Rational Choice Theory | 2

This second (of two) posts evaluates Rational Choice Theory and, by extension, any New Right / Right Realist theories based on the notion of rational cost-benefit analyses of criminal motivation. Digested Read A list of all the relevant bits to save you having to read through the rest of the post… • Rational Choice Theory […]

Sociology Revision Cards

Back in the day, before the invention of Learning Tables / Knowledge Organisers, students had to make do with Revision Cards – lists of all the key ideas and concepts you might need to know for an exam (you’ll find a selection here if you want to take a trip back to a time before […]

Marxism Sim

This is a slightly weird one because it seems to be an unfinished, abandoned, web site dating from 4 or 5 years ago created by Chris Deakin (who has another sociology blog you might find useful). It has precisely two blog posts. One of those posts – “Using simulation to illustrate basic Marxist theory” – […]

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias involves the tendency – usually, but not necessarily, unconscious – for individuals to look for and accept information that confirms what they already know and believe. In other words, it involves a cognitive tendency to place greater importance on “evidence” that generally supports a position we already hold. This process has been famously […]

Psychological Studies: A Free Text

40 Studies that Changed Psychology is a free (presumably because it’s around 10 years old and out-of-print) text I discovered while rooting around the Web that offers-up a selection of influential psychological studies that, in the opinion of its author Roger Hock, changed the way we think about – and in some cases do – […]

Psychology Learning Tables | 6

It’s been a while (March 2018 if anyone’s interested. Anyone?) since I posted any psychology Learning Tables / Knowledge Organisers so I thought it might be helpful to post a few more to add to your growing collection. As you may have noticed, I’ve decided to post the Tables in a slightly different way, as […]

School Climate: Narrowing the Gender Gap?

In a UK context, the relationship between gender and educational achievement – whereby girls consistently outperform boys at all levels of the education system – is both well-known and persistent. More-interestingly, perhaps, this situation is not, as Legewie and DiPrete (2012) note, confined to the UK, given that “boys generally underperform relative to girls in […]

Gender and Subject Choice

Another little bonus to add to yesterday’s offering from the work I’m currently doing on the concept of school climate and its possible effect on achievement. This one comes in the form of a couple of pieces of research commissioned by the Institute of Physics that cover gendered subject choices at A-level. Closing Doors: Exploring […]

DEA: Mythbusters

I’ve recently been looking at the idea of school climate and its possible relationship to the gender gap in educational achievement for a forthcoming blog post, a fact I mention for a couple of reasons: firstly, because I think the notion of school climate and its possible impact on educational achievement is an interesting idea, […]