Creative ideas for learning sociology include making mind maps and using images and metaphors.
Getting creative not only makes learning more fun, it also helps you to better understand complex sociological theories and concepts and remember them more efficiently.
I have selected below some creative strategies which should help you with learning A-level sociology.
Combining Concepts…
Select two concepts, theories, sociologists, research studies, news events, and try to make the links between them!
A chart or two containing such concepts with numbers up and down the sides may help with this!
Metaphors…
A metaphor is where you make one thing represent another in order to draw comparisons. Try to come up with metaphors for sociological perspectives, theories and even research studies.
For example, in terms of shapes Marxism can be represented by a triangle, which reflects the class structure. Functionalism is more of a square, which reflects its concern with social order and regulation.
Keep an ideas notebook or videolog
Walk around town and observe people, interactions, adverts, shops, or watch the news or any programme.
Keep a notebook of what you observe and apply sociological theories and concepts to your daily observations.
If writing is too long winded, do a photo diary or video log instead, making it visual may actually help.
Model things
If you have some lego then you might like to spend some time making models to represent different sociological theories and concepts.
This may be a little time consuming, so maybe treat this a break activity which keeps the brain ticking over!
Mind Maps!
It may be obvious from this blog that I am a huge fan of mind maps. They really are a great way of summarising complex ideas which mirror the way the brain works: one central point for each map, and then a few main points coming off the central hub and then further sub branches…
Mind map example:
NB maps can be even more effective if you make them more visual by using pictures where possible rather than just words!
Play the expert sociologist
Think of any social problem, such as a high crime rate or a failing school and either plan a research project to figure out why.
Alternatively, imagine you are a government advisor and think up social policies which may solve the problem. Or make the case for a revolution!
Increasing numbers of people are making use of online learning platforms to educate themselves, but getting representative data on online learning is a challenge!
Online education has expanded rapidly with the rise of the internet and in 2022 there are a huge variety of websites and learning platforms that people are making use of to learn about a huge range of topics.
Online learning ranges from the very formal to the very informal, and it is much easier to collect valid statistics on the extent of formal online learning compared to informal online learning, because the former have hard data on the number of student enrolments and degree of engagement for example, data which might not exist for the more informal learning that takes place online.
Examples of formal online learning include universities putting their courses online, workplaces running online training courses and courses run through online learning platforms such as Coursera.
Informal learning is much more difficult to measure at it involves people hacking together an education using whatever free sources they can fund – by using YouTube videos to learn new skills for example.
Gathering data on the extent of online learning is complicated by the fact that there isn’t a clear boundary between using the internet for education and using it for entertainment, not to say, of course, that education can’t in itself be entertaining.
In this post I gather together some data which gives us an insight into the nature and extent of both formal and informal online learning in the world today, taking a global focus.
My reason for doing this is to demonstrate how significant online learning is in relation to formal education in schools, colleges and universities. I don’t believe a sociology of education should ignore these trends in online learning simply because online learning plays an increasingly significant role in many people’s lives, especially in people’s adult lives.
I also focus on the problems of collecting valid data on the extent of online learning in 2022.
Formal and informal online learning
Ranging from the formal to the informal, four basic types of online learning include….
The rise of virtual schools offering formally recognised national curriculums.
The rise of online digital learning platforms such as Udemy
The increase in independent people offering education and training on YouTube and other channels
The increase in ordinary people sharing their stories, experiences and life-experiments, and the increased interest in people consuming these.
An Overview of Global Online Learning
According to Global Market Insights (1) the value of the global e-learning market was over $315 billion in 2021.
70% of demand for online learning comes from the U.S.A and Europe (3)
Coursera’s statistics (6) show us that America has the most online learners, followed by India, and we can see that online learning is truly a global phenomenon!
80% of employers use online learning platforms…
Virtual Schools
America leads the way in virtual schools and in 2019-20, 40 there were 477 full-time virtual schools that enrolled 332,379 students, and 306 blended schools that enrolled 152,530 students (2).
NB as I understand it these are schools offering an officially recognised curriculum leading to formal exams, so this is a very formal type of online education.
Online learning platforms
Elearning Industry (8) lists 893 online learning platforms as of December 2022, unfortunately there is no data on how many courses are offered across these platforms or how many people are making use of them.
If you do a Google Search for ‘how many learning platforms are there’ Google returns search results for blogs outlining the ‘best’ platforms, not necessarily those with the most users, for example Thinkific (9) provides 10 of the best which include LinkdIn learning, Coursera and Udemy.
So if you want to find out how many people are making use of online learning platforms, you need to look at the stats from the individual platforms (and there may be overlap, some people enrolled on a Coursera course are also going to be doing a Udemy Courses!).
I don’t have time to trawl through almost 900 online learning platforms to collect the data but to look two of the biggest:
In 2021 Coursera had 92 million registered learners and 189 million enrolments (4)
In 2022 Udemy had 52 million learners and 213 000 courses (5)
So two of the largest platforms have 150 million people currently enrolled on their courses, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that across all learning platforms it’s likely that there are several hundred million people globally doing some kind of formally structured course on such platforms.
Learning Management Systems
Learner Management Systems are back end solutions for managing learners’ data while Online Learning Platforms are front-end packages.
I’m not analysing use of online Learner Management Systems (LMSs) here because pretty much every school, college and university will make use of an LMS to manage their learners’ data.
Educational blogs and vlogs
Many blogs and vlogs are educational, it is very difficult to get statistics on how many exist because many accounts include content which is both educational and purely for entertainment.
There must be well over a million ‘high quality’ educational videos on YouTube alone, produced by institutions such as the BBC and TED, the latest data i could find from 2015 put the figure at 700 000 videos on YouTubeEdu (10), so today there must be many more.
Educational content can range from the academic to videos designed to help people figure out ‘how to present themselves online’ as in the picture below…
TBH I’m not sure how I’d even go about designing a methodology to quantify the number of educational blogs and vlogs online, let alone the number of people consuming them.
TED (Technology Education and Design) is worth a special mention as many of the talks are relevant to sociology. The TED channel hosts thousands of videos, its YouTube channel has over 22 million subscribers and the most popular talk by Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity has 22 million views.
The problem with global statistics on elearning!
Even formal online learning is difficult to measure as there is no body monitoring the total number of online learners (as far as I am aware), and manually trawling through almost 1000 online learning platforms would take a long time.
Most of the available global statistics come from private companies who themselves offer online learning services. The first problem with this is that there can be a barrier in the form of a significant pay wall (7), another possible problem is with the validity of the data because these companies may use methods of data collection which deliberately exaggerate the extent of online learning: doing so makes it seem like institutions should invest more in online learning to keep up with an inevitable trend.
As to informal learning it is very difficult to measure how many educational blogs and vlogs there are simply because there is so much educational content out there!
Hence what we know about the nature and extent of online learning in 2023 is based on samples of those companies that do publish data, and there is no way this is representative of all online learning!
For teachers, ‘teaching to a question’ is often the most efficient way of organizing a lesson, and it’s something I found especially useful when I first began my teaching career, 146 years ago.
In this post all I’m doing is re-visiting this basic strategy in preparation for teaching the next block of theories of crime and deviance, and simply asking myself what are the best ‘starting point’ questions to get students thinking along the line of Marxists, Interactionists and Realists….
Any of these questions can be used as useful starters… as kind of ‘what do you already know’ starter if you like. You could always add in a brief data response task to each block of questions to bring them to life a bit more.
Marxist theories of crime – four basic questions
Does Capitalism cause crime?
Do the police disproportionately target the working classes?
Are elites more likely to escape prosecution by the courts than the working classes?
Do Corporations cause more harm to people, society and the planet than ‘actual’ criminals?
Interactionist theories of crime – four basic questions
Do teachers/ the police label students/ people based on their class, gender and ethnicity?
Does this create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Are teachers/ the police to blame for the deviance of their students/ the crimes of criminals?
Right Realist theories of crime – to tap into rational choice theory…..
Really simple..brainstorm anything the government might do to reduce crime in society (prize for the most solutions)
Any series of questions relating to ‘Rational Choice Theory’ (future post on this) – e.g. here’s a scenario, such as it being late at night, no guards, no ticket barrier, would you bunk the train…
All things being equal, do you think harsher punishments generally reduce crime?
All things being equal do you think more police on the streets is an effective way to reduce crime?
NB – the questions above aren’t supposed to be exhaustive, just the simpler ones to kick start the topics.
Sociology Teaching Resources for Sale
You might be interested in my latest (November 2019) teaching resource pack which contains everything teachers need to deliver 10 hour long ‘introduction to sociology’ lessons.
Included in the bundle is a clearly structured 50 page gapped student work-pack, six PowerPoints* to structure the 10 lessons, 10 detailed lesson plans outlining a range of learning activities you can use with students, a massive list of relevant contemporary resources with links, and numerous lesson activities including introductions, plenaries and links to some Socrative quizzes.
These resources contain all the core sociology knowledge students need for a through introduction sociology, illustrated with numerous up to date contemporary case studies and statistics.
The resources have been designed for A-level sociology and cover the core themes on the AQA’s specification but are suitable for new 16-19 students studying any specification.
You might also like these teaching resources for the sociology of education. They are specifically designed for A-level sociology students and consist of several versions of key concepts definitions (80 concepts in total), gapped summary grids with answers covering the entire sociology of education specification and 7 analysis activities.
If you want to get both of the above resources and receive regular updates of teaching resources then you can subscribe for £9.99 a month. I’ll be producing 10 hour long lessons worth of resources every month throughout 2020 and beyond. The £9.99 subscription means you get the resources for 50% off the usual £19.99 price.
Station based lessons are those in which the teacher sets up a number of different (and differentiated) tasks on different tables in the class room and students spend a set time at each table, moving from task to task.
I find these are most useful at the very beginning of the Winter and Easter terms, after students have done sufficient sociology to enable them to work through said tasks largely on their own, with the teacher acting only as a facilitator…
This is precisely what I’ll be doing with my Upper sixth groups when I face the horror and terror of going back to school on Thursday…. Station lessons make things a little easier…
A3 photocopies of pages 2-4 above for stations 2, 3, and 5.
Card sorts for task 4 (I don’t have these to hand, but you simply need cards with concepts, and pictures and perspectives – this is more of a general recap rather than a consensus theory of crime recap),
Station 1: White Board Station (AO1 – Knowledge)
Explain your one of the consensus theories of crime in picture form – you may use three words also.
Station 2: AO1 Concepts Station (A01 – Knowledge)
Research and write in the definitions for two-three of the concepts
If you finish, add in an example or piece of supporting evidence which illustrates the concept
Station 3: Data Response Station (AO2 – Application)
Read the item, then for one theory write in how that theory would explain the case study in the item.
Station 4: Card Game Station (AO3 – Analysis)
Game 1: Shuffle the concepts and theories cards – pick two (or three!) at random, suggest a link between them.
Game 2: Rank the ‘case studies cards’ – rank them in order of how well they support your assigned theory.
Station 5: Evaluation Station (AO3 – Evaluation)
Add in as many evaluation points as possible for one theory
If you finish, then add in counter-evaluation to the previous evaluations of theories
Further comments
There’s not a lot else to say really… this was just a New Year’s post for all the sociology teachers out there, happy new year!
Many of the theories of learning that were developed during the first decades of the twentieth century tended to conceptualize learning as an end product or outcome – most often as a distinct change in behavior.
Students and educators who subscribe to this notion of learning-as-product tend to see learning as consisting of the following:
A quantitative increase in knowledge
Memorizing or storing information that can later be retrieved.
Acquiring facts, skills and methods that can be retained and used as necessary.
However, it is also possible to see learning as an ongoing process, and people who subscribe this notion of learning tend to describe learning as:
Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning, learning that involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world.
Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different way, learning that involves comprehending the world by reinterpreting knowledge.
These later two descriptions of learning as an ongoing process see the learner as building upon his or her previous experiences and, in some instances, changing his or her behavior as a result.
Learning as a process is the view of learning that many contemporary educationalists and psychologists would concur with. As Bruner (1996) puts it ‘learning is not simply a technical business of well managed information processing’. Instead, learning might also be seen to involve individuals having to make sense of who they are and develop an understanding of the world in which they live. From this perspective, learning can be seen as a continuing process of ‘participation’ rather than a discrete instance of acquisition.
IMO working within a marketised education system encourages us to see learning as a product – that is the ‘bottom line’ of education is the results, and there is much store placed on exam-training in order to game the system and get better results (the final outcome), and students, teachers and parents increasingly judge the quality of a school or it teachers on their ability ‘to deliver results’.
This is, in fact, an extremely narrow and shallow way to judge the quality of education.
If, on the other hand, we consider ‘learning as a process’ this forces us to focus on the quality of the learning experience and the context in which learning takes place – reflecting on the marketised system we realize what a poor educational experience many of us get (teachers and students alike) because of the pressure to achieve results. In such a system, there is little time to ‘understand the world and who we are’.
Another benefit of seeing learning as a process is that we come to realize that ‘learning’ takes place in many contexts outside of the formal education system – at home, at work, and through the many informal channels through which we ‘develop ourselves’.
Maybe more of us need to forget formal education with its obsession with learning as a product, and instead just focus more on life-long learning and self-development outside of formal education?
Sources
Selwyn (2017) Education and Technology – Key Issues and Debates
There are four main problems of the increasing role of large technology companies in education, all of which stem from the incompatibility of the values of Silicon Valley Digital Capitalism and Public Education:
The algorithmic approach to education cannot take into account the social and moral complexities of real world education.
The idea of ‘learning through failure’ is incompatible with supporting every child to develop
The focus on individualized entrepreneurialism may be incompatible with ideals of social cohesion, justice and equality of opportunity.
The influence of technology companies in public education undermines the democratic process.
Challenging the Benefits of Commercial Education
Large technology companies and their enthusiasts have made grand claims about both the problems of traditional public education and the potential benefits of disrupting business as usual through digital innovations such as MOOCs.
However, many of the technological disruptions of the last decade have simply failed to deliver positive results – in short, they have promised much but delivered far less.
The tech companies may well blame public education officials for failing to embrace their technologies (and/ or ideologies), however Neil Selwyn argues that tit is more a case of technology companies failing to ‘get’ public education, and the enormous complexities which surround the realities of educating people.
Below I summarize four ways in which the culture of technology firms are incompatible with the culture of public education, as identified by Selwyn (2016)
The problem of viewing education as a ‘computational project’
Innovations such as Coursera, Thiel Fellowships etc. tend to see education as a discrete computational project, that is a set of variables which can be manipulated and programmed so as to avoid any bugs or inefficiencies.
The problem with this ‘reductive approach’ is that education rarely contains variables that can be adjusted or manipulated to achieve optimal cause and effect – in reality, the social complexities of the real-world contexts in which learning takes place cannot easily be included in algorithmic models designed to make learning ‘more efficient’.
Similarly, it is questionable whether a computer can be programmed effectively to answer moral questions about the content of what a student, or students should be learning more generally.
The problem of ‘learning through failure’
In the Silicon Valley world of hi-tech start-ups, it is expected that the vast majority will fail, but the handful that survive will go on to be game-changers.
However, this ‘fail fast, fail often’ approach does not necessarily translate well into education, as the start-ups will be gambling with the futures of individual students, schools, or even districts… As Bill Gates reflected on his Foundations forays into education reform… ‘it would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we probably won’t know for a decade’.
This approach clearly does not fit in well with the ‘supporting every learner to succeed’ model advanced by the social democratic ideals of education.
The Problem of Focusing Too much on Individualised Learning
Silicon Valley idealism is also rooted in a libertarian belief in the values of personal freedoms and the individualization of action, with a skepticism towards ‘experts’ working within traditional institutions (such as education) which are generally seen as inefficient.
Innovations such as the MOOC or Flipped classrooms are examples of educational transformations which have emerged out of this individualist philosophy. Such disruptive technologies can, at one level, be seen as tackling inefficiency in the provision of existing educational provision.
However, such disruptions might undermine a number of the traditional social democratic values inherent in public education, such as those of promoting community cohesion, communal responsibility and the public good, rather than just emphasizing individual gain.
Such innovations may also undermine the ideal of equality of opportunity. Some research suggests that MOOCs for example are primarily accessed by people from privileged backgrounds, who already have degrees (source forthcoming).
Big technology companies might undermine the democratic process
When the executives of companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft have something to say about education, education ministers tend to listen. This has led some commentators such as Joel Spring to suggest that such companies operate as ‘shadow education ministries’ – the problem here is that large tech companies are playing a role in shaping our education systems, they profit from it, and yet they have no accountability!
Conclusion
It’s unlikely that technology companies are going to stop trying to disrupt education, and it’s unlikely that our increasingly neoliberal public managers are going to stop them. However, it’s also unlikely that the public are just going to give up on the ideals of social democratic education that easily, and so at some point stakeholders in education are going to have to figure out a way of reconciling the approaches to education advanced by Silicon Valley digital technology firms and those which persist in our public education systems.
Source
Nick Selwn (2016) Is Technology Good for Education?
My weekly ‘Monday teaching and learning’ post: I’ve been thinking about questioning in A-level Sociology recently,* in particular I’ve been asking myself ‘what are the best quick-fire questions to ask students about theories and concepts’ and ‘what’s the best way to present these questions’?
By ‘best’ I mean what kinds of questioning style will most effectively develop knowledge recall, understanding and the skills of application, analysis and evaluation? And how can this be done quickly!
I’m only really interested here in questioning as a review activity (not the kinds of question you ask during a regular lesson), so this is meant for recapping previous lessons work, as part of a plenary, or as part of a revision lesson.
As I see it, the most effective way to ask questions is to do so in a hierarchical order, starting with basic recall, and moving up through application, analysis, and evaluation, and you could even tag on a conclusion type question at the end.
I tend to ask eight questions to recap any theory or concept… In the example below, I used these questions on a PPT with the headings as titles and the prompts in the main body of each slide. This was a simple, verbal pair-work recap task (with the usual further development questions tagged on). There’s also nothing from stopping you dumping these questions onto Socrative.
I also use prompts to speed things up, and you could of course make these prompts as cards and for each slide get students to do ranking/ sorting exercises.
Eight Questions About Dependency Theory
(which could be asked about any other theory or concept)
(AO1) Explain why poor countries are poor according to Dependency Theory
HINT: Use the following concepts…
Marxism
Colonialism
Neocolonialism
Exploitation
Core-Satellite
Communism
(A01) Give some examples which best illustrates Dependency Theory
Try to think of one ‘developed’ and one ‘less developed’ nation
(AO2) Apply Dependency Theory to something else…
Use Dependency Theory to evaluate Modernisation Theory
What do you think the function of education in poor countries might be according to Dependency Theory?
(A03) Analyse Dependency Theory: How does the theory/ concept relate to the following concepts below:
Marxist theory more generally
Inequality
Power
Capitalism
(A03) Analyse Dependency Theory
Who developed it (where did it come from)?
If you could convince everyone it’s true, then whose interests does it serve?
(AO3) Evaluate Dependency Theory using evidence
Identify as many pieces of supporting evidence as you can
Identify as many pieces of counter-evidence as you can…
(A03) Evaluate using other theories
HINT: What would Modernization Theory say about this theory?
(AO2) Interim Conclusion – How useful is Dependency Theory?
HINT: Where ’10’ is explains everything and 0 is explains nothing, what score would you give Dependency Theory out of 10 in explaining why rich countries and rich and poor countries poor?
Asking these eight questions in relation to other theories and concepts…
Other topics I’ve used this template with recently include (with different prompts) The Functionalist View of Education, The Correspondence Principle (focusing in more deeply on just one Marxist concept of education), The Neoliberal Theory of Economic Development and the concept of Gross National Income as an indicator of development (the kind of concepts this 8 question hierarchy works well for might actually surprise you).
Of course this won’t work for everything and will need tweeking, but to my mind, this is a nice general questioning structure that ticks my 20-80 rule – spend 20 mins prepping to get 80 mins of students doing – NOT the inverse!
*I’m fairly sure this is a big contributor to mental illness among teachers, it’s exhausting.
‘Ranking is an academic exercise; through the exchange of opinion thinking is exercised and personal understanding is achieved of key issues and concepts. This results in deep rather than shallow learning.’ (1)
Ranking research methods, concepts, or even simple value-statements against some pre-set criteria is (IMO) one of the most efficient and useful* ways of developing students’ evaluation skills.
As with just about everything in life – all of this is explained much better through the use of examples, below are a few of my favourite ranking exercises:
At some point, hopefully very soon I’ll get around to putting the actual resources I use online somewhere so you can download them!
EXAMPLE ONE: Rank the RESEARCH METHOD according to the criteria…
Obviously provide students with the above cards so they can sort them!
Additional instruction/ criteria slides might include ‘validity’, ‘representativeness’ etc.
EXAMPLE TWO: Rank the RESEARCH TOPIC according to the Methods criteria
Very useful for Methods in Context this!
(Display on PPT):Rank the following topics according to how easy YOU would find it to gain access to conduct research.
Cards you could use (each bullet point on a separate card)
Researching how the values, attitudes, and aspirations of parents contribute to the achievement of certain groups of children
Why boys are more likely to be excluded than girls
Why white working class boys underachieve
Exploring whether teachers have ‘ideal pupils’ – whether they label certain groups of pupils favourably
Looking at whether the curriculum is ethnocentric (racist/ homophobic
Exploring the extent to which sexist ‘bullying’ disadvantages children
Examining how ‘gender identities’ enhance or hinder children’s ability to learn
Assessing the relative importance of cultural deprivation versus material deprivation in explaining underachievement
Example 3: Rank the ’causes’ of the social change
(Display on PPT):Rank the following reasons according to how significant they are in explaining the long term decline in the birth rate.
Cards you could use (with this topic I might actually include a bit more detail on the backs)
Economic changes
Changes in the position of children
Changing gender roles
Postmodernisation
Technological changes
Example 4: Rank the Example to how far it applies to men and women AND how liberating/ oppressive it is
I’m claiming this ‘double whammy’ ranking exercise – never seen it before. NB If you ‘spatialise’ this by making students hold one card each and go to different places in the room, you can even add in a third axis by getting them to hold the cards high or low.
(Display on PPT): Along the horizontal axis rank the cards according to whether it applies exclusively to men or women, or equally to both; along the vertical axis rank according to whether the experience is oppressive or liberating:
Suggestions for cards (I use about 20 for this)
Becoming a police officer
Becoming a nurse
Becoming a soldier
Going to jail
Becoming a politician
Becoming a CEO
Being the primary child carer
Motherhood
Fatherhood
Being a victim of sexual harassment
Hints and tips for using ranking activities effectively
Use them – they are very efficient – all you need is a set of cards with the words on that need ranking and a power point slide with the criteria and instructions **.
I recommend having no more than 8 cards (it gets tiresome with more than 8), and you probably don’t want to do more than ‘4 rounds’ of matching with the same cards, students tend to get a bit sick of it after that.
Technically I’m sure you can match and rank nearly anything against anything, so mess around with it, you might even get some lateral thinking going!
Do I really need to remind you to make yer cards real perty and laminate ’em???
Sources and Further Notes
(1) Ginnis (2002) Teachers Toolkit
*There are maybe more useful ways, but for the busy teacher in mainstream state education, ranking exercises are extremely quick to produce.
**You could do this on paper, and just get students to write in the order (say 1-10), or I’m sure there are online versions too, but personally I like cards – they’re nice and tactile!
Matching exercises or ‘sentence sorts’ simply involve students matching the concept/ sociologist/ perspective/ method to a definition/ statement.
Simple example:
Decide whether the sentences are below are Functionalist or Marxist – simply write ‘F’ or ‘M’ next to the sentence.
1. Education reproduces inequality by justifying privilege and attributing poverty to personal failure.
2. The education system plays an important part in the process of encouraging individuals to have a sense of loyalty and commitment to society as a whole.
3. The teaching of subjects such as history enables children to see the link between themselves and wider society. The National Curriculum, with it’s emphasis on British history shows pupils that they are part of something larger than their immediate social group.
4. Although school presents itself as being meritocratic, the hidden curriculum produces a subservient workforce, who accept hierarchies of power.
The easiest way to format these is simply as above – a title, brief instruction, and anywhere from 10 (or less if you like) to 20 (more is probably too many) statements/ definitions. You might like to use a grid (as in example 2 over page) for paper versions as it provides a more obvious space for students to write into. For more difficult topics, provide a jumbled list of concepts at the bottom.
Obviously if you’re designing your own, do the answer version first, then just delete the single or short-phrase answers. Numbering the definitions/ statements makes feedback easier!
Topics matching exercises work well especially for
After Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism, or all the perspectives for any of the topics within A-level sociology.
For material deprivation/ cultural deprivation and social/ cultural capital in class and education.
For the main changes with different waves of education policy
For strengths and limitations of any research method – one of the best I’ve seen is a range of sentences which are either strengths or limitations for either lab or field experiments.
Any sub-topic that’s very conceptual – such as childhood within the family.
Different ways of administering sentence sorts
Personally I still like the one-side of paper method – simply needs about 12 definitions/ statements and students just write in the concept/ method or whatever next to it.
These days of course, you can always put sentence sorts online – Quizlet, or Socrative work very well for this.
A way of adding in ‘stretch’ to this is to add in a third column in which you ask students to ‘give an example’ or ‘the opposite’ or to provide supporting evidence, or even criticise the concept/
NB The ‘gap fill exercise’ – don’t be fooled by a gap-fill paragraph exercise, it’s basically just a matching exercise/ sentence sort in disguise.
Three examples of Sentence Sorts for A-level sociology
The examples below show three typical applications of this method…. perspectives, ‘match the stat’ (which is quite good to introduce a new topic) and concepts. Unforunately they don’t format very well on a blog, but they’re just to give you an idea – they’ve all been designed to fit on one side of A4 paper.
Example 1: Sociological perspectives on the role of education
Sort the following statements into either Marxism, Functionalism or Feminism, simply write in F/M or Fem….
Girls may follow the same curriculum as boys, may sit side by side with boys in classes taught by the same teachers and yet emerge from school with the implicit understanding that the world is a man’s world, in which women take second place.
Education reproduces inequality by justifying privilege and attributing poverty to personal failure.
The education system plays an important part in the process of encouraging individuals to have a sense of loyalty and commitment to society as a whole.
The teaching of subjects such as history enables children to see the link between themselves and wider society. The National Curriculum, with it’s emphasis on British history shows pupils that they are part of something larger than their immediate social group.
Classroom interaction reflects the sexist attitudes and male dominance of the wider society.
By transmitting and reinforcing the culture of society to new generations, education helps to ensure the continuity of rules and values.
Although school presents itself as being meritocratic, the hidden curriculum produces a subservient workforce, who accept hierarchies of power.
The classroom is a ‘mini-society’ which provides a training ground for the wider society and eases the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Education has an important role of society reproduction, meaning that it is involved in the reproduction of new generations of workers appropriately schooled to accept their roles in capitalist society.
Schools help to abridge the gap from the ascribed status of the family to the achieved status of society as a whole.
Schools promote the shared value of achievement – at school young people are rewarded for academic achievement with good exam results. This, in turn, socialises young people for their adult roles.
The education system is the main agency for ideological control. People accept their situation in life because at school they have learn that capitalism is just and reasonable.
The hidden curriculum, including the social relations in the classroom and the attitudes and expectations of teachers, prepare girls for male domination and control.
Schools prepare pupils for their roles in the workforce. Most are trained as workers and are taught to accept future exploitation and are provided with an education and qualifications to match their future work roles.
The hidden curriculum produces a fragmentation of knowledge so that ordinary workers do not become educated and overthrow the ruling class.
Schools reinforce gender inequality in wider society.
Example 2: Key facts and stats about families and households in Modern Britain
Match the stat to the question. All of these issues come up at some point over the next eight weeks of the course.
What percentage of marriages end in divorce? 42%
How many children do the average family have? 92
How much does it cost to raise a child to the age of 18? £230,000
What is the average age which women have their first child? 30
When did rape in marriage become illegal? 1991
On average, how much more money a year does it cost to live a year if you are a single person living alone? £250,000
What percentage of households with children in are single parent households? 25%
What proportion of relationships consists of same-sex couples? 152 000
What percentage of men have been victims of domestic violence? 13%
OBVIOUSLY I’ve given the answers here, the numbers would be at the bottom, I’ve also been lazy and missed out sources.
Example 3: Key Concepts in the sociology of the family
Concept
Definition
Birth Rate
The number of babies born per thousand per year.
Civil Partnership
The legally or formally recognised union of a man and a woman (or in some countries two people of the same sex) in a committed relationship.
Co-habitation
Two people living together in the same household in an emotionally intimate, committed relationship without being officially married.
Death Rate
The number of deaths per thousand members of a population per year.
Emotion Work
Thinking about the emotional well-being of other members of the family and acting in ways which will be of emotional benefit to others. For example, hugging and reassuring children when they have nightmares, organizing Christmas and birthday parties so that everyone feels included and has a good time.
Individualisation
The process where individuals have more freedom to make life-choices and shape their identities because of a weakening of traditional social structures, norms and values. For example, secularization means people have more choice over whether they should get married or simply cohabit.
Instrumental Role
The provider or breadwinner role which involves going out to work and earning money for the family – the traditional male role within the family.
Matrifocal Household
A family structure in which mothers are the heads of household and fathers have less power and control in family life and the allocation of resources.
Net Migration
The difference between the numbers of people immigrating to and emigrating from a country.
Nuclear Family
A man and a woman and their dependent children, either their own or adopted.
Patriarchy
A society where men hold the power and women are excluded, disadvantaged or oppressed. An example of a patriarchal society is one which women are not allowed to vote, but men are.
Primary Socialisation
The first stages of learning the norms and values of a society; learning basic skills and norms, such as language, and basic manners.
Serial Monogamy
Where an individual has a string of committed relationships, one after the other.
Social Construction of Childhood
The idea that the norms and values and social roles associated with childhood are influenced by society, rather than being determined by the biological age of a child.
Toxic Childhood
Where social changes, especially the invention of new technologies, does increasing amounts of harm to children. For example, the internet and mobile phones results in screen saturation with increases anxiety and reduces attention spans.
NB – If you print this off, the grid format is much easier on the eye than the non-grid version.
How useful are sentence sorts in teaching and learning sociology?
Open question.. please do lemme know what you think!
Producing engaging written and audio visual resources
Emotional sensitivity
Evaluation and decision making based on standardized criteria
Presentation and communication skills
Facilitating participation
Simultaneous independent and collaborative working
Reflexivity, which incorporates flexibility.
Seven transferable skills which teachers can take with them to kinder careers
Given the depth and breadth of skill which teaching requires, combined with the unbearable amount of stress which teachers are expected to soak up, teaching is without doubt one of the most undervalued professions in the United Kingdom, and I’m fairly sure this is also the case in pretty much every country outside of Scandinavia.
Evidence for this (at least in the UK) lies in the fact that 30% of teachers quit within five years, and the thought of quitting is no doubt at the forefront of the majority of teachers’ minds towards the end of a long summer holiday; and no, a six week summer holiday is not enough compensation.
Just in case you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of undervalued teachers thinking of moving on, here’s a list of transferable skills which you can use to promote yourself to your next employer….
Producing written and audio visual resources that engage a differentiated audience for a sustained period (over month or years) – teachers are required not only to produce quality written ‘work sheets’ which are clearly written and structured, they also have to incorporate a range of audio visual (video/ podcast/ websites/ online tests) within these in order to engage learners. A related benefit is that teachers tend to have both sound levels of knowledge in their specific fields and excellent spelling, grammar and punctuation.*
Emotional Sensitivity – working with vulnerable children requires teachers to pick up on the special needs of students early on, which may not be communicated verbally by the students themselves. An extremely useful skill when working with a range of colleagues and clients in any profession.
Judgement and decision making – the ability to evaluate students’ work according to standardized criteria and provide constructive oral and written feedback to help students/ colleagues/ clients improve their performance in a timely fashion
Presentation skills – teaching requires the ability to present complex information in clear, concise and accessible manner, communicating the goals of lessons clearly to participants at the beginning of a particular session. It also involves the use of humor, analogies, examples, metaphors, stories, and delivery methods other than lecture or PowerPoint to engage an audience.
Facilitating participation through small and large group discussions – teaching involves doing a range of pair-work and discussion work in groups of 3-6, with feedback being given to the whole class. Teachers are experts in making sure everyone feels like they are participating and having a voice.
Independent and Collaborative working – teaching involves both working independently to plan lessons/ mark students work, while simultaneously working collaboratively with colleagues to share information about students in order to deliver the best outcome for students.
Reflexivity – The ability to continually reflect on one’s own performance and respond to constructive criticism based on feedback from peers and supervisors in order to improve one’s own performance. All of this has to be done within the context of shifting parameters of educational policy, so one also has to pick up new skills and knowledge in order to respond to systemic changes.
Sources and comments on other people’s lists of teaching transferable skills
I derived this list from the two lists below. Mine is better, but thanks to those who gave me a leg up!
Gina Smith from Branden University suggests the following list Of Top 20 Transferable-Skills:
Active Listening
Complex Problem Solving
Coordination
Critical Thinking
Diagnostic Tests
Grading
Instructing
Judgment and Decision Making
Learning Strategies
Lesson Plan Development
Problem solving
Management
Monitoring
Multitasking
Reading Comprehension
Relationship Management
Service Orientation
Speaking
Social Perceptiveness
Time Management
Writing
How useful is this list?
To be blunt, I don’t find this particularly useful – somehow the list manages to include too much information and not enough specificity both at the same time. If you were going to write a new C.V. in order to transition out of teaching, you would probably include all of the above words, but you’d be better off re categorizing them so you had fewer key-skills.
4. demonstrated problem solving skills/ability to learn new things quickly
5. demonstrated ability to work under pressure/in a fast paced, deadline-driven environment
How useful is this list?
Well it’s better than the above list because they’ve thought about the key ‘skill sets’ better – personally I think this is a nice, general list, and full disclosure, this guy also has another list of ’12 skills which teachers have’ which helped me a lot with writing the above post!
If, like me, you’re also thinking about quitting teaching, do get in touch.
*If you call me out on my own slightly dodgy grammar it WILL NOT be appreciated, in fact, regard yourself as having received a virtual slap if you’re one of the smug.
