BSA Video Resources

If my Inbox is any guide – which, of course, it really isn’t – the British Sociological Association has been making a concerted effort recently to “reach-out”, as we say, to A-level Sociology Teachers through their Discover Sociology off-shoot site. And by reaching-out I mean adding a steady drip of resources to those already on […]

Pygmalion in the Classroom: Revisited

Whether you’re looking generally at Education and Methods in Context or specifically at teacher expectations as an “Inside School” factor in differential achievement, a useful study to have in your locker is Rosenthal and Jacobson’s “Pygmalion in the Classroom” (1965) experiment. Accessible examples of experiments are quite rare in sociology and “Pygmalion” can be cited […]

New GCSE Sociology Knowledge Organisers

Following from a safe distance the recent batches of A-level Knowledge Organisers (A Few More A-level Sociology Knowledge Organisers and Even More Sociology A-Level Organisers) comes something similar for GCSE. These are largely for AQA but there are a couple of sets aimed specifically at WJEC/Eduqas. Chase Terrace Academy: Although I’ve previously posted Organisers for […]

Even More A-level Sociology Organisers

A little like the iconic red buses of yore, you wait a couple of years for a new batch of a-level sociology knowledge organisers and then two come along at once. Or a few days later at any rate. Bit like red buses when you come to think about it. Still, a gift horse is […]

Two More Sociology Knowledge Organisers

I think it’s probably fair to say that Knowledge Organisers / Learning Tables have become a well-established part of the A-level Sociology curriculum these past few years and while I’ve only posted one new set of examples over the past couple of years (the aptly-named New Selection) plus a rather-brilliant variation on the theme that […]

GCSE Subject Choices: Class, Gender and Ethnicity

In an English context, most research into subject choice tends to focus on both post-compulsory education and gender for reasons that should be readily apparent: Firstly, post-16 (A-level) education tends to offer a wider and largely-unrestricted set of choices about which subjects to study, so student choice is much easier for researchers to identify and […]

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 […]

The (Social) Magic of Sport?

This Lesson Outline uses the analogy of top-level sporting achievement – and the economic, cultural and social resources needed to reach this level – to encourage students to understand and apply concepts of economic, cultural and social capital to explain how and why apparently “individualistic explanations” of behaviour can be more-coherently explained sociologically. This is […]

Gender and Subject Choice: Archer et al (2013)

The relationship between gender and subject choice in post-16 UK education is both persistent and well-known and has produced a range of explanations – some sociological, some not (Skelton et al (2007), for example, note the widespread belief  ‘natural’ differences – babies are born with an inbuilt biological and / or genetic predilection – “push […]

Using Analogies: How Inequalities Create Inequality

This Lesson Outline is designed (yes, really) as a kind of skeleton structure you can flesh-out with ideas and information as and how you see fit. In other words, while it provides a basic structure for a lesson it doesn’t necessarily tell you what to teach, which means it’s not something you can just take […]

Gender in Education 3 – 19: A Fresh Approach

“Gender and Education” consists of “a spectrum of views commissioned and published by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers” and while it was published in 2004 many of the ideas, themes and concepts discussed are still, as you might expect, extant in contemporary Sociologies of Education. In the main the articles – there are 10 […]

A-level Sociology Organisers: A new selection

It’s been a while since I last posted any A-level Sociology Knowledge Organisers – a combination of both being a bit busy and a relative paucity of resources – and although this is something of a mixed-bunch, some fairly bog-standard stuff plus some rather more interesting efforts – unless you try them you won’t know […]

GCSE Sociology Knowledge Organisers

Over the past couple of years I’ve posted a whole load of Sociology Knowledge Organisers (or Learning Tables as they’re sometimes known) and they continue – along with their Psychology counterparts – to be some of the most-popular posts on the site. Which must mean something. The last batch, however, seems to have been posted […]

Differential Educational Achievement: “Must Try Harder?”

Explanations for differences in educational achievement based around concepts like class, gender, ethnicity and, for rather different reasons, age are well-known and generally covered comprehensively at High School and A-level, in relation to both “outside” and “inside” school factors. In terms of the former this includes a variety of material and / or cultural factors […]

Sociological Research Articles

I found this document lurking on a hard drive and while I’ve absolutely no idea from where it originally came, the metadata says “2008” and since it’s called “Sociological Research articles (since 2000)” it’s a fair bet it contains articles published between those two dates. As you can see, very little gets past me. Digging […]