Devise an argument for a debate against the motion: the David Rosenhan's 1973 paper is no longer relevant to the field of psychology because it is now over 50 years old and things are different now. 

Your task is to write a script for a presentation you will give to a debating society. You have a maximum of 10 minutes to speak. To make sure you do not go over time, your script should be no more than 800 words in length. This is a written script only. You are not being asked to submit any slides and you will not be required to present your script orally, although reading it out to someone else would be an excellent way of proofreading your script before you submit it. The focus of the debate you are preparing your script for is on the 1973 paper by David Rosenhan called ‘Staying Sane in Insane Places’. The debate is on a motion that states the Rosenhan paper is no longer relevant to psychology. You will be arguing against that motion.

The Rosenhan paper has been 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 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. In this assignment, you 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 and how that understanding points to the continued relevance of the Rosenhan paper.

Important information:

• The length of the assessment must not exceed 800 words.
• Your writing style should adopt a conversational tone: use simple, clear language that sounds natural when spoken. Avoid jargon and overly complex sentences.
• Your assignment should be text only, be word-processed and follow the APA style for layout.
• Use should use Arial font and double spacing.
• You are not required to include citations to the literature, but if you do you must include a reference section at the end of the assessment. Referencing and citations should be in the APA 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.

• 20% of your mark will depend on how you present a summary of the Rosenhan paper and its reception by the Psychiatric Survivor Movement.
• 30% of your mark will depend on how you relate the findings of the Rosenhan paper to mainstream psychology’s approach to the topic of mental illness.
• 50% of your mark will depend on how you elaborate on the relationship between the Rosenhan paper and a critical social psychological perspective on mental illness. 

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 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.

How can psychology more closely align with the Disability Movement? A critical discussion of the historical and contemporary positioning of psychology on the topic of impairment. 

Essay writing has been one of the key skills used by critical social commentators. It is the medium that offers you 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 research 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 influenced the peace movement, James Baldwin’s essays influenced the black civil right movement, the essays of Simone de Beauvoir wrote 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 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 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 AI technologies like ChatGPT to write for you, the more space you will have to hone your skills and develop your own writing style.

This assignment changes each term the unit is delivered and in this term your task for this assignment is to undertake a comprehensive examination of the concept of impairment and disability within the context of psychology's past treatment of disabled people. The task involves critically evaluating how psychological theories or practices in the past have reinforced and perpetuated disablism. This involves considering both critical social psychological perspectives and perspectives from the disability movement. 

Here is a breakdown of what this essay task entails:

• Disablism: You should focus on the distinction between the medical and social models of disability. 
• Critical Analysis: You should approach the topic critically. This means you should engage in analysis rather than description and your analysis should be in-depth, focusing on of how psychology, in the past, has helped to reinforce ableist norms. This might involve discussing instances where disabled people’s lives and experiences have been pathologized or ignored within psychology. You can use theories from critical social psychology and social psychology to help you with this analysis.
• Historical Perspectives:  You should examine the historical context, including key psychological theories or practices that relate directly to the topic of disability. This may include influential figures, or key approaches that have played an important role in shaping the discipline of psychology and what it has said about disability. 
• Consequences and Implications:  You should consider some real-world consequences and implications of ableism in psychology. You can, for example consider how mainstream psychology may have contributed to discrimination, stigma, or to limiting our understanding of disabled people’s lives.
• Analysis of power: While the focus is on historical work in mainstream psychology, you also should consider how that work remained current for as long as it did and how the legacy of that work might have an ongoing negative impact. You should use theories and concepts on social power from critical social psychology or social psychology here.  
  In essence, this essay task challenges you to engage in a thoughtful and critical examination of the historical roots of ableism in psychology and its implications for our understanding of disability and impairment. It 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 disabled peoples’ lives.

Important Information:

• 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: identify how ableism has impacted culture and led to the rise of the disability movement; articulate how ableism impacted psychology in the past; critically reflect on how psychology needs to promote a more socially progress approach to disability; and recognise the real-world consequences of it not doing so..

• 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).