Complete two short reviews that you imagine an editor for the academic journal Science might have received from the journal's peer reviewers. One review should recommended the paper is not published and one should recommend it is published.

In this assessment, you will engage in a piece of role playing - imagining that you a peer reviewer who has been asked by the journal 'Science' to provide your view on whether Rosenhan's paper should be accepted by the journal and therefore published. You will write one review recommending the paper be accepted and published without any changes required and one recommending the paper be rejected.

Rosenhan's paper has become very influential in the field of critical social psychology and made a major contribution to the Psychiatric Survivors’ Movement and other civil rights movements of people labelled with a mental illness. The Rosenhan study has also had an impact on mainstream psychology that has been broad and polarising. It has had a particular impact on psychological theories and practices regarding mental health and mental illness. Your task is to show your understanding of that polarisation by writing two opposing reviews of the study. This assignment will draw upon materials covered in the first four weeks of the unit to show your understanding of the cultural and political context and consequence of diagnosing people with a mental illness.

• The length of the assessment must not exceed 800 words.
• Text should be word-processed and follow APA 7 style for layout.
• Use Arial font and double spacing.
• You must include a reference section at the end of the assessment. Referencing and citations should be in APA 7 format.

Use of Generative AI

For this assessment, you may elect to use Generative AI to help you:

• Supplement teaching resources provided on the unit to help you further understand the concepts discussed (such as those related to opposing views of mental illness) as well as finding and understanding background literature and resources related to the topic.
• Check the grammar, punctuation, and syntax of your written work.
• Enhance the vocabulary of your writing and submitted assessment.
• Manage the word count of the assessment.

You are not permitted to use Generative AI technology to:

• Help you summarise the Rosenhan paper.
• Help you relate the Rosenhan paper to opposing views of mental illness.
• Elaborate on the challenges posed by the Rosenhan paper for mainstream psychology.

The full marking criteria will be in the form of a detailed marking rubric available on the Moodle site. The criteria broadly reflected in that rubric will be on how well you capture controversies around the concept of mental illness and on how well you demonstrate your communication skills, critical thinking skills and research skills. You will be specifically assessed on your ability to effectively and critically present a critical analysis of the concept of mental illness through your ability to present two opposing views of the construct of mental illness.

• 20% of your mark will depend on how you present your summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the Rosenhan paper.
• 30% of your mark will depend on how you relate the Rosenhan paper to opposing views of mental illness.
• 50% of your mark will depend on how you elaborate on the challenges posed by the Rosenhan paper for mainstream psychology. 

Critical social psychology is an area of the discipline of psychology which offers us the opportunity to adopt a more subjective, reflexive relationship to theory and practice. In Critical Social Psychology the objective, neutral stance of the psychologist is rejected in favour of a subjective, partisan stance. Assessment Two offers you an opportunity to develop or re-engage with those reflexive skills through the practice of diary keeping. Reflexivity is different from reflectivity. Reflective means thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions. Reflexive means thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions through the eyes of another. For this assessment, you will engage with reflexivity through the eyes of the various writers whose work we will discuss during the unit.

For the first eight teaching weeks, you should keep a weekly diary of your learning. The diary will contain two sections. In the first section you should summarise what you have learnt from that particular week (e.g., week 1) in the form of a summary of the ideas contained in, for example, the teaching videos, content covered by any required or suggested reading and the topics discussed during the online tutorial for that week. This should be a concise summary and be no longer than 125 words.

The second section will be your critical reflexions on that material in relation to what you learned about the role of social cultural factors in psychology, how your understanding of social support and social power has either been consolidated or changed during that week and what dilemmas or inconsistencies you have identified in your understanding of psychology’s approach to particular social issues. You should approach this task as an exercise of considering your own thoughts, feelings and actions through the perspective of the different approaches we cover that week. This section should be no longer than 275 words.

Once you have completed eight weeks of diary entries (one entry per week for the first eight teaching weeks), you will choose the two diary entries that you feel best meet the marking criteria. Pick your best work and submit those two diary entries in one document. The other six entries should be included as an appendix to that document but will not be assessed. The length of the assessment must not exceed 800 words (this word count does not include your appendix).

• Text should be word-processed and follow APA 7 style for layout.
• Use Arial font and double spacing.
• You must include a reference section at the end of the assessment. Referencing and citations should be in APA 7 format.

Use of Generative AI

For this assessment, you may elect to use Generative AI to help you:

• Check the grammar, punctuation, and syntax of your written work.
• Enhance the vocabulary of your writing and submitted assessment.
• Manage the word count of the assessment.

You are not permitted to use Generative AI technology to:

• summarise the content of a teaching week for your diary entry.
• draw out the social and cultural context of a piece of mainstream psychological theory.
• analyse the vested interests behind that mainstream psychological theory or practice.

The marking criteria will be in the form of a detailed marking rubric available on the Moodle site. The criteria laid out in the rubric will assess you on how well you are able to: identify and describe the socio-cultural contexts that impact two key areas of social psychological enquiry; recognise how privilege, power and oppression impact upon the social practices of prejudice and discrimination and the social context of inequity; identify the personal dilemmas you face and inconsistencies of beliefs you have in relation to social psychological topics and how well you think through possible resolutions for these; and, attain knowledge about key social psychological concepts by sifting and sorting through complex areas of the research literature. 

• 30% of your mark will depend on how you review the key content of a teaching week.
• 40% of your mark will depend on how you interrogate the social and cultural context of a key piece of mainstream psychological theory or practice.
• 30% of your mark will depend on how you analyse the vested interests behind a key piece of mainstream psychological theory or practice.

Essay writing is one of the key skills used by critical social commentators. It is the medium that offers the opportunity to fully engage with and communicate your critical thinking on important social issues. Throughout history, skilled essay writers have been among the most important agents of social change as essays combine literary skills with analytic skills to produce written texts that can create sufficient social and political ruptures to enable progressive social change. For example, the essays of Gore Vidal have influenced the peace movement, James Baldwin’s essays influenced the black civil right movement, the essays of Simone de Beauvoir influenced the women’s movement and so on. So, be inspired by the prospect of writing an essay, don’t be daunted by it.

Once you become skilled at essay writing, it can become a means for you to find your ‘academic voice’ – a style of argument that both conforms to the conventions of academic practice but also has a unique quality that reflects your disposition, your life experiences, and your particular way of seeing the world. The convention that you will follow will be: to cite evidence to support your arguments; to provide citations and references to the literature from where that evidence comes; to structure your essay with an introduction, main text body and conclusion (no abstract required); and, to identify and defend against the counter arguments and counter claims that are made in relation to your own arguments and claims.

Your voice comes through with the way you express your ideas. The more you stay away from citing long quotes, the less you paraphrase the work of others, and the less reliant you are on Generative AI technologies (e.g., ChatGPT) to write for you, the more space you will have to hone your skills and develop your own writing style and to find your voice.

This task involves critically evaluating how psychological theories or practices are undergoing change as a result of the 'Indigenising the Curriculum' project. This involves considering both critical psychological perspectives and perspectives from the First Nations movement. You can choose to focus on indigenising the curriculum work either in Australia or at a more global level. But if you chose to focus on the curriculum work in Australia, you still need to connect to that global level.

Here is a breakdown of what this essay task entails:

• Historical and Conceptual Analysis: You should explore the conceptual underpinnings of the term 'indigeneity' and the implications of its use, both in a historical and contemporary sense.
• Critical Analysis: You should approach the topic critically. This means you should engage in analysis rather than description. Your analysis should be in-depth, focusing on how psychology, in the past, has contributed to the negative treatment of First Nations people. You can use theories from critical social psychology to help you with this analysis.
• Consequences and Implications: You should consider some real-world consequences and implications of the Indigenising the Curriculum project in psychology. So, for example, what is the project changing in relation to how psychology is taught? Are those changes sufficient and effective?
• Analysis of power: You should consider why it has taken so long for the Indigenising the Curriculum project to be established and why momentum might have been slow since the project's inception. You should use theories and concepts on social power from critical social psychology here. 

In essence, this essay task challenges you to engage in a thoughtful and critical examination of the historical roots of discrimination enacted or defended by psychology against First Nations people and its implications for our understanding of colonial practices in psychology. The task encourages you to question the prevailing norms and biases in the field and to persuasively challenge mainstream psychology to play a greater role in promoting a more inclusive and equitable perspective on issues around First Nations people.

Important points:

The length of the assessment must not exceed 1200 words.
Text should be word-processed and follow APA 7 style for layout.
Use Arial font and double spacing.
You must include a reference section at the end of the assessment. Referencing and citations should be in APA 7 format.

Use of Generative AI

For this assessment, you may elect to use Generative AI to help you:

• Supplement teaching resources provided on the unit to help you further understand the concepts discussed (such as those related to the topic) as well as finding and understanding background literature and resources related to the topic.
• Check the grammar, punctuation, and syntax of your written work.
• Enhance the vocabulary of your writing and submitted assessment.
• Manage the word count of the assessment.

You are not permitted to use Generative AI technology to help you:

• Identify the specific cultural and political context that you present.
• Articulate your chosen psychological approach.
• Develop and present your critical reflections on your chosen psychological approach.
• Select and articulate the mechanisms of social power that maintain the status quo regarding the topic.

With this being the main piece of assessment, the marking criteria will cover all of the unit’s planned learning outcomes. The marking criteria will be in the form of a detailed marking rubric available on the Moodle site. The criteria laid out in the rubric will assess you on how well you are able to cover both mainstream and diverse perspectives in your essay, to reflexively describe how sociocultural and international contexts impact those perspectives, to evaluate the usefulness of particular social psychological ideas and to map out the way social power impacts social phenomena.

• 25% of your mark will be on how you identify the cultural and political context.
• 10% of your mark will be on how you articulate a particular psychological approach.
• 25% of your mark will be on how you critically reflect on that approach.
• 40% of your mark will be on how you recognise how social power maintains the status quo.

There will not be a separate marking criterion related to your written expression (such as the clarity of your writing and your avoidance of spelling and grammatical errors), but implicit to each element of the marking criteria will be an assessment of your writing skills (i.e., if you present an idea poorly because of writing errors, you will not pick up as many marks as you would if you were to present that same idea written well).