PsychEd: Free Resources

A rather unprepossessing WordPress blog about A-level Psychology, run by someone called “Ed” (hence the title) and featuring 8 posts in 2 years isn’t the kind of thing I usually feature on the blog. But I’ve made an exception because, much like the proverbial duck, while there may not be much happening on the surface […]

The A-level Gender Gap: A Visual Tool

Although I’ve posted before about the gender gap in subject choice, the focus has largely been on explanations for the gap in various broad subject strands (see, for example, Archer 2013). While this type of analysis is, of course, vital, what sometimes gets overlooked in the rush to explain is data that actually allows students […]

Geographical Profiling Applied: The M25 Rapist

Continuing the recent Crime and Criminology vibe with our films (if you’re interested in Geographic Profiling you might also be interested in it’s better-known counterpart Offender Profiling), this companion-piece to Introducing Geographical Offender Profiling complements the original film by using the example of Antoni Imiela, the man the media dubbed the M25 Rapist because the […]

Sociology: No. 5 with a Bullet…

We’ve been doing a bit of research on the rising popularity of Criminology, mainly it has to be said in Wales (the popularity, not the research) and speculating about why no English exam board currently offers the subject at a-level (WJEC currently offer an a-level equivalent Diploma that’s recognised by UCAS, but it’s mainly only […]

Podcasts Without Pictures: The Sociology Show

Educational podcasting – both with and without pictures – has become increasingly popular over the past few years as the wider availability of computer audio equipment, plus the ease of uploading and hosting content, has made producing such resources much quicker and easier. We’ve featured some examples of these podcasts in the past and while […]

Psychology Transition Materials

As with their sociological peers, Psychology teachers have also been busy producing a wide range of materials designed, in the main, to ease the transition between GCSE and A-level and this means there’s plenty of resources freely available to either use “as is” or, more-likely perhaps, to inspire the creation of your own transition resources. […]

Sociology Transition Materials

If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, Sociology transition materials are resources designed to help students transition from either GCSE to A-level or from A1 to A2. In the normal course of events they consist of notes, readings, activities and exercises that students complete during the long months of their summer holidays when they would otherwise […]

Sociology Revision Blasts

Having girded my loins, as you do, for this set of Tutur2U GCSE and A-level Revision videos I was quite prepared to be met with a series of “worthy-but-a-little-dull” screencasts that used a “Podcasts with Pictures” format to talk students through a range of sociological topics. In other words, someone talking over and around a […]

The D.O.V.E. Protocol: 4 Functions of Religion

Classical functionalist theories of religion, associated with the work of writers like Durkheim (1912), Malinowski (1926), Alpert (1937), Parsons (1937) and more-latterly Luhmann (1977), generally see religion as a cultural institution: one mainly concerned with the creation and promotion of cultural values that function to support and maintain social order.  Underpinning the notion of order, […]

Are you feeling lucky?

When it comes to Sociology Knowledge Organisers I’m starting to feel like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry: in all the excitement I’ve kinda lost track of what I have and haven’t posted. So, moving quickly past the stuff about “44 Magnum’s” and their undoubted ability to separate parts of your body from other parts, we […]

Introduction to A-Level Sociology: Cultural Differences

For reasons that will become clear in a moment, I was searching for a document or two about Sherbit Culture to accompany a 5-minute film clip I’d assembled from some old (2000 – 2002-ish) HSBC adverts. The idea was to use the film as a light-hearted way to introduce the concept of cultural differences to […]

Losing Their Religion? Using Statistical Evidence to Evaluate Secularisation

The secularisation debate in A-level Sociology, encompassing a wide diversity of ideas around pro, anti and post-secularisation positions, is an increasingly complex area for students to cover. Although this can make it a somewhat daunting topic, it also provides significant opportunities for students to critique these different positions (and gain solid marks for knowledge, application […]

Mass Media 4 | Representations

The fourth chapter in what’s turning into, for me at least, an interminable churn through reams of notes and dtp design follows Defining and Researching the Media, The Ownership and Control Debate and The Selection and Presentation of News by focusing on Media Representations. More-specifically, this set of personally hand-crafted (“artisan!”) notes looks at representations […]

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