Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

This is for  teachers out there who have struggled to think of an interesting Sociology field trip to spice up the course!  It’s especially relevant for those of you teaching the OCR Individual and Society module and if you have students who come from suburban/rural areas.  I took our Lower Sixth group out to London last week and they enjoyed it and learnt a lot.  (Admittedly this is a trip that works best with small numbers of pupils)  I would imagine this could easily be adapted to work for those of you not in reach of London.

Our day went as follows:

• train journey into London - we had looked at Burgess and Park’s (Chicago School) theory of a city being set out in concentric circles, I got the group to make a note of the way the buildings and use of space changed as we moved in towards the city - this appears to support the concentric circles idea (we knocked it apart later as we walked round smaller bits of London)
• tube to Aldgate East, where we visited the exhibition at The Women’s Library which currently has a fabulous exhibition called What Women Want looking at changes in women’s lives over the past century and asking some searching questions about women’s lives today and how they have improved.  The exhibition runs until 26th August 2006 and is well worth visiting, my students became very reflective looking around and had a good conversation about what they had seen and how it linked to what they had learnt in lessons.
• we then walked round the corner and into Brick Lane, part of the fascinating Whitechapel area and a good example of an ethnic minority community, we walked up Brick Lane to Fournier Street and looked at the outside of the mosque there which started life as a Huguenot church and then became a synagogue before becoming a mosque - there is a good article in The Economist on the history of the area
• From Brick Lane we turned left onto Whitechapel High Street and walked past the large mosque and had a wander around the market, which is predominantly Bangladeshi - lots of unfamiliar fruit and veg. 
• We then walked down New Cannon Street towards Wapping, and turned left onto Cable street and then right down Dellow St and crossed The Highway, there is then a cut through into a park where we ate lunch.  For this and the rest of the day we had a Booth Map of the area (created just over 100 years ago to map out the social classes in London - there is a good Economist article here).  The girls were able to compare the Booth map with a current map and what they saw (the park is actually an old dock basin that has been filled in, but you can still see signs like morring rings set in the walls).
• We then walked past Shadwell Basin and along Wapping Wall and Wapping High Street where most of the old warehouses have been converted into luxury flats - this allows you to discuss changing occupational structures as well as consumption patterns.
• Eventually you come to St Katherine’s Docks which have been converted into a luxury marina - a nice place to sit and have a final discussion before heading to Tower Hill Tube station to go home (now accessed by a foot tunnel from St Katherine’s Docks so no busy roads to cross)

The girls are still talking about the trip, especially the Women’s Library, and we’ve just put the date in to do it again in September so the students have the benefit of it before the exams this time.