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What's New?

More activities to help you in learning Research Methods. This time you have to make a series of decisions. You gain or lose funding depending on which choices you make. You can download information on how to choose a method or sample, how to design a piece of resarch, what is involved in operationalising (defining and measuring concepts) and a final written paragraph which shows you what your answer might look like.

Find these in the E-tests on Research Methods -

• How to Choose a Method (in Criteria for Choosing Methods)
• How to Choose a Sample (in the Sampling section)
• How to Operationalise Concepts (in the Data Collection section)
• How to Evaluate a Research Design (in the Evaluation section)

If you prefer you can access these activities from the Tests Menu, where they are listed as Decision-Making Activities.

When you are using these activities, you can download information about how to structure your decisions, and a suggested answer using the information in the activity when you have finished.

These are really A2 activities.

More drag-and-drop activities added.

• Social Class and Education (Home Background) - drag the description of research to match the appropriate authors.
• Race and Education - drag the description of research to match the appropriate authors.
• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Education - put the stages of a process in the correct order.
• The Poverty Trap - put the stages of a process in the correct order.

The first few of a series of concentraton games added.

• Family and Social Policy - match the pairs of authors and concepts, perspectives and concepts, or policies and dates. There are 15 pairs, and 8 appear on each game.
• Introduction to Education - 15 pairs of terms and dates on the History and Structure of Education; 8 pairs appear in every game. The game is timed.
• Overview of Educational Achievement - 15 pairs on measuring and explaining educational under-achievement. 8 pairs appear on each game. The game is timed.

New matching pairs games for Sociological Perspectives. Match the pairs to improve your knowledge and memory of the perspectives and types of perspectives available. These games are like the G.C.S.E. games, but timed, and you are told the number of flips it took you to match all the terms. Compete against yourself to improve your memory and know(ledge.

• Sociological Perspectives
• The Functionalist Approach
• The Marxist Approach
• The Weberian Approach
• The Feminist Approach

New matching pairs games for the Sociology of Education. These games consist of 12 authors for each topic. Match the pairs to learn the authors.

• Social Class and Education
• Gender and Education
• Race and Education

CDs with printed versions of most of the tests for Education and Families and Households are now available from the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences. See the Home Page and the Teachers' Page for more details of these, and links to the order form.

• These consist of key concepts and/or authors.
• You complete the jigsaw and this helps you to remember key names and ideas.
• The jigsaws come in two versions:

1. Basic - these have a ghosted image in the background to help you complete the jigsaw. It is a good idea to do these first.
2. Harder - these have no image, although you can switch on a grid to give you clues about the size of the pieces.

The basic jigsaws have been revised. The 'grid on' or 'grid off' option has been removed, although I have kept this for those with no image, following comments from Mary Morgan, for which I am grateful.

There is a new GCSE section. It includes introductory:

• Quizzes
• Hangman games
• Wordsearches
• Revision jigsaws
• Memory games based on matching pairs of sociological terms

Whiteboards

The materials here are suitable for students to use as resources for independent study outside the classroom, but can equally well be used with a whole class led by a teacher.

Drag-and-drop exercises and quizzes lend themselves well to this. For example, word searches and jigsaws can be completed with a finger.

To increase the text size, go to View and choose the size you want from Text Size. This works for most of the exercises, although not for those written in Flash.

I would like to acknowledge Dave Bown's generosity in making available material from his CD for the synoptic module as part of the SocSite section of this site. It is much appreciated.

Students from Brighton and Hove College and Itchen College have password-protected access to SocSite. The username and password are the same for all students. Please ask your teachers for the current version.

The new specification from the Welsh board began last September. Sociology Learning Support tests are relevant to the new topics for this specification.