PIP
Kate Thompson, Aurora College
Just like the SMH Good Food Guide, this is a Good PIP Guide aimed to help you think about the right ‘ingredients’ for a
PIP worthy of three chef’s hats!
It’s a PIP…not a project!
To get a chef’s hat, you have to create a good atmosphere…The PIP is unique. It could possibly be
unlike any other assessment you have done before. Projects, assignments, speeches, presentations and
other assessments you may have done differ greatly from the PIP. Such projects in the past involve planning,
researching and reporting. The PIP requires all this too, but at a much higher level.
Projects might investigate certain topics, issues, events or sites and address questions beginning with who,
what, when and where. However, PIPs investigate social and cultural issues at greater depth and with a
greater level of analysis. PIPs go beyond the basic description of an issue and address aspects such as how,
why, assessing impacts, examining attitudes, predicting futures, generating ideas and solutions, evaluating
changes and continuities and analysing multiple perspectives.
PIPs can be amazing, insightful and very original pieces of work about contemporary sociological and cultural
issues.
Example:
Think about Morganics (a hip hop artist who frequently performs at HSC PIP Study Days. Visit his website
http://www.morganics.info/ to listen to some samples) A project about hip hop would address questions
such as those below. They are broad questions that lend themselves to descriptive responses that can be
gleaned from basic secondary research.
• Where did hip hop originate and where is it in the world today?
• What are the effects of hip hop on the music industry?
• What is hip hop and how does it differ from other genres of music?
But a PIP about hip hop would go further and address questions such as:
• How has hip hop improved community cohesion in isolated Aboriginal communities?
• Is hip hop the best solution to restoring hope for economically disadvantaged people from remote NSW?
• Assessing the impact of hip hop among juveniles in detention and its potential to generate social change.
Wise topic choice
To get a chef’s hat, you have to have a great menu…Topic choice is hard! But, get it right and you
will be well on your way to a good PIP. A good place to start is by examining contemporary issues that are of
interest to you. A few useful sources that can trigger ideas, even by just looking at article titles, graphs,
quotes or images include:
• Australian Policy Online http://apo.org.au/
• Australian Parliamentary Library
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library
• The Economist http://www.economist.com/
• The Conversation https://theconversation.com/au
• The Guardian Weekly http://www.theguardian.com/weekly
• Inside Story http://insidestory.org.au/
• 4 Corners http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/
What matters to you? What are you passionate about? What areas of the course interest you? What
contemporary events or issues inspire you or get you thinking? What personal experiences have had the
most profound impact on you, shaped your views etc.?
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Aim for a topic that you are interested in, but one that also expands
your ‘sociological’ horizons. Make sure you grow and learn from your
PIP. Some topics are not as appropriate as others due to their
superficial nature, the purpose behind them or pre-conceived ideas
about the outcome. For example, PIPs on body image, eating
disorders, alcohol, vegetarianism, abortion, piercings, animal rights,
and P plate drivers (depending on the approach taken of course) may
all have social issues associated with them and make for very
worthwhile studies elsewhere, but at year 12 level, these topics are
often not explored very well due to the limited nature of research, the
agenda set by students and the lack of association to course concepts.
Example:
What issues matter to us? These also need to link to what matters in Society and Culture…
• Equality
• Diversity
• Postive change
• Authentic identitiy
• Harnessing people power
• Utilising technology
• Celebrating culture
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Kate’s big PIP ideas
• Guerrilla art & democracy in Somalia
• Whitesplaining – white privilege and ‘colour-blindness’ (The
Conversation)
• Why do we choose to look the other way? Massacre in Sth
Africa after workers strikes (The Guardian Weekly)
• Electoral quotas for women: trends towards female political
representation (Guardian Weekly)
• Individual to community resilience
• Super-forecasting: the art and science of prediction and why
it is essential for society
• Juggling mums and halo dads (The Economist)
• Poverty porn – empowering the wrong people
• Social unrest: do we tolerate certain levels of conflict so
others benefit? (Inside Story)
• The LIKE generation (4 Corners)
• Do the UN Millennium Goals mean much in an era of
unprecedented change (The Economist)
• ‘If you are the one’: dating shows, reality TV and the politics
of the personal in urban China (Australian Policy Online)
• Feminism, domesticity and pop culture
• Class-passing: social mobility in film (Florida State University
Library)
• Does non-conformity in education lead to failure?
• ‘Othering’: demeaning the existence of secondary groups
• Girl code and Hetero-normativity in STEM (Everyday
sociology blog)
• Something on human behaviour!
Achieving social and cultural literacy
To get a chef’s hat, you have to be better off for the experience….Topic choice is very closely linked to your
achievement of social and cultural literacy. Some topics make for great projects but not necessarily great
PIPs. For example, PIPs that are overly medical, legal or environmental in nature may miss the mark by not
accurately addressing course concepts and by restricting the achievement of some of the characteristics
below.
Your PIP topic should allow you to demonstrate what you have learned as a Society and Culture student and
ensure that you graduate as a better person in a way, someone who will be an advocate for certain people
and issues, someone who reads widely and can develop informed opinions, someone who make sound
decisions and someone who values others no matter what their status or background.
Does your PIP topic…
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Help you develop and/or consolidate your personal, social or cultural identity?
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Help you understand that interactions, language, practices, beliefs and values vary greatly
between people /groups and are heavily influenced by culture?
Provide opportunities to ask probing questions about the micro, meso and macro levels of
society?
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Seek to develop a greater sense of empathy towards other societies and cultures?
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Acknowledge and appreciate diversity?
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Show intelligence and logic when tackling issues presented in the media?
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Allow for detailed, reliable and accurate research that can be fairly reported on?
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Help build communication and cooperation skills?
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Encourage you to go outside your comfort zone to learn about another valid perspective?
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Allow you to demonstrate that you do not have pre-conceived ideas, nor act on such ideas,
about other people, groups and cultures?
Help you realise that you have your own ‘cultural lens’ and that it may heavily influence
what and how you think about other cultures BUT encourages you withhold judgement?
Demonstrate that you are socially responsible and behave in a manner that shows respect
towards all people
Encourage you to make a difference, take action on relevant issues and be an advocate for
social justice and human rights
Help develop a deep awareness and informed of social and cultural issues at local, national
and global levels?
Allow you to examine the impacts of globalisation and technologies on societies and
cultures
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Address change, as well as continuity and the implications of this for the future
Yes ()
Creating a focus
To get a chef’s hat, you need attention to detail…It is important to reign in the big ideas that you have and
create a more manageable, realistic and narrow focus that aims for detailed analysis of your topic. This takes
time and patience, familiarity with the syllabus and also discussions with your parents, teachers and peers.
Example:
Big ideas about Hip Hop: The power of hip-hop in promoting equality; Can hip-hop lead the way in
promoting diversity and acceptance? Is conformity in hip hop killing the genre?
Specific focus idea: How can hip hop contribute to the sustainability of the Koorabye, Djugerari, Kadjina
remote indigenous communities under threat of ‘closure’? I know it links to the course because I can easily
address concepts of power and authority, as the WA government declared some communities as
unsustainable.
Getting ‘personal’
To get a chef’s hat, you need to cater for individual nuances…Make sure you are interested in the topic you
choose. You don’t have to be involved in solving world hunger (although this is preferable!) but you do have
to be passionate enough about the issue to get through the 9 months of PIP work.
If you are too far removed from your PIP topic, it loses the personal aspect, which is actually required to
make your PIP original. If your PIP is too heavily based on secondary research it may lack the analysis that
comes through you pouring through interview recordings, focus group responses and questionnaire data.
Your perspective matters. How you grow and what you learn as a result of your PIP, matters.
Example:
I listen to hip hop 24/7 so I’d love to do a PIP on
something to do with hip hop BUT I haven’t written
any lyrics myself. I know some songs off by heart, I
know that some lyrics are quite controversial, I know
that Morganics uses hip hop to help communities, I
know he performs in jails, I know he has performed in
Tanzania and New York. I really don’t like some other
hip hop artists but I do realise they may be pushing
boundaries, challenging perceptions, representing
certain groups of people and doing what they love.
I can achieve a more personal PIP about hip hop by:
• Writing in the first person eg: I think, I believe, I
noticed etc
• Linking hip hop with something else I’m
passionate
about,
like
equality
and
empowerment of indigenous communities
• Tapping in to things around me such as family,
friends, music group at school etc to gauge their
views
• Reflecting on what I think and do throughout the
PIP process and acknowledge any changes in
approach, new ideas or solutions
• Generating my own theories about what might
happen
• Thinking about how I have responded to issues
• Developing my own hip hop style that
communicates what I believe in
• Getting out there and making a difference myself!
How can I make
my PIP more
personal?
Integrating continuity and/or change
To get a chef’s hat, you need to keep the ‘signature dishes’ but also have a seasonal menu…Your PIP must
address continuity and/or change in some capacity. This has to be dealt with in an obvious and explicit
manner. Through addressing continuity and/or change you develop perspective, deepen your understanding
and empathise with those who have a different life experience from you. Both change and continuity are
quite abstract concepts so can be tricky to deal with.
Example:
Specific focus idea: How can hip hop contribute to the sustainability of the Koorabye, Djugerari, Kadjina
remote indigenous communities under threat of ‘closure’?
Empowerment of local communities through hip hop and issues associated with continuity/change are
inherent within the topic. Possible technologies to promote sustainability for the future could be explored;
conflict as a concept, opposing ideologies and values could be integrated throughout too.
Questions I could ask about time include:
• How were the communities empowered in the past?
• How can a community just be closed? What happens to the people, their livelihoods etc?
• For communities that have such strong connections to the land and the past, wouldn’t this devastate
their culture and their future?
• Would there be resistance to introducing hip hop to each community? What would happen to more
traditional forms of music?
• Do indigenous communities have the power to change the direction of hip hop?
Chapter ideas
To get a chef’s hat, you need different courses that are balanced and contribute to a good dining experience
overall…Chapters in PIPs provide structure for many students and help to organise content in a logical
manner. Keep in mind the chapters have to flow and build upon previous information.
Chapters should indicate deep understanding and insight as opposed to basic coverage of the topic. They
should contribute to the overall search for clarity and vision in relation to the PIP topic. Each chapter must
engage with real sociological issues that are closely linked with the main PIP topic, which is of course linked
to the HSC course.
Chapters are NOT compulsory though! A couple of different themes would be good to have throughout, so if
you can build the central material of the PIP in a logical and sustained manner then that’s ok. But if you’re
anything like me, I need a little more structure to organise my thoughts, so 2-3 chapters is sufficient for 4000
words. Any more chapters than this may not allow for the adequate development of that chapter/theme
presented.
Chapters need to be analytical, rather than descriptive. Chapter content should include each element of the
PIP that is required such as a range of research methods, a range of applicable concepts, continuity/change
aspect, cross-cultural feature and your own interpretation of the information you’ve gathered.
Example:
Specific focus idea: How can hip hop contribute to the sustainability of the Koorabye, Djugerari, Kadjina
remote indigenous communities under threat of ‘closure’?
Chapter ideas:
• Similar challenges faced in hip hop and remote indigenous communities
• Power in the hands of few: elders, hip hop artists and government officials
• Hip hop as a ticket to empowerment and a thriving future community