Graduate Diploma in Arts - Psychology

at Massey University - Auckland Campus New Zealand

Become equipped with the concepts, theories, and facts you need to make sense of the world around you.

Politics is about contestations for power and how we make decisions in society – who gets what, when, and how – from the local community to the nation and internationally.

Politics is concerned with the conflict of ideas and values. It has to do with who governs. It’s also has to do with how and why decisions that affect all of us are made. That could vary from how much students should pay to study at university to whether the UN should sanction military interventions.

With Massey’s Master of Arts (Sociology) you can build on your undergraduate interests. Sociology is about understanding and describing our local society and its global setting.

Sociology is about understanding and describing our local society and its global setting. Sociologists are interested in almost all aspects of the social world and in your MA (Sociology) you’ll consider questions such as:

• how is society structured?
• how is society changing?
• what divides or unites social groups?
• what causes the inequalities we see in society?
• how does power operate?

With a Massey MA (Sociology) you’ll ask challenging questions about how power structures function in the social world. You’ll study culture, ethnicity, class, inequality, gender, mass media, politics, environment, and social change as well as individual and group interactions.

The quantitative skills that you’ll gain from a Massey Bachelor of Arts (Statistics) can set you apart from other graduates when applying for jobs.

Social anthropology is the study of the relationship between human beings and culture. It gives you a deeper understanding of cultural variation and cultural change. It allows you to better understand your own culture as one among many possible ways of being human.

Social (or cultural) anthropologists seek to understand cultural differences. That includes the many ways people maintain and change the culture in response to new social contexts. Social anthropologists bring a comparative approach to the description and analysis of society based on fieldwork that extends across the globe, from hunter-gatherers to industrial nation-states.

If you have an interest in how culture influences psychology, then Massey’s Diploma in Arts (Indigenous Psychologies) is for you.Indigenous (local) psychologies is a movement, perspective and approach that examines how the worldviews specific to particular (Indigenous) communities influence the thoughts and behaviours of group members.

Massey offers the only specialisations in Indigenous psychologies in the South Pacific.

This diploma has been developed from an intellectual movement that recognises that ways of conceptualizing and interacting with reality differ greatly between individuals depending on their cultural affiliation and context. 

Develop your interests from your undergraduate degree. The Massey PGDipArts (Social Anthropology) gives you a different perspective on world affairs. Studying social anthropology develops your understanding of other cultures and ethnic groups. You’ll discover how your way of life is just one of many possible ways of being human. Learn to challenge your existing beliefs and put yourself in others’ shoes.

Massey University’s Postgraduate Diploma in Science and Technology (Conservation Biology) gives you the opportunity to join the pathway to in-depth research at a master's level. The qualification consists of 90 credits of taught courses and 30 credits of research.

The qualification gives you the opportunity to show your analytical thinking and high-level research capability. 

The Master of Construction (Construction Law) degree is unique. It the only specialist master’s degree program with a construction law specialization offered in New Zealand. It is a flexible study program that allows you to continue to work full time.

Gain specialized knowledge
You will gain specialist knowledge in areas of construction law, construction contracts, construction contract administration and alternative dispute resolution including statutory adjudication. Three other unique features include the offering of statutory adjudication as a whole course, the focus on drafting construction contracts in modern plain legal language, and the international comparative element that complements country-specific issues

Psychology covers a broad range of topics, but at its simplest level it is the systematic study of individual behaviour. It considers emotions, personality, and the way individuals interact. It also considers learning, memory, thinking and the brain.Psychology is a growing and ever-changing subject which helps us make sense of the human impact on the world in which we live.You'll learn how people perceive, learn, think, develop, behave, and relate to one another. Courses will teach you how the structure of the brain affects our behaviour, what makes people different from one another and how being in groups affects people's behaviour. Finally, you'll learn how factors like culture, gender, poverty, and mental illness affect our health, our thinking, and our behaviour.

To learn about history is to learn about change in the world and in ourselves. Having a better understanding of history will make you more broad-minded as a person and citizen.

History is a topic as large as our recorded past. Our cultural heritages, literatures, arts, religions, politics, economics, social behaviours, buildings and landscapes all derive from past influences.

Massey offers a range of topics so you can explore your own particular interests. Topics you could study include:

• The history of New Zealand and the Pacific
• Focus on the history of Britain/Europe
• Study pre-industrial society or colonisation
• Social and political history, or
• Contemporary history.