Secondary Sort
Helping Students Make Sense of Qualitative Secondary Sources When teaching research methods, qualitative secondary sources can sometimes feel harder for students to get hold of…
Participant Observation Fishbowl
A Simple Classroom Activity That Makes Observation Methods Click One of the challenges when teaching observation methods is that students often understand the definitions before…
Reliability Test: Using Video to Teach Reliability in Non-Participant Observation
Teaching research methods can sometimes feel abstract for students. Terms like reliability, observer agreement and structured observation are easy enough to define, but much harder…
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Homework Activity: Sampling a Population
Sampling in Practice: A Homework Activity That Helps Students Move Beyond Definitions Sampling is one of those areas in sociology where students can often learn…
Bringing Theoretical Perspectives to Life in the Sociology Classroom
One of the biggest challenges when teaching theory and methods is helping students see that research methods are not simply technical tools sitting in a…
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What Is the Researcher Doing?
Activity for Introducing Participant Observation One of the most effective ways to teach participant observation is to move students quickly from definition to application. Rather…
The Ethnographer’s Toolkit
Ethnographic research is one of the most vivid and engaging methods to teach in sociology. Students are often drawn to it because it feels closer…
Positivism at Home
A Simple Homework Extension Activity for A Level Sociology Homework does not always need to be long, complicated or heavily research-based to be useful. Sometimes…
Why Mixed Methods Matter
A Sociology Classroom Activity on Investigating Inequality Teachers of sociology are often trying to do two things at once: help students engage with contemporary social…
Activity: Does the IV Cause the DV?
This activity helps students practise the difference between correlation and cause and effect by looking at sociological hypotheses and deciding whether the independent variable (IV)…
The Sociology Guy 