PowerPoint: The Hypothetico-Deductive Model

This is a simple one-slide PowerPoint presentation of Popper’s classic model of scientific research. The presentation contains two versions: Click-to-advance: this allows teachers to reveal each element in the model at their own pace. This is useful if you want to talk about each of the elements before revealing the next. Self-advancing: if you want […]

School Climate: A different dimension to differential educational achievement?

The relationship between social class – or socio-economic status (SES) if you prefer – and differential educational achievement is well-known at A-level and students are expected to discuss and evaluate a range of possible factors / explanations for this relationship; these are usually grouped, largely for theoretical convenience, into “outside school” and “inside school” factors, […]

ShortCuts to Sociology: Organised Crime

A few years ago we did some interviews for a film on organised crime that, for one reason or another (money, probably), didn’t get made – if memory serves we were going to include a version on ShortCuts to Crime and Deviance Vol. 1 but it didn’t make the final selection. Anyway, I was searching […]

Deviancy Amplification Spiral: Legal Highs

Wilkins’ (1964) concept of a deviancy amplification spiral (or ‘Positive Feedback Loop’ as he called it) has been a staple of the crime and deviance Specification for many years and there’s a range of ways to present the feedback process, both statically and a bit more dynamically. Examples of a “successful” feedback loop are, however, […]