Agencies of Socialisation
Another day, another PowerPoint Presentation. And this time its “All About The Agencies” The Presentation identifies a range of primary and secondary socialising agencies (family, peers, education, workplace, media and religion to be precise) and provides some simple information / examples for each in five categories: Behaviour Roles Norms Values Sanctions. If this sounds a […]
Sociology Flipbooks: Free Textbook Previews
So. Here’s the thing. I like to occasionally root around on Pinterest – mainly, it must be said, when I’m pretending to do “research” in order to avoid doing any actual work – because it’s a good source of interesting ideas and practices. Like stuff I’ve shared in the past, such as structure strips […]
Sociology Flipbooks
A Flipbook is a way of displaying a pdf document online so that it has the look-and-feel of a paper-based magazine, one whose pages you can turn using a mouse (desktop) or finger (mobile). That’s it, really. I could talk about stuff like whether this creates a greater sense of engagement among students than the […]
(Knife) Crime, Deviance, Media and Methods
“Knife Crime” as you’re probably aware, is increasingly in the news, particularly, but not exclusively, in London (because, quite frankly and a little rhetorically, is there anywhere else of any great significance in England?). And while there are Definitely | Maybe | Probably (please delete as inapplicable) all kinds of reliability issues surrounding what counts as […]
Understanding Media and Culture: Free Textbook
Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication (to give it its full title) is a textbook, released under a Creative Commons licence by the University of Minnesota, that’s free to read, copy and share – which makes it especially useful for schools / colleges or students on a tight budget. Under this particular […]
New Media: WeChat and the Chinese New Year.
One of the nice things about running Dorset’s Most Popular Sociology Blog (*) is that from time-to-time we get to feature the work of Richard Driscoll’s students at the Shenzhen College of International Education in China. Previous posts have, for example, examined ideas as diverse as Cultural Capital, Parental Involvement in Education, Social Identity and Matriarchy […]
Society Now Magazine
“Society Now” is a free full-colour magazine published four times a year by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and features a range of articles that “showcase the impact of the social science research” funded by the Council. Although the magazine includes material that’s not necessarily relevant to a-level sociology – the ERSC funds […]
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 […]
Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes
The 2017 OfCom Report on “Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes” (2017) covers different types of on-and-offline media use by children in the UK and it’s quite a treasure trove of visual and verbal information that will repay careful analysis – although at around 300 pages it may prove a little hard-going for most […]
Gay Best Friends as Consumers and Commodities
If you’re looking for something slightly different to incorporate into your Culture and Identity / Media Sociology teaching this book chapter on “Effeminacy and Expertise, Excess and Equality: Gay Best Friends as Consumers and Commodities in Contemporary Television” by Susie Khamis and Anthony Lambert might well fit the bill. Of particular interest here might be […]
Methods, Mobiles and Media
Research Methods can be a little abstract and dry (teacher-speak for dull), particularly when opportunities to experience and apply what’s being taught are limited by things like time and a lack of easy access to suitable research subjects. This is where Steven Thomas’ “Patterns of Mobile Phone Use” article might help. The research example it […]
Sociology and Issues in the News
This simple activity, culled once more from the ATSS archive, has a dual purpose in terms of helping students: 1. Develop a critical and sociological understanding of “news” and how it is socially constructed and presented. 2. Interpret and apply sociological knowledge to real social situations. The activity requires no great preparation and involves students […]
Deviancy Amplification PowerPoint
Deviancy Amplification has become something of a classic example of an Interactionist approach to deviance, predominantly, but not exclusively, because of Jock Young’s seminal analysis (1971) of “The role of the police as amplifiers of deviance, negotiators of reality and translators of fantasy”. This is a little ironic given that Leslie Wilkins’ original formulation of […]
Connecting Walls Collection
CBSC Sociology has been busy creating and posting a huge number of revision Connecting Walls on Twitter and, in the spirit of “pinching other people’s stuff and sharing it with a wider audience”, I’ve pulled all their tweets together into one handy blog post for your – and your students’ – greater convenience. So, if […]
Free Chapter: The Psychology of Addictive Behaviour
The third – and probably final – free chapter from Holt and Lewis’ “A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook”, this one covers addictive behaviour in terms of main areas: 1. Models Biological, cognitive and learning models of addiction, including explanations for initiation, maintenance and relapse Explanations for specific addictions, including smoking and gambling 2. Factors affecting […]