PowerPoint: The ABC of Investigating

This spin-off from the burgeoning Sociological Detectives Universe™ is a vehicle by which you can simply and not-a-little-secretly introduce a soupcon of Study Skills into what we’re contractually obliged to call “The Student eXperience” (sic). In other words this PowerPoint Presentation is a slightly different way to encourage your students to take information you provide […]

Podcasts with Pictures: Learning Academy

Another in the “Podcasts with Pictures” series designed to bring to your attention video materials you or your students might find useful. In this instance we have a series of “video lessons” created by The Learning Academy. Each of the 14 lessons lasts between 10 and 15 minutes and consists of someone talking about a […]

Origins of Sociology: PowerPoint

This new PowerPoint Presentation introduces students to some (okay, 9) of Sociology’s founders, from the Big Three of Marx, Durkheim and Weber to lesser-known, but equally important in their own way, names such as Harriet Martineau and William Du Bois. And while Sociology Specifications in the UK no-longer feature discrete sections on the Founders of […]

Situational Action Theory

Most a-level teachers and students will probably be most familiar with Per-Olof Wikstrom’s work on the Peterborough Adolescent Development Study (PADS), a longitudinal study of youth crime in a “provincial English town”. One that sits mid-way between the teeming Birmingham metropolis and Norwich. Which, with the best will in the world, can neither be described […]

Crime and Social Disadvantage: The Evidence

One of the more-interesting things about the use of Situational Action Theory (SAT) to explore the relationship between crime and social disadvantage is that it developed alongside Wikstrom’s Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+). This longitudinal study of young people’s behaviour in the early part of the 21st century has proven to be […]

Situational Action Theory: Crime and Social Disadvantage

While the relationship between social disadvantage and crime  has long been known, an important question that’s often ignored is why only a relatively small proportion of the socially disadvantaged seem to engage in persistent criminal offending? Wikstrom’s Situational Action Theory provides an interesting, thought-provoking, possible answer… The Crime Paradox Most A-level crime and deviance students […]

Crime and Victimisation: 1. Victimology

This section of Crime Notes focuses on a number of different aspects of victimisation with the initial emphasis on the concept of victimology, the social construction of victims and a range of victim-orientated policies introduced into England and Wales in the 21st century. Over the past 50 or so years there has been a growth […]

Dynamic Learning: Metacognition

The 7th film in our Dynamic Learning Series designed to introduce students to a range of important ideas and skills related to the science of studying. Understandably perhaps, most students spend the vast majority of their study time thinking about what they’re learning, rather than how they’re learning it, on the not-too-questionable  basis that if […]

Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 6. Left Realism

Short set of Notes on a kind of complementary, albeit less revolutionary, approach to understanding crime and deviance that you can either lump-in with Critical Criminology or treat as a separate, neo-critical, perspective. Your choice. But let’s just hope it’s the right one, for everyone’s sake… Left Realism: A Young Man’s Game? Young (2003) suggests […]

Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 5. Marxism

A broad overview of a range of different Marxist interpretations of crime and deviance in words and pictures Or, if you want to be picky, film. Marxist (or critical) theories of crime assume that no behaviour is inherently deviant. Behaviour only becomes criminalised through the creation and application of laws – and in capitalist societies […]