Advancing Psychology Education: Insights and Innovations from the 2025 BPS DART-P Annual Conference, By Juliet Holdstock & Isabella Vainieri
On 23rd and 24th June 2025, Royal Holloway, University of London, hosted the annual conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology (DART-P), with members of Teaching in Higher Education: Supporting and Inspiring Students (THESIS), a pedagogic research group in the Psychology Department at Royal Holloway, contributing to the organisation.
This national conference brought together teachers of psychology from higher and pre-tertiary education from across the UK for two days of talks, workshops and poster presentations exploring the theme of ‘Delivering high-quality psychology education in challenging times’.
The opening keynote, delivered by Professor Louise Taylor (Oxford Brookes University), emphasised the role of collaboration and community in achieving excellence in teaching. Professor Taylor highlighted the value of building networks among educators, emphasising that meaningful connections and shared efforts are essential, particularly when time and resources are limited. She introduced T-Fun (Teaching-Focused University Network), a national initiative designed to support teaching-focused academics through collaborative pedagogic research and shared practice. The keynote also included interactive group activities, encouraging delegates to connect, share ideas, and begin forming new professional networks. It was an inspiring and practical start to the conference, reminding attendees that real progress in education is often achieved not alone, but together.
In keeping with the theme of the importance of pedagogic networks, the second keynote was delivered by members of the network of education focused academics within the Psychology Department at Royal Holloway who together make up THESIS. THESIS has extensive expertise in Higher Education pedagogy and provides a supportive collaborative network within the Psychology Department that has led to the development of many effective initiatives to support student wellbeing and improve the educational experience of our students.
Professor Victoria Bourne outlined the development and structure of THESIS, and its dual aims of supporting students throughout their educational journey and supporting staff in their career development through education, pedagogy and scholarship. This was then followed by presentations by staff and students about some of the recent work carried out by the group.
Dr Gemma Northam talked about the work of THESIS in building our psychology community within the University through organising a wide range of fun and informative events for students throughout the academic year. These have included events in which students can meet each other and staff in an informal environment such as a Welcome Week Fair and party, regular coffee mornings, staff-student sports day, and our annual Christmas panto, written and performed by the staff of the Psychology Department for the psychology students, which is the social highlight of the year! The talk also introduced two events that have been designed with student support and wellbeing in mind and have involved co-production and co-creation with students.
Dr Vanita Chamdal expanded on this co-production and co-creation work of THESIS. She described the Wellbeing Day, a co-produced event developed by Dr Beatrice Hayes, which gives students an opportunity to try a range of fun activities led by University societies and has been so successful that in the 2024-25 academic year, it was run as a wider event across a number of departments at Royal Holloway. She also talked about To Academia and Beyond, an event developed by Dr Adnan Levent, focused on academic skills development and employability co-created with a team of psychology students. She highlighted how the benefits of these events are not only limited to the psychology students who attend them, but that the student organisers also gain a huge amount in experience, confidence and employability skills through their involvement.
The keynote also included a talk by Royal Holloway Students Sevitika Sharma and Sana Rehman, who shared their project on decolonising the curriculum. By analysing contents of module lecture slides, they showed both inclusive practice and areas for improvements. They also shared findings from focus groups with fellow students, which explored lived experiences about mental health, gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity, and religion. They also presented an ongoing project involving an annual student survey to monitor students’ perception of inclusion. Their presentation offered examples of how student-led research can actively shape teaching and institutional culture.
Lastly, Dr Sam Fairlamb presented his work on supporting students in using technology, including running drop-in sessions and co-creating resources for first-year students to navigate platforms like Moodle. The presentation also covered digital tools to support students, such as informational videos covering topics like navigating campus, and educational videos aimed at developing academic skills.
The conference also included a varied and stimulating programme of talks that explored several key themes in psychology education, including supporting staff and student well-being, innovative and sustainable teaching practices, and fostering collaboration and community.
Sessions on staff and student well-being included presentations on how education can shape attitudes toward mental health, teaching sensitive topics like forensic psychology, and supporting police apprenticeship students facing exposure to trauma. Practical initiatives were also presented, such as the Inclusion Café, animal-assisted interventions, strategies for reducing statistics anxiety, and much more.
Talks on innovative and sustainable teaching practices included presenting approaches to enhance learning and engagement, such as integrating comics and animations into course design, exploring AI-powered revision tools and enhancing assessment feedback strategies. Talks also covered topics like problem-based learning, decolonisation of the curriculum, employability and career skills.
Talks focusing on collaboration and community explored how to foster inclusion and belonging on campus. For example, co-creating assessment rubrics with students to improve clarity and fairness, participatory action research promoting neuro-inclusion, and a peer-support programme to help students stay connected and supported during the dissertation phase.
Alongside the talks there was a lively poster session and a series of workshops which gave delegates an opportunity to develop inspiration, new ideas, and new strategies for their teaching practice These workshops explored a diverse range of topics including the challenge of developing students’ research skills when working with limited resources and large student cohorts, and a holistic approach to teaching to improve both student wellbeing and academic progress, particularly for vulnerable students. There was also an interesting workshop focusing on designing assessments to incorporate authentic experiences and guided reflection, which provided useful case studies and guidance for developing experiential reflective assessments. The final workshop introduced delegates, in a very hands-on way, to an innovative table-top role play game that requires players to work collaboratively to move through ethical, cognitive and emotional challenges and in doing so enables key concepts in psychology to be explored.
Overall, the conference provided a friendly and stimulating environment, providing opportunity to develop connections, share ideas and learn about the innovative pedagogic work happening across the UK.