Your Sociology and Social Sciences Offer Holder Day

• Saturday 4 February, 11.30am – 4.00pm
• Wednesday 22 February, 1.30pm – 6.00pm

What is childhood?

Find out from your taster session the different types of issues covered when you study Childhood and Youth at Edge Hill University. What are the differences between social science thinking and common-sense understandings of the world? During your session you’ll be asked to consider what you know about childhood and who might be influential in shaping your understanding of what childhood is and what it is for.

And, after watching two contrasting representations of childhood you’ll be encouraged to consider the implications of the different ways in which children and young people are understood in society and how this might impact their experience of childhood.

Finally, we’ll invite you to think about how children and young people engage with popular culture. What does this mean in personal, local, national and global context. How can you use basic social science thinking to unpick the topic?

• Saturday 4 February, 11.30am – 4.00pm
• Wednesday 22 February, 1.30pm – 6.00pm

What is it like to be a child?

In this interactive session we’ll engage in some self-reflective analysis in order to think about children’s cultural worlds. This question has been considered by some social scientists because they believe it is important, not only to describe the institutional arrangements, such as schools and social services which society provides for children, but because it is also important to investigate and understand how childhood is experienced by those who inhabit this particular stage of life. They ask questions such as: what is it like to go to school? What is it like to have no friends? How do they feel about being told what to do by teachers and adults?

This kind of approach within the social sciences is sometimes referred to as the anthropological or ethnographic or naturalistic approach. Anthropologists are well known for studying other cultures from within. The aim is to understand the point of view of the members of the cultures being studied

• Saturday 4 February, 11.30am – 4.00pm
• Wednesday 22 February, 1.30pm – 6.00pm

Children Who Kill: Representations and Reality?

The death of a child in most societies is a tragedy but such events do seem to bring societies together in a form of solidarity. But what happens when children are seen as responsible for the death of another? Such actions transgress most societal values and in rich modern societies challenge our very beliefs in who children are, leading to considerable societal reaction. This session explores such issues by looking at various case studies and asks questions about the `naturalness’ of childhood, power, identity, and contemporary society in general. 

• Saturday 18 March, 10.00am – 3.00pm

Session details:

As this is a joint honours programme, you will have the opportunity to attend two separate hour long sessions on your offer holder day.

Please check the session information on this page for the BA (Hons) Childhood and Youth Studies session and visit BA (Hons) Criminology for an idea of what your subject tasters could include.

• Saturday 18 March, 10.00am – 3.00pm

Session details:

As this is a joint honours programme, you will have the opportunity to attend two separate hour long sessions on your offer holder day.

Please check the session information on this page for both the BA (Hons) Childhood and Youth Studies session and the BA (Hons) Sociology for an idea of what your subject tasters could include.

• Saturday 18 March, 10.00am – 3.00pm

Session details:

As this is a joint honours programme, you will have the opportunity to attend two separate hour long sessions on your offer holder day.

Please check the session information on this page for both the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies session and the BA (Hons) Sociology for an idea of what your subject tasters could include.