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Investigating Social Inequalities Through Media Reports: A Content Analysis Activity
Read more: Investigating Social Inequalities Through Media Reports: A Content Analysis ActivityIf you are teaching Cambridge OCR A Level Sociology, this is a really effective way to get students exploring social inequalities, media representations and research methods in one lesson. Using a small set of current media reports, students carry out a content analysis to investigate how inequality is framed, who gets blamed, and whether social…
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Secondary Sort
Read more: Secondary SortHelping Students Make Sense of Qualitative Secondary Sources When teaching research methods, qualitative secondary sources can sometimes feel harder for students to get hold of than questionnaires or interviews. Students can usually picture a researcher handing out a survey or conducting an interview, but they are often less confident when the method involves analysing documents…
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Participant Observation Fishbowl
Read more: Participant Observation FishbowlA Simple Classroom Activity That Makes Observation Methods Click One of the challenges when teaching observation methods is that students often understand the definitions before they understand the difference. They can usually tell you that participant observation involves joining in, while non-participant observation involves watching from the outside. But that does not always mean they…
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Reliability Test: Using Video to Teach Reliability in Non-Participant Observation
Read more: Reliability Test: Using Video to Teach Reliability in Non-Participant ObservationTeaching research methods can sometimes feel abstract for students. Terms like reliability, observer agreement and structured observation are easy enough to define, but much harder for students to genuinely understand unless they experience the problem for themselves. That is why this reliability test works so well. It takes a key methods issue and turns it…
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Homework Activity: Sampling a Population
Read more: Homework Activity: Sampling a PopulationSampling in Practice: A Homework Activity That Helps Students Move Beyond Definitions Sampling is one of those areas in sociology where students can often learn the key terms without fully understanding what they mean in practice. Many can memorise the difference between random, stratified, quota, opportunity and snowball sampling, but struggle when asked to apply…
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Bringing Theoretical Perspectives to Life in the Sociology Classroom
Read more: Bringing Theoretical Perspectives to Life in the Sociology ClassroomOne of the biggest challenges when teaching theory and methods is helping students see that research methods are not simply technical tools sitting in a box waiting to be picked up. Too often, students learn that questionnaires are quantitative, interviews are qualitative, and observations can be either overt or covert, but they do not always…
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What Is the Researcher Doing?
Read more: 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 than beginning with a long teacher explanation, this activity asks students to examine realistic research situations and work out what kind of observation is taking place. In doing so, they…
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The Ethnographer’s Toolkit
Read more: The Ethnographer’s ToolkitEthnographic research is one of the most vivid and engaging methods to teach in sociology. Students are often drawn to it because it feels closer to “real life” than many other research methods. Rather than relying mainly on questionnaires, statistics or short interviews, ethnography involves entering a social world and trying to understand it from…
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Positivism at Home
Read more: Positivism at HomeA 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 the most effective tasks are the ones that help students take a big theoretical idea and apply it in a clear, structured way on their own. That is exactly why…
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Why Mixed Methods Matter
Read more: Why Mixed Methods MatterA Sociology Classroom Activity on Investigating Inequality Teachers of sociology are often trying to do two things at once: help students engage with contemporary social issues, and sharpen their understanding of research methods. This activity does both. It asks students to consider how they might prove or disprove a set of sociological claims about inequality…