A-level Sociology Videos: Crime and Deviance

Tips 4 Sociology is a YouTube Channel offering “Sociology Resources for A-level and GCSE students”, although there’s stuff here aimed at WJEC Criminology Certificate and Diploma students (for reasons that may or may not become apparent).

The site is run by Dan Tipton – or at least it was because it hasn’t been updated for the past year so I’m guessing he’s probably given it up as a bad job. I don’t actually know. It could be he just decided to do something different or maybe got tired of making stuff that very few people bothered to watch.

Whatever to reason, the site has 60 short(ish) videos that, as far as A-level Sociology is concerned, are pretty-much exclusively focused on Crime and Deviance. The GCSE videos (9 in all) seem to be split evenly between Deviance and Stratification. While the site suggests the plan was to cover other areas I guess we’ll probably never know why the project was abandoned – which is a bit of a shame because the films that exist seem to be well-planned, enthusiastically presented and, most-importantly, Quite Informative.

Another thing to note is that while the site claims the films “are useful for all Boards” this is true only up-to-a-point: the fact there’s a lot of films covering “Youth Culture” suggests to me they lean more towards OCR but, having said that, there is plenty of content here that’s relevant to Eduqas and AQA (but not CIE because for some weird reason they don’t offer Crime and Deviance).

With that minor caveat in mind, the A-level films are organised into four categories:

1. Full Lessons: these run for a significant length (30 -45 minutes) and do exactly what they say. You get a “full lesson” on a particular (deviance) topic, taking the form of a filmed lesson: Dan, a camera, a whiteboard and some Presentation software. While the length might not be everyone’s cup of hot chocolate I found Dan interesting and personable enough to hold my attention (which, given how generally impatient I am, was quite a feat). These films could be useful for flipped teaching, revision or as a way for students who’ve missed classes to get back up to speed.

2. Straight from the Whiteboard: these come in around 15 minutes each and do pretty much what you’d expect. Dan uses his whiteboard to take students through the basics of 4 criminology perspectives: Marxism, Functionalism, Interactionism and Realism.

3. Explainers: these focus on a single idea, concept or perspective and run for around 10 minutes, tops. The format’s basically the same – a short lecture that uses a whiteboard and Presentation software.

4. Insights: these come in at around 5 minutes each and seem to consist of Dan talking directly to the camera (as opposed to walking around and waving his arms) about the life and work of a specific sociologist (Cohen, Hirschi, Hall etc.).

While it’s a shame the Channel seems to begin and end with Deviance, what’s available is something that’s well worth a look for both students and teachers.