Sociology in Focus for AS: Education and Methods

Continuing to plough the long and lonely furrow that is AS Sociology, today’s offering is a whole bunch of resources for Education with Research Methods. These complement the Sociology in Focus for AS textbook you can pick-up for absolutely nothing if you click the link and then click another link to download it. You might want to read the text that surrounds the download link, but it’s not mandatory.

If you follow the AQA Spec. the combination of Education and Methods will be all-too-familiar but if you follow other Specs (such as Eduqas) you’ll be pleased to know that as far as the resources go they’re basically “all about the Education” and you can forget about Methods (at least in this context).

If you teach / study OCR then you need to be aware these are AS rather than A2 resources.

If you teach / study outside the UK bubble you may find stuff here and in the textbook that relates to your course of study, but I can’t guarantee it.

Anyway, todays resources relating to Education (and a bit of Methods) are, in no particular order of importance or significance:

An Overview Map: This is a puffed-up, self-important way of saying a spider-type map that gives a very general overview of the Module content.  

Revision Maps: These are Unit Maps and go into much more depth and detail about the content covered throughout the Module. Not only are they useful for Revision, they can also be used to introduce and map the content of each Unit. And remember: “A student who knows where they’re going will find it easier to get there“.

Confucius said that.
Possibly.
I couldn’t swear to it.

Teaching Tips: There’s some stuff on how to integrate Methods into the Education content that you can safely ignore if you don’t follow AQA. There’s also a neat little section on using poems to aid memory and revision.

Here’s one, for example, I prepared earlier on Correspondence Theory:

“Bowles and Gintis looked closely at schools,
Because they wanted to know how their rules
Taught children about work and its needs
And the correspondence on which it feeds.
The school bell rings like the time clock dings,
Better not be late ‘cos the boss doesn’t wait,
Keep your head down and don’t play the clown,
Listen to the sages or you won’t rake in the wages…“.

Okay. So it’s not Shakespeare. But then who is?

Activity Answers: If you use the activities that have been cunningly placed throughout the Module, you may find some answers a useful timesaver. In which case you’re in luck because I’ve painstakingly written answers to Every. Single. Question.

Worksheets: I know worksheets aren’t everyone’s cup of hot chocolate (and if you want to get sniffy about it, Comments Are Open). But these aren’t just any worksheets. They’re M&S Worksheets (not really) and they can be used to set individual and group tasks to consolidate and check learning. These are organised around three activity types:

Consolidate, designed for individual work to ensure students have “grasped the basics”.

Apply, designed to promote analysis, discussion and application through small-group work.

Evaluate, designed for whole-class discussions around arguments / evidence for and against a question.

Exam Focus provides Top Tips from a Senior Examiner. Be aware, however, that the specific types of questions asked may have changed in the 10 years since this text was published. There are sufficient generic tips, however, to make this section worth a look.