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 […]

Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 3. Interactionism

A quick’n’dirty overview of the Interactionist perspective on crime and deviance. Two ideas closely associated with Interactionist approaches are those of deviance as both relative and socially constructed. Relativity refers to the idea that the same behaviour can be considered deviant in one context (or society) but non-deviant in another. A simple example here might […]

Education: 3. The Purpose of Schools

The final part of the “Structure and Organisation of Education” trilogy (Part 1: Structure and Organisation and Part 2: Schools, Marketisation and Parentocracy are, as is the way of trilogies, also available) ends with a !Bang! (if by “bang” you mean “a slightly loud noise”) by looking at various forms of school organisation (from the […]

Crime and Criminology: Free the Texts

Although criminology is a unique field of study focused on all things crime and criminal (yes, really), it invariably incorporates all kinds of sociological and psychological ideas, concepts and theories that makes criminology texts a potentially useful source of information. Mainly for teachers but, in some instances, a-level students as well. For this reason – […]

Crime and Deviance: Non-Sociological vs Labelling Approaches

I came across this “Approaches to Crime and Deviance” PowerPoint the other day while searching through an old hard drive (the metadata says I created it in 2003 and although that sounds about right in terms of the look-and-feel of the Presentation it may actually have been created a little later, not that this makes […]

More Crime and Deviance Learning Tables

A few days ago I did a post on Learning Tables that noted, in passing, that although the numbering system used suggested at least 14 Tables had been created for crime and deviance, I’d only managed to find 10. After a bit of detective work (which sounds a bit mysterious and a touch glamourous until […]

Learning Tables: Crime and Deviance

We’ve just started filming for a new series of crime and deviance films (the long-awaited follow-up volume to our original Shortcuts to Crime and Deviance films – a welcome change to be creating sociology films after 3 years spent focusing on psychology films – and in the process of searching for Robert Agnew pics (one […]

Sociological Theories And Frameworks

This is a web page where you can find a bite-sized run-down of a range of: a. Sociological frameworks – from those fairly central to a-level, such as Functionalism, Feminism. Conflict theory, Critical theory and those (symbolic interaction, phenomenology) that tend to be a little more optional. b. Sociological theories – some fairly central ones, […]

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

I chanced across this blog post from the Smithsonian Institution of all places and it struck me as something that could be useful as a way of getting students to think about all kinds of sociological stuff – from gender and identity, through the role of the media to more-abstract ideas about childhood, invented traditions […]

14 | Youth: Part 3

One area of social life in which the relationship between youth and specific types of behaviour is particularly clear is that of offending behaviour. Young people – principally young, working class, men – are hugely over-represented in the crime statistics and since this series of chapters is linked by ideas about Youth Culture and Subculture […]