Ghostsites: Wathistory
WatHistory is a YouTube site I’ve been meaning to write about but, for whatever reason, never got around to doing so until now. I guess I was inspired by the sociology ghostsites theme because this site seems to have something of a chequered history. Although the Twitter account ceased trading in 2018 and the .com website may never […]
Methods in Context: Crime in England and Wales
Keeping abreast of the various statistical sources and data on crime can be both time-consuming and somewhat confusing for teachers and students – both in terms of the volume of data and the reliability and validity of different data sources. For these reasons the Office for National Statistics statistical bulletin is a brilliant resource for […]
Differential Educational Achievement: “Must Try Harder?”
Explanations for differences in educational achievement based around concepts like class, gender, ethnicity and, for rather different reasons, age are well-known and generally covered comprehensively at High School and A-level, in relation to both “outside” and “inside” school factors. In terms of the former this includes a variety of material and / or cultural factors […]
Methods in Context: Overt Participant Observation
For some reason I thought I’d already blogged this document, but it seems I’d put it on the Sociology Central web site but not here. To rectify the omission, therefore, this document uses Sudhir Venkatesh’s “Gang Leader For a Day” study as the basis for an outline and evaluation – the advantages and disadvantages – […]
Teaching A-level Research Methods: Part 3
Talk the Walk At this point students need to get to grips with learning the basics of research methods. How you organise this is up to you, but one way is to get students to take ownership of their learning: If there are sufficient students, split the class into groups and give each group responsibility […]
Teaching A-level Research Methods: Part 2
Virtual Research in a Real Location The idea here is that we use students’ knowledge of a real location as the basis for virtual research: while the scenario is real – a location such as a high street, shopping mall, school or college – students aren’t required to carry-out any real (time-consuming) research. Rather, they […]
Methods in Context: Crime and Official Statistics
While the validity of Official Crime Statistics has long been questioned, their reliability has tended to be assumed. Recent pronouncements by the ONS, however, suggest that students should look at the reliability of crime statistics more critically…