GCSE Sociology: Terms and Concepts Visualised

Free online Introductory Sociology Flipbook aimed at GCSE students.

As you may be aware – I may have mentioned it once or twice – I really like the idea of a visual sociology that involves integrating text and graphics to create narratives for students that have much greater appeal than the simple textbooks of yore (or even the more-complex Textbooks of Today that plonk a few pictures next to some text and call it innovative…).

Maybe it was the distant echo of childhood comics – both the bog-standard British and, very, very, occasionally the wonderful world of Marvel and DC – that appealed to my sense of sociology as story-telling.

Until very recently it certainly wasn’t the idea of dual coding information in a way that made it accessible and memorable. That, as they say, was an unintended bonus.

Anyway, while there have been a couple of reasonably-successful attempts to produce visual sociology books, such as Sociology in Pictures (2012) which covers Theories and Concepts and a follow-up (2016) covering Research Methods, the main drawback with these is that they’re print books and hence rather expensive for what you get. Although, given their relative age, you can at least pick up cheap 2^nd hand copies.

My favoured format for this kind of endeavour is, of course, Flipbook and Free. I don’t know why but there’s something about being able to flip online pages as if they were a real-world magazine that appeals to my infantile sensibilities.

The “free” part is, of course, optional and it’s rare to come across a publication that combines the two, which is why I was interested to discover Sociology: Terms & Concepts Visualised. Created by Sanjana Saxena for the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) the flipbook combines interesting visuals with short descriptive text on a range of Introductory Sociological Terms (mainly  around the idea of different groups – primary, secondary and the like) and Concepts such as Stratification, status and role. Both the style and content fit the English GCSE curriculum.

One drawback is that the flipbook was published in 2017 and since then Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Which is a bit of a shame because the flipbook is beautifully drawn and will definitely appeal to GCSE students (and teachers) looking for a different, potentially more-interesting, way to get into Sociology.