The Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences (ATSS)

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Another Great National ATSS CPD Conference 2009

The National ATSS CPD Conference for 2009 was held at the University of Northampton between Friday 11 September and Sunday 13 September 2009. Key note speakers were David Gillborn, Dick Hobbs, Lucinda Platt and Stephen Fuller. The speakers were, as always, excellent and kept delegates informed (and amused) with recent devleopments in sociology. In addition, there was the usual excellent mix of workshops and social events, with this year's challenging quiz taking us into the early hours of the morning.

Annual Sociology A/AS Level Essay Competition
University of Cambridge, Sociology Department

The winners of the University of Cambridge's Sociology essay prize for 2009 were:

Ms Yanpei Zhang of St Paul's School for Girls on 'What are the success and flaws of China's One-Child Policy and are there better alternatives available?' and

Mr Peter Ashton of Harrow School on 'Social Capital- its decline, effect and why the current social climate could see a change in the trend'.

To see the winning entries, please go to the Sociology Department's Home Page where they can be downloaded.

The ATSS offers its congratulations to the worthy winners.

New Patron for the ATSS

Dr.Eileen Barker, OBE, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, LSE became a patron of the ATSS at the University of Northampton on November 21st. She said she was delighted to become a patron alongside Lord Anthony Giddens, Professor Ann Oakley and Professor Robert Burgess. Dr. Barker who is soon to begin new research on NRMs in China, is a member of the British Academy and one of the UK's foremost Sociologists. Dean of Social Science, Chris Moore said, " It is an honour to welcome Dr.Barker to the University once again and to continue to support the work of the ATSS in their important role".

Joining the ATSS by Standing Order

In order to make joining the ATSS easier, you can download a Standing Order form by clicking on the link and printing off the form. Just fill it with the appropriate amount (£40.00 in 2008-2009) and send it into your bank with a renewal date in August/September yearly.

ATSS EBulletin

The ATSS emails out a monthly bulletin with information of professional interest to sociology teachers. If you would like to sign up for the Ebulletin, then email the ATSS at atss@btconnect.com for this free service.

Audio Resources from the ATSS

The ATSS is pleased to announce two resources that offer an innovative way for your students to prepare for the examination, as well as reinforce their basic knowledge of concepts. We have developed a 'podcast' type CD-Rom for both Sociology and Psychology. Each CD-Rom contains a number of audio files (.wav format) organised into topic folders. For the Sociology CD-Rom there are 140 basic concepts and for the Psychology Cd-Rom, there are 103. You can take these files and download them onto your students' iPods or MP3 players, either to be used as a 'block revision' tool, or, when they are shuffling through their music, random definitions will pop up to remind them of their sociology or psychology.

To order an Audio Sociology Concepts CD-Rom, go to our Sociology electronic resources page.

To order an Audio Psychology Concepts CD-Rom, go to our Psychology Resources page.

New CD-Roms of our ever popular PowerPoint Collections are also available for both Sociology and Psychology. Just visit our resources pages.

New Psychology Resources

The ATSS is delighted to announce additions to our series of PSYCHOLOGY RESOURCES. The Psychology Flash Card offer is still available for purchase. There are also a growing number of worksheet booklets and CD-Rom collections of PowerPoint presentations, as part of this series. Please keep re-visiting the webpage as new resources are added.

There will be a minimal charge for these resources and any monies raised are re-invested in the work of the ATSS. If you have any psychology resources of your own that you would like to donate to the ATSS to build up its offers in this area, then please contact our Resources Officer (Janis Griffiths) via the Manchester office.

Please also tell your Psychology colleagues of the availability of these resources, even if you do not teach Psychology yourself.

You can see what the ATSS is offering by going to our Psychology Resources page.

Discount on offer to ATSS members

Jill Swales' books 'The Methods Thinking Kit'(2008 ready), 'The Crime and Deviance Thinking Kit', 'The Critical and Creative Thinking Kit' and 'The Sociology Thinking Kit' are available at 15% discount to ATSS members. Go to our book discount page to see details and access an order form.

Contribute your resources to your colleagues

ATSS is looking for ideas and contributions towards a floppy disc which can be marketed to Sociology and Psychology teachers and lecturers in schools and colleges.

We are looking for tried and trusted worksheets, lesson plans, short notes and any other supporting materials, address lists or assessment materials which can be produced. We would like the materials to be:

1. original (or for the original sources to be clearly identified with author, date, text, page etc)
2. formatted to Word 6 so that it can be read by most school networks
3. between 1 to 4 sides of A4 at most (anything longer will take time to download)
4. footnoted with the author's name and institution with a footer of 1.8 cm to suit most printers
5. in Times New Roman size 12 font with as little fancy formatting as possible
6. for the author to be prepared to allow other teachers to edit this material to suit their own needs and students.

If you are willing to offer some of your ideas and lesson plans to the ATSS they should be e-mailed as an attachment to either Tony Lawson (txl@leicester.ac.uk) or to James Hegarty (j.hegarty@cttc.staffs.sch.uk).

Alternatively you can always send the material in hard copy to the ATSS (and marked resources disc) so that it can be scanned onto a disc.

The ATSS would like to thank the University of Leicester for supporting this web site. If you would like information about the Department of Sociology at Leicester, then click here for the Department of Sociology web site.

This site has been produced by Tony Lawson of the School of Education, University of Leicester

ATSS is a Registered Charity No. 1072522 A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England & Wales Company No. 3535198 VAT No. 841 2693 29

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