Introducing Sociology: Core Concepts

Core Concepts in Sociology was a series of short films on areas like culture, identity and socialisation produced by OnlineClassroom. If you’re interested, the films are still available in various places but since they were originally published in 2007(ish) the technical quality is probably not up to the standards to which we’re now accustomed.

The content, however, is still sound.

Which is probably just as well because I’ve managed to dig-out the resources we created at the time to accompany the film. They’re perfectly serviceable, if a little basic…

The main resources were three PowerPoint Presentations covering:

1. Culture

2. Identity

3. Socialisation

Although they were originally designed to complement teaching in conjunction with the films there’s nothing here that actually requires students to have watched the films.

A second resource, an Activity Booklet (available as a Word document if you want to edit / adapt the activities or as a PDF file) contained, as you probably won’t be too surprised to learn, a selection of classroom activities:

A. Culture

1. The Components of Culture

2. British Culture

3. Cultural continuities and diversities

B.  Socialisation

1. Instincts

2. The Socialisation Game (to play this you’ll need to download the game board).

3. Agencies of Socialisation

C. Identity

1. Who am I?

If you want to introduce the concept of identity via the medium of film, here’s one we made earlier:

“This activity-based film looks at the interaction between the individual and society through the concept of identity. Its main focus is on illustrating and explaining the difference between personal and social identities”.

2. Gender Socialisation and Identities.

3. Personal Identities.

These are pretty-much standalone activities that you can slot into your teaching as and when required.

Finally, if you’re looking for a short “Introduction to Sociology” film you could do worse than check out this little gem:

“Based around an exploration of the distinction between social and sociological problems, What Is Sociology? provides a short and accessible introduction to the subject, built around and examination of the problem of order, how to explain social change and relationship between the individual and society”.