (1800s and 1900s)
Padded cap (1800s)
Shackles and locks (1800s)
Hubbard E-meter (1980s)
Immersive experiences
 Human Emotions: multimedia environments that evoke the 6 basic
emotions
(happiness, surprise, anger, fear, disgust and sadness)
 Booths: enter a person’s mind, and listen to four separate stories of an
individual’s experience of life (synaesthesia, depression, bipolar disorder and
schizophrenia)
 Ames room
Interactive exhibits
 Learning a language: can you say ‘I am always learning something new’ in
five different languages? Press the button and hear the voice, repeat and
record your own voice. Facial emotions recognition game: can you match
the face to the emotion?
 Galvanic skin response: measure your stress levels (by small changes in the
amount you sweat) in response to a trigger.
 Identify the pattern game: can you recognise the pattern in these images?
 Labyrinths: trace the labyrinthine paths. Does it help to calm and focus your mind?
 Personality game: which words best describe you? (Loosely based on the Myers
Briggs Type
 Indicator)
Issues
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The ethical display of psychiatric art
The ethical display of human remains
The confrontational nature of asylum life
The confrontational nature of mental health issues
The debate regarding mental health diagnosis and treatment
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VCE Psychology at Melbourne Museum
Teacher notes
The Human Body exhibition presents a history of changing beliefs, taboos, medical
practices, and a wonderful diversity of models, maps and images of the human body
produced both today and in the past.
The displays are grouped around the following themes:
First impressions: Looking at our bodies from the outside
Invading the body: The study of human anatomy
Becoming transparent: The use of medical imaging technologies
Close ups: The microscopic world of cells and genes
Body parts: The workings of our body systems
Several areas are relevant to the VCE Psychology Unit 3 course, in particular the medical
imaging technologies in Becoming transparent and the workings of the brain and nerves in
Body parts.
Another section you might encourage your students to explore if time allows is First
impressions, in particular the displays which look at how external features, body
measurements and proportions are often mapped and measured to classify people and
determine standards of normality. Examples include different ‘ideals’ of physical beauty and
how judgements about differences in proportions have been used to support naïve ideas
about intelligence and character.
Photograph of a man receiving ECT
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Exhibition floor plans
The On-site investigation activities for this program take place in The Mind: Enter
the Labyrinth and The Human Body exhibitions and in a designated space
between the two. These are all in the Mind and Body Gallery on the first floor of
Melbourne Museum.
The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth
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The Human Body
D
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Excursion activities
1. Self-guided program
Working in small groups, students carry out a series of investigations in the
exhibitions. These activities involve the students going on a tour of the Mind: Enter
the Labyrinth gallery, guided by the images on the postcards. There are 20 postcards
and students should be able to complete most of the activities on the cards in the
allotted time.
Activities cover both Areas of Study but are more heavily focused on Area of Study 1.
They can be divided into groups:
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Cards 1-4: Structure of the brain
Cards 5-8: Development of the brain
Cards 9-12: Effect of drugs
Cards 13-15: States of consciousness
Cards 16-20: Memory
The location of the stations where the activities related to the cards can be found is on
the ‘Map of postcard locations’.
Activities that are most relevant to the students may be selected for students to
focus on. It would be helpful if activities are selected and assigned to student
groups prior to the excursion. It is also possible that each group could be divided
into two halves and they complete half of the cards each and then share their
answers back at school.
Activities will take from 2-10 minutes each.
Each activity has been designed to stand alone so students may do them in any
order. This allows you to assign a particular order to suit your students.
If the results from some of the activities are to be used back at school it would be
useful to tell students in advance which data they must be sure to collect.
Approximate duration: 90 minutes.
The postcards should be downloaded and copied before the excursion. They are
available from Melbourne Museum’s Education website
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VCE Psychology at Melbourne Museum
Teacher notes
2. Suggestions to teachers for using other activities
If you wish to use some of the postcard activities to obtain class results to
analyse back at school you can give students the sheets on the following
pages or worksheets of your own. You will need to provide students with
specific instructions for the report that you require them to prepare for you.
Other suggestions
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Have students look at some of the articles that are available
online that deal with texting while driving to complete an
evaluation of research
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Students can construct a visual presentation of their visit
to the museum.
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Collect class results from postcard activities and do a data analysis
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Experiment: The Memory Game
Card 17 directs you to play a Memory Game. Play the game and select
your answer from the 5 possible solutions. Circle your answer on the
diagram below before you check to see if it is correct.
1
2
4
3
5
You can collect class results for this activity and collate the results back
at school.
Table 1: Results for the Memory Test
Student
Age
M/F
Answer
Correct /
incorrect
1
2
3
.......
Some examples of things to think about when you analyse the results:
1. What proportion of the class got the correct answer?
2. Is one of the incorrect answers more common than the other
incorrect answers?
3. If so, why might this be the case?
4. Is there a difference between: boys and girls, younger or
older students, etc
5. Is there a relationship between test results and memory?
6. Can memory be improved?
7. How many items can a person recall from short term memory?
8. How is long term memory established?
Complete a written report on this activity under the direction of your teacher.
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Experiment: A Sound Memory
At the final station (postcard 20) there is a game for you to play. To do this
most effectively your class should be split into groups of 4 and rotated
through this activity so that the results for one group do not influence the
results of subsequent groups. This should allow fair comparisons between
groups because most variables will be constant for all of the groups. Follow
the instructions and record the results for each group in the table below.
Table 1: The number of trials taken to complete the game
Student
Name
Age
Sex
(yrs)
(M or
F)
Music
Student
(Yes or
No)
Trial 1:
Moves to
complete
the game
Trial 2:
Moves to
complete
the game
Average
moves
taken
When you get back to school you should put your results together with
those of the rest of your class and consider the following questions. Predict
what you think will happen in each case before actually analysing the
results and write them down as hypotheses.
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Questions to consider:
1. Is there a difference between the results for boys and the results for
girls (consider the mean, median and range, including any outliers)?
Prediction:
Hypothesis:
What actually happened:
Was your prediction correct:
Your explanation:
2. Is there a difference between the results for students who play musical
instruments and the results for students who don’t (consider the mean,
median and range, including any outliers)?
Prediction:
Hypothesis:
What actually happened:
Was your prediction correct:
Your explanation:
3. Is there a difference between the results for older students and the
results for younger students (consider the mean, median and range,
including any outliers)?
Prediction:
Hypothesis:
What actually happened:
Was your prediction correct:
Your explanation:
4. Did the number of Moves taken to complete the game go down from
the first to the last student in a group?
Prediction:
Hypothesis:
What actually happened:
Was your prediction correct:
Your explanation:
5.
(If there is another comparison for you to examine put it here)
Prediction:
Hypothesis:
What actually happened:
Was your prediction correct:
Your explanation:
Complete a written report on this activity under the direction of your teacher.
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Teacher notes
The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth Gallery map
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