2014-15 Coursework options for the 500 word essay

Education:
All I learnt at school?: Education can have a profound effect on our sense of who we are. Education can be seen in the broad sense of experiences that have a formative effect on the individual or more specifically as the system by which society formally transmits knowledge, skills, attitudes and values through institutions such as schools and colleges. This topic asks you to investigate the relationship between aspects of personal identity and the many ways in which we are influenced by the contexts of education. Areas for investigation might include your experience of the curriculum ('national' and 'hidden'); the social dimension of education; the many ways in which you are represented at school and college (for example through dress codes and uniforms, photographs, reports, roles, group membership) or of influential people, relationships and experiences within an educational setting.


Food: You are what you eat: "Food touches everything important to people: it marks social difference and strengthens social bonds. Common to all people, it can signify very different things from table to table." * Our relationship with food communicates a lot about the construction and development of our personal identity in terms of food choices, the importance of food preparation and meal times in defining our identity within the family and food as a representation of national, regional or ethnic identity. *Food and Culture: A Reader by Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik, (Routledge 1997)


Virtual selves: Projections and Representations:  Virtual worlds can allow us to more freely explore facets of our personalities in ways that are not easily available to us in real life. Partly this is due to our capacity to invent, modify and exaggerate attributes and abilities within these contexts. In one sense we can be whoever we want to be. Online identities are flexible to the extent we can easily alter the seemingly fixed markers of self such as race, ethnicity, gender, age and socio-economic background. Another characteristic of virtual environments is the anonymity they provide. Virtual contexts give the individual the ability to express themselves free from social norms and the pressures or expectations within family and friendship groups, personal relationships or within the education system or work place. However the freedom to experiment and the capacity to remain anonymous have other consequences for our sense of who we are. Maintaining an alternative identity can cause feelings of disconnect and dissatisfaction and can lead to issues of trust in the interactions that we have with other virtual selves. When identity becomes ambiguous and disembodied how do we know what is real? This topic invites you to investigate the relationship between aspects of personal identity and the many ways in which we are influenced by the virtual environment that we interact with and through. Areas for investigation might include your presentation of self on social networking sites; the modifications you make to your identity as an online gamer; the construction of yourself through blogs and vlogs or your own experience of the more negative aspects of virtual communication, such as trolling. Whichever focus you choose remember that this piece of writing is specifically asking you to investigate your own personal identity.