Introductory

What Is Sociology?

A brief Introduction to Sociology, focusing on the concepts of social relationships, groups and order.

Origins of Sociology

Interactive Presentation that introduces students to 9 of the 19th century founders of Sociology.

Investigating Sociology

If you’re a teacher looking to spice-up your Introductory Sociology lessons I've created this Presentation especially for you. Eschewing the traditional "here's some bullet points on a screen. Look how I've made them wobble to make them seem more dynamic and exciting" PowerPoint approach, I've gone for a slightly more Multimedia effect (i.e. there's a bit of music and some graphics). The Presentation style is another in the award-winning Sociological Detective Series and, in case you were wondering, the whole sheebang is like nothing you or your newbie students will have ever seen before. Probably.

Mass Media

Defining Mass Media

Prezi-style Presentation

Crime and Deviance

Left Realism

A simple outline of the "3-cornered approach" to understanding crime and deviance.

Visualising Left Realism

This is a simple "teaching presentation" that provides visual representations of three aspects of left realism:

1. The Three-cornered Approach to Crime (Young, 2003)

2. The Criminogenic Triangle (Lea and Young, 1984)

3. The Square of Crime (Young, 1997).

Visualising Routine Activities Theory

Provides a visual representation of the factors that contribute to both offending and situational crime prevention, within the context of routine activities theory.

Broken Windows Revisited

PowerPoint Show designed to "tell a story about Broken Windows" in terms of 3 discrete areas:

1. Intro and Overview.

2. The Ecological Context

3. Order Maintenance Policing

Approaches to Deviance

The basic features of correctional criminological and labelling approaches to crime and deviance are identified and compared.

Globalisation and Transnational Crime: Part 1
This presentation focuses on examples of *conventional forms of crime facilitated by globalisation*, including *trafficking, counterfeiting* and *intellectual property rights*. The slides are designed to provide "background examples" of conventional transnational crimes that can be elaborated by teachers within the classroom.

Organised Crime: Part 3
If you prefer to use PowerPoint rather than video, then this, Part 3 of the Organised Crime series, is the one for you. It deals with Economic Market models and differs marginally from the video in that it has no filmed inserts and some of the accompanying text has been omitted.

Theories of Crime

These presentations covers a range of popular A-level Crime and Deviance theories and each presentation combines text, graphics, audio and video as a means of delivering interesting and accessible content to both teachers and students. The Presentations can be used for revision or as a starting-point for further elaboration.

Functionalist Theories

New Right Theories
Interactionist Theories

Functionalist Perspectives on Deviance
This Presentation, created by Lee Bryant, outlines a range of Functionalist theories of deviance:
Durkheim: Functions of crime; Hirschi: Bonds of attachment; Merton: Social structure and anomie; Structural and subcultural theories; Cohen: The delinquent subculture; Cloward and Ohlin: Delinquency and opportunity; Murray: The underclass.

Responses to Strain

Although examples of Merton’s “Responses to Strain” are fairly straightforward I always think it helps students if they can visualise the basic idea involved. This short presentation, therefore, was designed to enable teachers to display the various responses and talk around the topic at the same time (just think of it as multitasking). Also, if you need some critical notes on strain theory you can find them here.

Deviancy Amplification

Simple two-screen PowerPoint that outlines Wilkins' classic model and indicates the role of the mass media in the amplification process.

Situational Crime Prevention

This Presentation  outlines Costello and Clarke's (2003) 5 strategies and 25 techniques of situational crime prevention.  While the 5 strategies are outlined here this presentation focuses on identifying, explaining and providing examples of the 25 associated crime prevention techniques.

Situational Crime Prevention: The Craving for Hot Products

Clarke (1999) used the mnemonic CRAVED to define the characteristics of "hot products" and you can use either of these PowerPoint Presentations to identify each element in the mnemonic.

Version 1 displays the mnemonic as a self-running presentation.

Version 2 displays the CRAVED mnemonic but to display the meaning of each letter it has to be clicked.

Crime Displacement

When evaluating situational crime techniques we need to know whether they are always successful and this PowerPoint identifies six ways crime may be displaced rather than removed.

White Collar Crime

A relatively simple - but  useful - set of slides with information taken from a range of sources. There's nothing too detailed but there's plenty of examples and a neat, jaunty, presentation style.

Crime and Criminology

This series of five PowerPoint presentations, created by Janis Griffiths for an A-level Criminology course, has a mix of Notes, questions  and simple interactive activities that could be easily adapted to A-level Sociology:

1. Biological / Physiological theories of crime

2. Individualistic theories of criminality

3. Sociological theories of criminality

4. Feminist approaches to crime and criminality

5. Offender Profiling

Measuring Crime

Large (30-odd slide) PowerPoint Presentation that introduces a number of different topics related to the practice and problem of measuring crime

The Sociological Detectives: We Have A Situation

In this simulation students take on the role of Sociological Detectives to investigate and explain the behaviour of "unruly youth" using a mix of video and text.

Types of Cybercrime

Identifying and briefly explaining a range of contemporary cybercrimes.

Culture and Identity

The Web of Identity
This small (two slide) Presentation can be used to introduce (or revise) the concept of identity and its relationship to other groups of sociological concepts.

Some Functions of Culture

Simple Presentation that identifies 7 possible functions of culture. If you need some notes to expand the level of detail, the Presentation is based on the 7 Functions of Culture post that will help you fill-in any gaps...

Global Culture

Presentation that covers three different ways of looking at the development of global culture:Convergence and Homogenisation, Diversity and Heterogeneity, Homogeneity and Diversity. If you want more background information about these ideas, you can find it here.

Three introductory Presentations on:

Culture

Identity

Socialisation

Further details about the contents of each Presentation can be found here.

Agencies of Socialisation

This Presentation identifies a range of primary and secondary socialising agencies (family, peers, education, workplace, media and religion) and provides some simple information / examples for each about Behaviour, Roles, Norms, Values and Sanctions.

Middle Class Identities

Two Presentations looking at middle class occupational and cultural identities. If you want a little more information / explanation, you can find it here for the former and here for the latter.

Methods of Socialisation

A brief introduction to 5 methods: Selective exposure, Identification, Modelling, Sanctions (rewards and punishments) and Nurturance.

Self and Identity

Covers personal and social identities and perspectives on The Self and identity (Functionalist, Marxist and Interactionist).

Education

Flashcards can be a fun way to engage students with their revision and this set of 32 flashcards (divided into two separate packs) focuses on the Role of Education. You can download a couple of different versions:

1. Flashcard without answers displays a definition for 30 seconds before moving to the next definition. Students can use the blank answer sheet to record their answers (and use the completed answer sheet to check them)
2. Flashcards with answers displays a definition for 30 seconds and then displays the answer before moving to the next definition.

Family

Family Structures
A relatively simple Presentation outlining 4 types of family structure: nuclear, extended, reconstituted and single-parent.

Commitments to Cohabitation

Simple Presentation illustrating Smart and Stevens (2000) two basic forms of “commitment to cohabitation”:

1. Contingent commitment involved couples cohabiting “until they were sure it was safe or sensible to become permanently committed or married”.

2. Mutual commitment involved the couple feeling as committed to each other and their children as married couples.

Or, if you prefer you can watch online.

Politics and Power

Pluralist Model of Power
This short Presentation by Lee Bryant offers a range of definitions of power and provides a visual demonstration of pluralist models of power in a UK context.

Religion

New Religious Movements: 5 Pathways

Short Presentation based on Daschke and Ashcraft’s (2005), that identifies and outlines “five interrelated pathways” into membership of NRMs,

New Religious Movements: 6 Characteristics

Short Presentation that identifies and outlines Barker's (1999) "six characteristics of New Religious Movements".

New Religious Movements: Who Joins

Simple Presentation that identifies and outlines the 5 main groups likely to be attracted to New Religious Movements

The D.O.V.E. Protocol: Four Functions of Religion

Presentation designed to introduce students to “functions of religion” in terms of four broad categories: Discipline, Organisation, Vitalisation and Euphony.

Types of New Age Religious Movement

Presentation that outlines the key attributes of 3 types of New Age Religious Movement (Explicitly Religious, Human Potential and Mystical), illustrated with short video clip examples.

Defining Religion

This fairly simple introduction to the topic of religion looks at how it can be defined in terms of three main criteria:

Beliefs, Practices and Organisation. In this respect it introduces students to examples of how religious behaviour differs from other types of non-religious (secular) behaviour. However, rather than going down the traditional “bullet point list” route, this Presentation uses a simple Timeline effect to introduce the information. And although I say “simple”, you probably wouldn’t believe the huge amount of sweat and tears that went into creating it and making it work.

And yes, that is a psuedo-parallax scoll you think you’re seeing.

One small step for PowerPoint. One giant leap for me…

Defining Religion 2

Where the first of these two Presentations laid the groundwork by outlining three basic aspects of religion, Part 2 digs quite a bit deeper by looking at three more complex areas, namely religious diversity, inclusive approaches and exclusive approaches to defining religion.

As you might expect the Presentation also uses the Timeline effect introduced in Part 1.

Theory and Methods

Methodology 1
Contents include: Factors influencing choice of method; validity and predictability; the advantages and disadvantages of Participant Observation, Structured Interviews, Secondary data and Triangulation.

Methodology 2
Presentation containing nearly 50 slides covering Positivist and Non-positivist methods and methodology, authored by students of Coopers and Coburn school: Cheidi Antoine, Michael Boyce, Jeremy Bristow, Chris Dann, Chris Davis, Anthony Forsyth, Patrick Hill, Laura Knight, Lewis Mason, Stephanie Moore, Jenna Payne, Lauren Penticost, Holly Rantell, Jay Reeves, Lucy Salmon, Terryann Smith, Adam Solomons, Luke Snellin, Steve Walker and Alison Young.

Sociological Theory
An introduction to the concept of theory; understanding sociological perspectives (Functionalism, Marxism, Interactionism, Feminism, Post-Modernism).

The Hypothetico-Deductive Model

A simple one-slide representation of Popper's classic statement of scientific research. The idea is mainly to save you time if you're lecturing about the model. The presentation contains two versions:

1. Click-to-advance for those who want to talk about each element in the model before advancing the presentation.

2. Self-advancing where each element in the model is revealed after a two-second delay.

If you prefer a more filmic version you can watch online without the hassle of downloading...

Emergent Research

This simple 30-second (idealised) outline of the processes involved in emergent research can be used as a counterpoint to the Hypothetico-deductive model to present an alternative (Interpretivist) model of scientific sociological research.

If you prefer your research methods on film (and why wouldn't you?) you can watch this epic creation online...

McDonaldisation
A simple (one screen) presentation covering the main points of Ritzer's 'McDonaldisation' argument.