Seeking “A Higher Level of Understanding”
Streamlined AP Psychology class imparts intellectual, career concepts important for talent development
By Ed Finkel
Laura Brandt has taught at CTD for going on two decades, most often AP Psychology. The course has been organized mostly the same way, following the structure of the AP Psychology exam.
But that exam, which has been around since 1992, changed in the past year—and the course shifted along with it—to align with a new “pillar model” that the American Psychological Association adopted, which AP disseminator the College Board wanted to mirror.
“The goal is, whether a student takes a college prep psychology class, typically a semester; an AP class, typically a year; or an intro to psych class at a community college or four-year university, they would come away with the same skills and same understandings,” says Brandt, who teaches AP Psychology and chairs the social studies department at Libertyville High School.
The redesign collapsed what once had been 14 separate psychological concepts that the course covered into units touching on the APA’s five pillars, Brandt says, which cover Biological, Cognition, Development and Learning, Social and Personality, and Mental and Physical Health.
“The College Board is seeking a higher level of understanding...The idea is that if students can do good research—if they know the scientific method—they can do anything they want, whether psychology, or another scientific discipline.” –Laura Brandt
The College Board also has changed the AP test itself in a variety of ways, ditching multiple- choice definitional questions, as well as those asking students to apply said definitions to their daily lives. Instead, students are prompted to analyze and summarize data from a research study and draw conclusions; and, separately, summarize three peer-reviewed articles and stake out a position, providing evidence based on their own reasoning and psychological knowledge.
“The College Board is seeking a higher level of understanding,” she says. “The idea is that if students can do good research—if they know the scientific method—they can do anything they want, whether psychology, or another scientific discipline.” The new assignments also “align with what they’re being asked to do in other social studies classes, and what we think is probably better writing [assignments] than what they’ve done in past exams,” Brandt adds. “They’re actually writing a persuasive essay, instead of, ‘Here’s a term, now apply it.’ ”
What is exciting about these changes, from a talent development perspective, is that they help students connect classroom learning to future possibilities. Through more real-life, applied assignments and career explorations tied to the content, students deepen their understanding of the subject and discover how psychology builds skills relevant to many fields.
The class is now structured into five main units corresponding with the pillars. Unit one covers the biological basis of behavior, the nervous system and the brain, and genetics and heredity. Unit two focuses on perception, memory, thinking and problem-solving. Unit three spans cognitive, linguistic, physical, prenatal and gender development. Unit four looks at social psychology and emotional motivations. And the final unit, which used to be called, “disorders and treatment,” takes a more positive look at mental and physical health.
“That reflects the larger movement in psychology focusing not just on people who are ill, but people who are doing well but could be thriving,” Brandt says.
Teachers introduce students to the careers interwoven into each of those units. While some wait to introduce them sequentially, as they delve into each pillar, Brandt is among those who “preloads” this discussion, covering the gamut at the beginning of the year.
“A lot of teenagers believe, when they enter the course, they have to be a therapist. That’s what they think is psychology,” she says. But they can leverage social psychology to go into a business career, such as marketing, or the emotional motivations to become a human resources specialist, for example. However the teacher chooses to structure the course, “hopefully students will leave with a much broader idea of how psychology … might help them with a career that maybe they don’t think of as related to psychology,” she adds.
Brandt covers the waterfront upfront because she wants them to see, early on, that even those interested in business, engineering or math will learn useful skills. “A lot of students think, this [taking psychology] is one and done. And it might be,” she says. “But I think there are probably some little nuggets they can take from that one psychology class.” She adds, “Not that I’m trying to turn everyone into a psych major, but I do want to expose them to some new opportunities that they didn’t know existed before.”
Students have a choice of which career to explore during each unit; Brandt provides two for each of them. For example, “in mental health and wellness, the choice is between a community psychologist who would intervene probably in high-risk communities at community centers and so forth, before negative things would happen,” she says. “Or they could investigate a psychiatrist or psychologist who’s going to intervene, usually after something has happened.”
“I think it’s fascinating to know how people work. I felt like it would help me grow in emotional intelligence...It was my favorite class that I've ever taken.” –Audrey Billington
For each of those investigative assignments, students research what education they would need, what their day-to-day work life looks like and what salary they make from the beginning to end of their career. Then they do a “closeup” on one particular person who has contributed to the specific subfield, which has ranged from household names like Sigmund Freud to psychologists and psychiatrists unfamiliar to Brandt herself.
Audrey Billington, a freshman at Hillsboro High School in central Illinois who took AP Psychology online over the summer, says she wanted to “get my feet wet” in an AP course and see what the environment was like. While she had an interest in psychology coming in, she enjoyed the class more than she expected and definitely plans to take psychology courses in college. “I think it’s fascinating to know how people work. I felt like it would help me grow in emotional intelligence,” she says, adding, “I loved it. It was my favorite class that I've ever taken.”
Billington found the sections on neurology and mental disorders especially illuminating, as well as projects in which students were asked to apply theory to the real world. “It allowed my brain to connect it to [real-life] situations, which made it more interesting,” she says.
Free response questions where students were asked to analyze evidence using psychological concepts and famous psychological experiments were especially challenging, Billington says. “That definitely required a lot of deep thinking,” she says. “Applying situations to my life made it so much easier to understand and made the course more enjoyable.”
Billington particularly liked an assignment in which students had to pick a character from a movie or a TV show and analyze them as a psychologist would. “We had to look at those characters and try to imagine what mental illnesses they might have,” she says.
The assignment Brandt most enjoys giving dovetails with 20th century Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, in which students fully describe themselves at a certain age—typically age 8 works well—in words, pictures, video, or even including a toy they liked, and then relate that to the developmental stages Piaget laid out.
“I love that they have to talk to their parents to get the stories,” she says. “They have to describe themselves and connect it to the theory—do they connect to the stages like Piaget says they should? … They’re fun to read. I think students have a fun time putting their own twist on it and making the connections.”
Learn more about the AP Psychology course offered through the CTD Online Program on our website. The fall session of AP Psychology is enrolling through October 1, 2025.