Patrick McGhee – författare

Psychology is not simply a body of fixed knowledge like some dead language, which we define, frame, package and pass on. Psychology is a living, evolving process of understanding which depends upon constant debate and discussion being actively entered into by researchers, teachers, practitioners and, yes, students, too. In order to learn about psychology we need to understand it, and in order to understand it we must actively engage with it.This book aims to help students to think psychologically; to encourage them to think more creatively, analytically and critically about almost every type of theory, book or article they will come across in their course; to show them how to be an active learner; to help them understand and question the assumptions psychologists make about the world and the kind of knowledge we can have about it.

Universities and further education colleges are under increasing pressure to provide 'quality' for their students. Quality assurance and development issues affect the staff, resources, administration and culture of an academic institution, yet there is often a lack of clear guidance available to those responsible for implementing best practice. This book provides practical guidelines for managing academic quality assurance and quality enhancement, outlining best practice from both the UK and the rest of the world. Each chapter addresses the key points, risks and good practice across a wide range of quality issues, drawing explicitly and in detail from the QAA guidance on the Code of Practice, Subject Benchmarks, Qualifications Framework and Institutional Audit. The material is presented in an accessible and straightforward style, incorporating useful features such as development questions for individual or team review. A maintained website accompanying this book (www.academicquality.com) contains further useful resources, with updates and supplementary material in this constantly changing area.

Originally published in 1987, Accounting for Relationships, which brought together work by the leading international scholars in the expanding field of personal relationships research at the time, was the first to concentrate entirely on people's accounting for their relationships. It represented a significant move away from the analysis of personal relationships through events and actions on which research had thus far been concentrated, focusing instead on our explanations, interpretations, understanding and conceptions of our relationships.The underlying theme which runs through this collection is that we actually create the experience and reality of our relationships by our accounts of them, and the ‘accounting’ concept links together chapters covering a variety of topics and ranging from research reports to theoretical discussions. The editors have divided the book into three sections. The essays in the first section concentrate on the individual's ‘inner world’ and the psychological processes which underlie his or her understanding and knowledge of a relationship. In the second section the focus is on a more public or expressed level, linking accounts to action, communication and social goals. The third section widens the scope still further, dealing with social and historical origins of collective sense-making, and looking at the extent to which the meaning of a relationship is created independently of the individuals concerned.This collection at once moved the investigation of personal relationships forward by focusing on an aspect which deserved to be given more central importance, and, with respect to social psychology in general, advanced a growing intellectual movement away from individualism towards a relational perspective. Today it can be read in its historical context.