In what is, I must admit, a first for me I came across this Recipe Booklet on a school web site when looking for the source of a GCSE to A-level Revision Booklet that features in a recent post about Summer Transition materials. It was filed under Revision for the not implausible reason that what you eat can impact on academic performance.
• 20 individual recipes designed by Mark Lloyd who is, apparently, a “celebrity chef”. The objective of each recipe is to use “ingredients that will enable students to feel fuller for longer and perform well“. Each recipe has full instrcutions for preparing and cooking the meal plus some indication of the nutritional benefits of the meal.
• 3 bonus snack recipes (for things like Granola Bars).
• Videos for 11 of the recipes that walk students (and anyone else come to that) through how to cook the dish. I’m guessing that links to the videos should have been embedded in the pdf document but, for some reason, weren’t.
Luckily I found a document that lists the recipes for which videos are available and the Good News is there are links to view them on Vimeo (which, by a spooky coincidence, is the video platform on which we host our Sociology and Psychology films).
The slightly less Good News is that you need to join Vimeo in order to view the films (the Recipes, not our films – anyone can view our stuff apparently). However, since registration is free that’s not too much of a hardship.
As I hope the accompanying picture shows, the food looks really appetising and if I wasn’t such a hopeless cook I’d be tempted to try the recipes (although, having said that, I might have a go at the Granola Bars…).
For better or worse, the notion of sociological perspectives is deeply embedded in A-level and High School sociology and teaching them can be a bit of a nightmare as far as students new to the subject are concerned.
For one thing, different perspectives introduce ideas about which the majority of students will never have given much thought: they may, for example, have a tangential awareness of broad ideas like Feminism or Marxism but it’s unlikely they will have come across Functionalism, Conflict Theory or Interactionism before starting to study Sociology.
And this leads to the second problem.
The ideas you’re trying to get across are likely to be so far outside their critical comfort zone that they run the risk of seeming abstract and detached from any reality they have hitherto experienced.
One way to resolve this is to anchor each perspective in some semblance of a known reality: a reasonably familiar situation or scenario against which you can apply different perspectives to demonstrate how they can be understood in the context of social behaviour. This will also demonstrate quite clearly to students how each sociological perspective looks at the same situation but interprets it differently – which in itself is useful as a way of generally understanding sociological perspectives as “different ways of seeing“.
A further benefit of this approach is that it helps to establish the idea that the social world may not simply consist of a “single unquestioned reality”: the world in which we live may not have quite the taken-for-granted existence your students may have been lead to believe.
Before we can use a scenario as a way of helping students to apply perspectives they clearly need to have some basic understanding of what each involves. How you do this is, of course, up to you, but it can sometimes be useful to initially sensitise students to the idea of different perspectives in a couple of ways:
Young? or Old?
1. Optical Illusions
Showing your students a few optical illusions makes them sensitive to the idea of “different ways of seeing” the same thing. Just do a simple web search for them if you need examples. I’ve found the ones that work best involve looking at recognisable pictures rather than patterns.
2. Analogies
Once you’ve established the principle that it’s possible for different people to look at the same thing and see it differently you can move-on to Perspectives Proper and one way of separating each perspective in a simple and effective way is to consider each in the context of different analogies. This not only helps students to understand the specific content of different perspectives but has the added bonus of identifying 5 or 6 key ideas about each perspective that can be applied to the final, scenario-based, section.
Once you’ve covered the above (or ignored it and done whatever it is you do) you need to provide your students with a real-life scenario they need to interpret from different perspectives, using the information they’ve previously uncovered. This section can be one that follows directly from the Analogies section or you can introduce it after any work you use to firm-up your students understanding of whatever perspectives you want to teach.
The following short film provides an example of a scenario that involves different applications (in this instance Functionalist, Conflict and Interactionist perspectives):
You don’t, of course, have to use a film clip (although a short news clip or something similar can be a simple, ready-made, way of setting-up a scenario to interpret). A set of pictures and / or simple text description can also be used. All that really matters is that you choose a scenario that gives your students the opportunity to apply their new-found knowledge of perspectives to an understanding of real-world situations.
Finally, of course, if you want to add a bit of evaluation into the mix you could get your students to think about which perspective – or even combination of perspectives – they feel provides the most convincing analysis (and why!) of the scenario they’ve just interpreted.
This series of short films, produced by Dallas Telelearning around 10 years ago, provides an introduction to both Sociology (it’s European and America development) and sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, interactionism and feminism. Although the production and focus generally means the world is seen through American eyes - and much of the illustrative film focused on American politics and culture of the 80’s and 90’s probably won’t mean much to contemporary European audiences – it shouldn’t be difficult for non-US teachers to focus the theoretical content on things that will resonate more with their particular students.
Why Sociology? This One-minute Opener for the OER Sociology series introduces students to the idea of understanding “the individual” in a social context and touches briefly on the concept of a Sociological Imagination.
Origins: This 10-minute film looks at the origins of Sociology as an intellectual and academic discipline in the 19th century and begins with the work of the so-called “Founding Fathers”: Marx, Weber and Durkheim.
It then looks at how Sociology developed in an American context through the work of one of the discipline’s neglected giants, W.E. B. De Bois and his pioneering fieldwork study of African-American neighbourhoods in Philadelphia. The film also discusses the work of sociologists like Jane Adams, another early sociologist whose work is largely neglected in Europe and the black female sociologist Ida Wells-Barnett and her statistical analysis of lynching and it’s theoretical origins in the balance of power between black and white Americans.
A further section of the film looks briefly at the development of “Two Sociologies” in America: the macro analyses, favoured on the East Coast, of social structures and the Chicago School and its influential work on human ecology. The latter included sociologists like Park, Burgess and Lewis.
The film finishes with a short overview of the current global perspective for sociology.
The Functionalist Perspective: This 2-minute introduction to the Functionalist perspective uses The Circus as a way of introducing and illustrating basic Functionalist ideas about social structure, interaction and their relationship.
The Circus setting also gives enterprising teachers the opportunity to talk, quite literally, about “the elephant in the room” when it comes to evaluating the perspective.
Part 2 of a range of fairly up-to-date transition materials that might both inspire and save you a bit of time and effort.
Because Other People have done the Hard Miles.
GCSE to A-level
The second batch of resources is designed to ease the transition from a GCSE mode to an A-level orientation:
St Mary’s Catholic School: A set of transition materials conveniently divided into 4 separate weeks to keep idle hands and brains busy through those long summer days.
Week 1: Focuses on a range of tasks relating to education and sociological perspectives that broadly involves making notes from Internet sources, either web sites or videos.
Week 2: The focus for this week is understanding and applying Functionalism, which involves a range of tasks, from fill-in-the-gaps through applying knowledge to summarising key ideas.
Week 3: This week the focus is on Feminism and mainly consists of reading some Introductory book chapters (supplied), making notes, answering questions and applying this information to different situations. It might be more-interesting than I’ve just made it sound.
Week 4: The final week’s work focuses on Marxism and education and aside from the by-now familiar “watch this video and take notes” activities there’s a final “research task” that involves explaining differential educational achievement from a Marxist perspective.
It’s been a couple of years since I last posted any Sociology Transition materials (work set for students to complete over the summer holiday to ease the transition between GCSE and A-level or Year 12 and Year 13) so I thought it might be useful to update the list with some more-recent materials culled from the labours of hard-working Sociology teachers.
As ever you might find exactly what you’re looking for in the stuff below or, more-likely perhaps, it might inspire you to create something of your own.
Either way, it’s all free.
If not necessarily easy.
GCSE to A-level
The first batch of resources is designed to ease the transition from a GCSE mode to an A-level orientation:
AQA Summer Transition Booklet: 24-page, booklet that provides useful information and tips about what students should expect when they begin their A-level course (from What is Sociology? to what students will study) combined with activities, questions and tasks built around four main areas: Introductory Sociology (key sociological terms, norms and values, introducing theory); Education (differences in educational achievement), Family Life (housework) and Race, Inequality and the Criminal Justice System.
AQA Sociology Transition Work: Combines some simple instructions about what to watch / read before the course starts with a couple of tasks: one covers family life while the other involves creating a small scrapbook of articles on the topics of Families and Households, Education, Crime and Beliefs in Society.
A couple of years ago (in October 2021 to be precise) I added a small number of Revision Sheets created and distributed by the WJEC / Eduqas Exam Board covering areas like Introductory Sociology, Families, Youth Culture, Social Inequality and Research Methods.
It now seems (I’m always the last to know) that in the intervening years they’ve been beavering away behind the scenes and the fruits of their labours have now resulted in a range of new Knowledge Organisers for your educational edification.
And while they’re obviously specific to these Exam Boards there is, as ever, a fair degree of overlap between the different Boards. If you’re a teacher / student following AQA, OCR or even CIE there’s something here for you, too – you may just have to dig a little deeper to find it…
The latest addition to the burgeoning Sociological Detectives™ Universe is a role-playing simulation of the Research Process – and Popper’s Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research in particular – that uses the analogy of a criminal investigation to help students understand and experience how and why the research process is structured.
The simulation takes the students through a number of stages in the investigation – from identifying a problem to prosecuting the guilty party – that mirror the different stages in Popper’s Model.
The basic idea here is that the role-playing element, whereby students are faced with a range of suspects and evidence from which they have to choose one individual they believe the evidence shows is guilty, adds an interesting dimension to what can be a fairly dry and difficult-to-teach area – particularly if you don’t have the time or resources to engage in some hands-on application. (more…)
As you’re probably unaware, there are quite a few Sociology Podcasts out there and it’s a little surprising I haven’t stumbled across this offering before – particularly because it’s been published weekly since August 2022 and there are currently (May 2023) 36 episodes available.
Most podcasts feature one (or sometimes two) guests talking to the host about a single topic for around 30 or so minutes, although some are shorter – around the 20-minute mark – and a few are a lot longer. Personally I found pushing the 40-minute mark for an academic podcast stretching things just a bit too much. Others may disagree, but we all know that’s not very likely.
As befitting the title, Sociology Staffroom podcasts are aimed at (A-level and GCSE) teachers and cover a wide range of topics, from Working in a One-Person Department (an old favourite for those who remember the dear-departed days of ATSS Conferences), through Supporting Non-Specialists and Growing Sociology as an Option to the culture-eating-itself reductiveness of How to Use Sociology Podcasts (featuring someone who runs their own Sociology Podcast…).
Mass killings, particularly in the United States, have a long history, but the murderous rampage carried-out by two senior students at Columbine High School in April 1999 was different.
Not only was it, at the time, the most lethal school shooting in American history it also, in the words ofProfessor Ralph Larkin, “wrote the script” for many of the subsequent mass killings in 21st century America and beyond.
Columbine is also a seminal moment in our understanding of what motivates one of the largest categories of mass killer – the fame-seeking narcissist for whom the end-game to their murderous rampage is the fame and notoriety they ardently desire but which, until in the words of one notorious killer “they spill a little blood”, they believe they are denied.
This short film, the second in a series that began by examining some of the myths surrounding mass killers, features interview footage with Professor Craig Jackson, a leading academic authority on mass killings and highlights ways the desire for fame and notoriety that has motivated an increasing number of mass killers over the past 25 years can be turned against potential killers: by denying them the media exposure their behaviours are explicitly designed to attract.
Mass Killings: The Role of the Media is now available to Buy or for 7-day Rental.
Flipbooks are online magazine-type documents whose defining feature is that you can flip the pages just like if you were reading a real magazine.
Amazing huh?
I don’t know why but I’m sufficiently attracted to this idea to have, over the years created a range of these documents that I’ve grouped into the following education-friendly categories:
A Flipbook.
Research Methods
Introductory
Theory
Education
Crime and Deviance
Revision
Mass Media
Shortcuts Magazine
Aside from reading, the magazines can (usually) be annotated with Sticky Notes (if I’ve remembered to assign this function), text can be highlighted and you can draw rectangles and circles around the text (not quite sure why you’d want to do this, but in case you do, you can).
The flipbooks also have a comprehensive Search function and pages can be bookmarked for future reference.
So, if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary to stimulate your sociological palate (or maybe just to give your students something a little different to look at) then these Sociology Flipbooks may be just what you’ve been looking for.
If you teach High School / AP Psychology (the American equivalent of A-levels) you’ll no-doubt be aware of the American Psychological Association web site. This has a wide range of resources scattered across its many pages that, unfortunately, aren’t always the easiest to find.
So, to save you a of time and trouble I’ve selected a range of Lesson Plans for your browsing pleasure in the hope you might find some, if not necessarily all, of them useful.
If you’ve arrived here from an American destination the lesson plans are aligned to the National Standards for High School Psychology Curricula while if you’ve wandered absent-mindedly to the site from somewhere in the UK you’ll find a lot of the stuff fits into various A-level curricula in terms of level if not necessarily always in terms of content. In this case it’s probably a question of having a look around to see if there’s anything that takes your fancy, either to apply as is or adapt in some way to your particular curriculum.
While these are all designed to be Lesson Plans this can mean different things to different schools and systems, in terms of both teaching time and depth. In the main, the resources listed below tend to be both extensive and comprehensive. Most are designed to be taught over a couple of sessions (although, as I’ve suggested, what constitutes something like “a session” can vary quite widely) but some are more-ambitious and can cover a week or so’s teaching.
Whether you see this as a good thing or bad thing probably depends on the topic and how desperate keen you are for teaching resources.
Unlike the Sociology-specific Workouts (although, as I’ve suggested, it’s not difficult to take the basic Workout formula and apply it to any subjects where the exam board uses Assessment Objectives – that would be all of them), the Revision Hacks are more-general tips ‘n’ techniques students can use to gain a better grade (or that’s the theory, anyway).
As with All-Things-Revision, not every tip, trick, hack or technique with be everyone’s cut of hot chocolate with extra cream, but it doesn’t hurt to try different ideas just to see if they work for you.
And while there are only 5 Hacks available, this is no bad thing given that the objective is to find Shortcuts to Revision (a phrase we will shortly be bringing to a screen very near you):
This is the complete version of a film we originally made around 8 -10 years ago and it starts with how animals were used in psychological research in the past (early to mid 20th century) using original footage of Harlow’s experiments, that consigned baby rhesus monkeys to isolation in ‘the pit of despair’, as a working example.
It brings the story up-to-date by explaining the then-current ethical and legal regulation of using animals in research in Britain and America, illustrates how decisions about whether and how to use non-human animals in research are made and ends with the question of whether animals should ever be used in such research.
Although the film is fine in terms of it’s educational content we subsequently updated it in 2021 (Of Mice and Monkeys: Ethical Issues in Animal Research) mainly to reflect improvements in film definition and to update some of the spoken and graphical content.
The first in a trilogy of films about the psychology of mass killers (subsequent films cover the Role of the Media and the Nature of Victimhood in mass killings), “Mythologies” evaluates three well-known – but arguably mistaken – beliefs about mass killings:
Firstly, that random mass killings are a relatively recent phenomenon, one that largely originated in the latter part of the 20th century with the killing spree carried-out by what is widely considered to be the first American mass killer, Charles Whitman, in 1966.
However, what characterised Whitman’s mass killing wasn’t that he was the first, per se, but that his actions were the first to have been televised. His shooting spree in Texas was captured by a local television station and was the first to have been broadcast ‘live into American homes.
Secondly, there’s a widespread belief that the majority of mass killers suffer from some form of mental illness; their illness is the thing that makes them indulge their fantasies and marks them out as very different from the vast majority of sane human beings. Critical analysis of mass killings, however, shows this to be largely a myth. Only around a tenth of mass killers suffer from a clinically-diagnosable mental illness while around 70% of killers show no indication of mental illness at all.
There are, however, a range of “negative life experiences” suffered by those who subsequently go on to commit mass murder that tend to mark them out from the majority: these include things like serious and persistent levels of bullying at school or work and some sort of life crisis that eventually tips them over into seeing mass murder as a solution to their problems.
Finally, just as most mass killers aren’t mentally ill, the vast majority are neither suicidal nor trying to invite so-called “suicide-by-cop” – the idea that mass killers effectively plan to commit suicide by forcing the police to kill them.
While a relatively small number may invite suicide there’s increasing evidence to suggest that the motivations of mass killers are both many and varied and that an increasing number do not want to die at the scene of their crimes, either by their own hands or those of law enforcement. On the contrary, a significant number of mass killers – motivated by a desire for fame examined in the second film in this series – clearly want their “time in the spotlight”.
And the only way they can achieve this is by staying alive.
It’s a fair bet that for most students – and teachers come to that – “revision” isn’t something that features highly on their list of “things to do” when it comes to studying.
It’s just the tedious stuff they need to do between finishing a course and starting exams because most of what they thought they’d learnt over the preceding two years of an a-level course has mysteriously gone AWOL.
And it’s something they need to find. Sharpish.
Encouraging students to see revision as integral to their studies – as something they do from the very start of their course – isn’t easy, for a variety of reasons with which you probably have an over-easy familiarity. But that isn’t to say you can’t encourage a more proactive approach to revision in a couple of ways:
by providing students with “revision tasks” throughout the course.
by helping students to structure their revision to keep it focused and relevant.
In what is, I must admit, a first for me I came across this Recipe Booklet on a school web site when looking for the source of a GCSE to A-level Revision Booklet that features in a recent post about Summer Transition materials. It was filed under Revision for the not implausible reason that what you eat can impact on academic performance.
This series of short films, produced by Dallas Telelearning around 10 years ago, provides an introduction to both Sociology (it’s European and America development) and sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, interactionism and feminism. Although the production and focus generally means the world is seen through American eyes -and some of the illustrative material focused on American politics and culture of the 80’s and 90’s probably won’t mean much to contemporary European audiences – it shouldn’t be difficult for Non-US teachers to focus the theoretical content on things that will resonate more with their particular students.
It’s been a couple of years since I last posted any Sociology Transition materials (work set for students to complete over the summer holiday to ease the transition between GCSE and A-level or Year 12 and Year 13) so I thought it might be useful to update the list with some more-recent materials culled from the labours of hard-working Sociology teachers.
The latest addition to the burgeoning Sociological Detectives™ Universe is a role-playing simulation of the Research Process – and Popper’s Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research
