realsociology

This isn’t a particularly informative post, more of a spontaneous expression of an epiphany moment (although one without the elation). The epiphany comes in the form of a question – Is there any worse way of getting teenagers to concentrate than sitting them in a room with 19 other teenagers and one adult for four and a [...]

-      Twitter as an educational tool in ten tweets – I’m getting my students used to using twitter as an educational tool this week. I’ll be getting them work through the following questions. I’m doing this with my A2 Global Development other educators should be able to modify this for their own subjects… Initial steps [...]

Oh the comforts of revision – I finally get to really hand over to the students and spend my prep time creating these cartoons – becoming something of a yearly ritual now – In this one a Green devil like creature explains how cultural deprivation affects educational achievement. Please note the cunning use of the [...]

To ‘help’ students with their revision for the forthcoming AS Education and Research Methods exam – some of the ways in which middle class parents may use their cultural and material capital to advantage their children in education

Assess the extent to which home based, rather than school – based factors account for social class based differences in educational achievement (20) Let this post stand as a monument to how much I hate marking essays – I just spent 20 minutes writing it – the unconscious motivation obviously being to avoid marking four dozen with same [...]

Amy Chua’s latest book – Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother – argues against the weak, cuddling, Western parenting style, making the case that the much stricter approach of Chinese parents is superior. Some of the rules she subjected her own daughters to included – Never letting them attend sleepovers Never having ‘playdates’ never watching [...]

A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation argues that early intervention is not enough to tackle the persistent differences in class inequalities in educational achievement – The report is a follow up to earlier research published March last year which is summarised below This four page summary (and the longer document which you can [...]

In this podcast A Sociologist reveals his findings about masculinity and identity based on 5 months participant observation with students in a sixth form in the South of England. The podcast focuses on ideas about heterosexuality and homosexuality. This is a nice 15 minute summary of a paper entitled ‘It’s just not acceptable any more: [...]

Stuart got fired for being full of s**t, Jamie got fired for being a bit wet, but did Jo get fired because of her lack of cultural capital? We use this concept of Bourdieu’s in the AS Sociology of education to explain why middle class kids do better in education – Stephen Ball pointed out – middle [...]