crime control, surveillance, prevention and punishment, victims, and the role of the criminal justice system and other agencies

the relationship between different social groups and religious/spiritual organisations and movements, beliefs and practices

This month at AQA

the relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods; the nature of ‘social facts’ AS Sociology for AQA – The Application of Sociological Research Methods to the Study of Education – This odd little booklet provides a useful overview of the methods used in various studies relevant to different topics within the Education module. Sociology Teaching Resources for Sale This course carries UCAS points. This means that it can be used to gain direct access to University courses and other Higher Education, through the UCAS system. The methods chapter is OK – gets a bit thin towards the secondary data material at the end. What’s nice about this chapter is that the book has clear methods in context boxes throughout the methods chapter which link to education research (some of which has even been done this decade!) The book is divided up into 10 sections, which each section exploring around seven sociological concepts, providing a ‘working definition’, a section on the origins of the concept, meanings and interpretations, critical comments, and a final section on the continued relevance of the concepts.

There is no great mystery about how to study for sociology A-level. Many students, although they’re not naturally that ‘academic’ still score A and A* grades through sheer hard work, focus and determination.globalisation and its influence on the cultural, political and economic relationships between societies Ken Brown’s excellent text book is a nice balance of depth and breadth. The chapters are clearly broken down by specification area, and covers the new areas of the specification well – it is the only text book to specifically deal with the issue of Selection in education for example. NB I’ve only selected the most quintessentially sociological books for this list (I’ll get round to explaining what I define as ‘quintessentially sociological’ at some point). Ask “How” and “Why” questions when revising and try to connect ideas (this method is called “elaboration”) Sudhir Venkatesh (2008) Gang leader for a day: A rouge sociologist crosses the line. London: Penguin books.

development in relation to aid and trade, industrialisation, urbanisation, the environment, and war and conflict the social distribution of crime and deviance by ethnicity, gender and social class, including recent patterns and trends in crimeUpon successfully completing this home learning course, you will receive the qualification: AQA A-level Sociology, issued by AQA. Your certificate is identical to that issued to students at any other school, college or university. Even though this is not one of the AQA endorsed text books, the fact that it’s not endorsed probably says more about the AQA than it does about this book. The resources have been designed for A-level sociology and cover the core themes on the AQA’s specification but are suitable for new 16-19 students studying any specification. sources of data, including questionnaires, interviews, participant and non-participant observation, experiments, documents and official statistics