IMPACT FOR RESEARCHERS: THEMES AND WORKS STUDIED BY PUPILS AGED 16-18 IN THE UK
This post explains some of the broad themes and suggested texts and films studied in schools across the country. For more ideas on disseminating your research in secondary education, see the three-part series on working with schools.
The ASMCF offers financial support for liaison and outreach activities. Details of the scheme are available here. If you are a researcher interested in collaborating with schools, or a teacher interested in working with universities, please contact Camille on camille.jacob@port.ac.uk.
Scotland
Teachers can choose any topic, text or film related to the contexts of society, learning, employability and culture. Examination material (including Reading, Listening, Writing, Translation and Speaking components) is drawn from those four contexts. Specific examples of topics (similar to the ones offered below for England, Northern Ireland and Wales) are provided but not mandatory, and there are no set texts or films.
For Advanced Highers, students are required to complete an independent research project (portfolio) about literature, media or language in work in a French-speaking context.
England, Northern Ireland and Wales
The following broad themes are part of the A Level requirements, and as such can come up as part of Reading, Listening, Writing, Translation or Speaking assessments:
- Changing family structures and attitudes
- Education and work opportunities, including volunteering, gender equality and strikes
- Politics and immigration, multiculturalism, marginalisation and the far-right
- Teenage life: political engagement, new technologies and life online
- Music and cinema
- Festivals, traditions and heritage
- Media and freedom of expression
- France during WW2: occupation, Vichy, collaboration and resistance (only Edexcel and Eduqas/WJEC)
- European citizenship, environmental issues (only CCEA)
Students are also required to conduct an independent research project related to an aspect of life or culture in a French-speaking community or country.
In addition, students are require to analyse either two texts or one text and one film, drawn from the following list:
