Revision Tools: Personal Learning Checklists

Personal Learning Checklists (PLCs) are a useful revision tool for both students and teachers because they allow both to identify areas of strength and weakness in an overall revision strategy: students, for example, have a list of everything they’re expected to know by way of preparation for their exams and teachers can identify any areas […]

For A Few (A-Level Sociology) Organisers More

Every now and then – between creating short-but-beautifully-crafted films and resources that both push the a-level envelope and suggest interesting new ways of doing familiar things – I like to revisit old hits as a way of reassuring myself that, when it comes to creating interest and generating those sweet, sweet, Likes, you just can’t […]

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 […]

Sociological Dinner Parties

This general lesson plan, created by Molly Scott and delivered in the form of a simple PowerPoint Presentation, requires students to imagine they’re organising and hosting a dinner party to which, in this particular instance, a range of sociologists of religion have been invited. To this end you can either use the ready-made guest list […]

Types of New Age (Religious) Movement

A previous post looked at New Age Religious Movements (NAMs) in terms of the idea of different “streams” – a way of broadly classifying NAMs according to the different types of transformation they promise (such as intellectual and lifestyle) the individual and / or society. This PowerPoint Presentation complements this idea by looking at a […]

New Age (Religious) Movements (NAMs)

A short – but critical – piece on New Age Religious Movements and some possible reasons for their emergence and popularity in postmodernity… Melton (2001) suggests “the term New Age refers to a wave of religious enthusiasm that emerged in the 1970s” which, for Cowan (2003), have two defining characteristics: 1. NAMs represent new ways […]

Attending Church at the Turn of the (20th) Century

One of the things about teaching the sociology of religion is that, at various points – from its function and role in society to secularisation theory – you’ll find yourself referring to “religion in the past”. And if you want to anchor your observations in something slightly more-solid than an airy wave of the hand […]

Belonging Without Believing

I seem to have got into a habit of writing stuff about secularisation recently, whether it be the more-or-less straightforward stuff about the intergenerational decline in religious beliefs to accompany the long-term decline in religious practices in countries like Britain or the rather more left-field increase in paranormal beliefs recently seen in countries like the […]

Sociology in Focus for A2: Free Textbook

Sociology in Focus for A2 is, as you may have guessed, the companion volume to the previously-posted AS text and it’s no great surprise that its design and layout perfectly complements its AS counterpart. This includes the by-now standard colour-coded sections, lots of pictures, activities and questions that, at the time, were considered a quite […]

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 […]

The Sociological Detectives: Ch-Ch-Changing NRMs

Another in the New Religious Movements series of PowerPoint Presentations, this uses the Sociological Detective format to investigate a “crime scene” to unearth clues based on Eileen Barker’s observations about why NRM’s change over time. The basic idea is that as each clue is unveiled it contributes towards an understanding of Movement change and once […]

New Religious Movements: Who Joins?

Another PowerPoint in what’s rapidly evolving into some sort of NRM-based series. This, as you might expect, complements the previously-posted Characteristics and Pathways Presentations and draws once more on the work of Professor Eileen Barker. There’s not a lot to say about it except that it’s a deceptively-simple Presentation that identifies and outlines Characteristics.

New Religious Movements: 6 Characteristics

Basic PowerPoint Presentation, designed for whole-class use, that identifies Barker’s 6 characteristics of New Religious Movements. The concept of New Religious Movements was initially developed, by writers such as Eileen Barker (1999), to reflect a general unease and dissatisfaction with the contemporary usefulness of the “sect – cult” distinction. More-specifically, the argument in favour of […]

Paranormal Activity: Another Dimension to the Secularisation Debate?

Although the secularisation debate in sociology has a number of different dimensions, involving arguments over issues like sacralisation, desacralisation, resacralisation, post-secularisation, religious fundamentalism and the like, one key assumption in the debate is rarely, if ever, questioned: the idea that “secularisation” is effectively a zero-sum game that consists of two, fundamentally-opposed, sides: 1. The Religious, […]