how to write a methods in context essay

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Methods in Context: AQA A Level Sociology Topic Essays (20 Marks)

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This resource provides a series of exemplar 20-mark essays for questions on Methods in Context.

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The Methods in Context questions covered by this digital resource are:

• Applying material from Item A and your knowledge of research methods…
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of closed questionnaires for the study of gender and subject choice
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of field experiments for the study of teacher labelling in classrooms
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of group interviews for the study of class differences in educational achievement
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of laboratory experiments for the study of teachers’ expectations of pupils
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of non-participant observations for the study of the impact of setting on educational achievement
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of official statistics for the study of attendance within schools
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of official statistics for the study of educational achievement amongst different ethnic groups
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of participant observations for the study of anti-school subcultures
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of postal questionnaires for the study of parents’ attitudes towards their child’s education
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of gender identities within schools

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Writing a methods in Context essay guide

Subject: Sociology

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

21 October 2022

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This guide provides a structure to answer the 20 mark AQA essay linking methods in context to education with an example of an exam question

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ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Theory and Methods: A Visual Overview

A summary of theory and methods for A-level sociology, AQA. (Theory part only!)

Table of Contents

Last Updated on May 23, 2018 by Karl Thompson

Theory and or Methods Questions appear on both the AQA’s A-Level Paper 1 ( Education with Theory and Methods ) and Paper 3 ( Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods ).

In my experience, students underplay the importance of this aspect of the course, but in fact there is a total of 40 marks for pure theory and or methods questions and an additional 20 via the methods in context question, so in fact, these are the MOST IMPORTANT areas of the Sociology A-level syllabus which students should revise.

This post simply provides a visual overview of mainly the Theory part of the theory and methods aspect of the syllabus, and if you like this sort of thing, or even just want to show your appreciation, you might like to purchase my ‘Theory and Methods Revision Bundle’ … it includes more detailed revision notes on theory and methods as well as exemplars of exam questions, mind maps, and all the slides below in PPT format and picture format, and lots lots more

Positivism and Interpetivism

Is Sociology a Science?

Can Sociology be Value Free?

Functionalism

Social Action Theory

Postmodernity

Social Policy

To follow… research methods slides!

Theory and methods a level sociology revision bundle .

Contents include:

• 74 pages of revision notes
• 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
• Five theory and methods essays
• ‘How to write methods in context essays’.
• Power Point Overview of sociological theories in slide and picture format.

Happy Revising!

Last updated May 2018.

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The One Method That Changes Your—and All Students’—Writing

Science-based writing methods can achieve dramatic results..

Posted May 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

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• A systematic writing framework offers a method for dramatically improving the teaching of writing.
• This method received only limited uptake, despite high-profile research publications and textbooks.
• A focus on writing style might have limited the method's impacts.

I remember spending hours commenting painstakingly on my students’ papers when I was a graduate student teaching in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. My students loved our classes, and they filled my sections and gave me terrific course evaluations. Yet I could see that their writing failed to change significantly over the course of the semester. I ended up feeling as if I should refund their money, haunted by the blunt instruments we had to teach writing.

As I’ve learned from directing five writing programs at three different universities, methods matter. When I reviewed comments on papers from instructors who taught in my programs, I discovered that the quantity and quality of comments on students’ papers made only a slight impact on writing outcomes. For instance, one notoriously lazy instructor took several weeks to return assignments and only used spelling and grammar checkers to automate comments. But his conscientious colleague made dozens of sharp observations about students’ arguments, paragraphs, and sentences. However, Mr. Conscientious’ students improved perhaps only 10% over Mr. Minimalist’s students. Even then, the differences stemmed from basic guidelines Mr. Conscientious insisted his students write to, which included providing context sentences at the outset of their essay introductions.

Educators have also poured resources into teaching writing, with increasing numbers of hours dedicated to teaching writing across primary, secondary, and higher education . Yet studies continue to find writing skills inadequate . In higher education, most universities require at least a year of writing-intensive courses, with many universities also requiring writing across the curriculum or writing in the disciplines to help preserve students’ writing skills. However, writing outcomes have remained mostly unchanged .

While pursuing my doctorate, I dedicated my research to figuring out how writing worked. As a graduate student also teaching part-time, I was an early convert to process writing. I also taught those ancient principles of logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as grammar and punctuation. Nevertheless, these frameworks only created a canvas for students’ writing. What was missing: how writers should handle words, sentence structure, and relationships between sentences.

Yet researchers published the beginnings of a science-based writing method over 30 years ago. George Gopen, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams created a framework for identifying how to maximize the clarity, coherence, and continuity of writing. In particular, Gopen and Swan (1990) created a methodology for making scientific writing readable . This work should have been a revelation to anyone teaching in or directing a writing program. But, weirdly, comparatively few writing programs or faculty embraced this work, despite Williams, Colomb, and Gopen publishing both research and textbooks outlining the method and process.

Peculiarly, this framework—represented by Williams’ Style series of textbooks and Gopen’s reader expectation approach—failed to become standard in writing courses, likely because of two limitations. First, both Gopen and Williams hewed to a relativistic stance on writing methods, noting that rule-flouting often creates a memorable style. This stance created a raft of often-contradictory principles for writing. For example, Williams demonstrated that beginning sentences with There is or There are openings hijacked the clarity of sentences, then argued writers should use There is or There are to shunt important content into sentence emphasis positions, where readers recall content best. Second, these researchers failed to tie this writing framework to the wealth of data in psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience , or cognitive psychology on how our reading brains process written English. For instance, textbooks written by these three principal researchers avoid any mention of why emphasis positions exist at the ends of sentences and paragraphs—despite the concept clearly originating in the recency effect. This limitation may stem from the humanities’ long-held antipathy to the idea that writing is a product, rather than a process. Or even that science-based methods can help teachers and programs measure the effectiveness of writing, one reason why university First-Year Writing programs have failed to improve students’ writing in any measurable way.

Nevertheless, when you teach students how our reading brains work, you create a powerful method for rapidly improving their writing—in any course that requires writing and at all levels of education. Students can grasp how writing works as a system and assess the costs and benefits of decisions writers face, even as they choose their first words. This method also works powerfully to help students immediately understand how, for instance, paragraph heads leverage priming effects to shape readers’ understanding of paragraph content.

Using this method, I and my colleagues have helped students use a single writing assignment to secure hundreds of jobs, win millions in grant funding, and advance through the ranks in academia. However, we’ve also used the same method without modifications in elementary and secondary classrooms to bolster students’ writing by as much as three grade levels in a single year.

Perhaps the time has arrived for this well-kept secret to revolutionizing student writing outcomes to begin making inroads into more writing classrooms.

Gopen, G. D. and J. A. Swan (1990). "The Science of Scientific Writing." American Scientist 78(6): 550-558.

Gopen, George. The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Gopen, George. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace . University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace . Harper Collins, 1994.

Williams, Joseph. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace . Longman, 2002.

Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Ph.D. , is a consultant on writing and organizations. She is also the author, with Maria B. Grant, MD, of The Biomedical Writer: What You Need to Succeed in Academic Medicine .

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