Year 10

Introduction to course schema

• Social structures (social institutions and groups – class, age, gender and ethnicity)
• Methods of socialisation (social control, role models and canalisation)
• Deprivation (cultural and material)
• Structural theoretical perspectives - consensus vs conflict debate
• Interactionist perspective – labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy  

Research Method

• Types of data (qualitative and quantitative, primary, and secondary)
• Validity and reliability
• Pattern and trends Vs meanings and motives
• Analysis of strengths and weakness of various research methods: interviews, questionnaires, observations, longitudinal study, content analysis
• Secondary data: official and non-official statistics, documents, and media material
• Sampling methods
• Application of methods to a variety of contexts

Family Unit

• Differing views of the functions of families.
• Parsons’s functionalist perspective on primary socialisation and the stabilisation of adult personalities.
• How family forms differ in the UK and within a global context.
• The work of the Rapoports on family diversity.
• Different views of conjugal role relationships.
• The feminist perspective of Oakley on the idea of the conventional family.
• Changing relationships within families.
• How relationships within families have changed over time.
• The theory of the symmetrical family and the principle of stratified diffusion developed from the functionalist perspective of Willmott and Young.
• Different criticisms of families (isolation and unrealistic idealisation, loss of traditional functions, lack of contact with wider kinship networks, the status and role of women within families, marital breakdown, dysfunctional families).
• The work of Zaretsky on developments in families from a Marxist perspective and Delphy and Leonard’s feminist critique of families.
• Changes in the pattern of divorce in Britain since 1945 and the consequences of divorce for family members and structures.

Education Unit

• Different views of the role and functions of education.
• The functionalist perspective of Durkheim on education as the transmission of norms and values and Parsons on achieved status and the operation of schools on meritocratic principles.
• Different views of the correspondence principle on the relationship between education and capitalism as developed from a Marxist perspective by Bowles and Gintis.
• Factors affecting educational achievement.
• The work of Halsey on class-based inequalities and Ball on parental choice and competition between schools.
• Processes within schools affecting educational achievement.
• The work of Ball on teacher expectations and Willis on the creation of counter school cultures.

Year 11

Crime and Deviance Unit

• The social construction of concepts of crime and deviance and explanations of crime and deviance.
• The work of Merton on the causes of crime from a functionalist perspective and Becker from an interactionist perspective.
• Formal and informal methods of social control.
• The work of Heidensohn on female conformity in male dominated patriarchal societies.
• Factors affecting criminal and deviant behaviour and ways in which criminal and deviant behaviour have generated public debate.
• The work of Albert Cohen on delinquent subcultures and Carlen on women, crime and poverty.
• The usefulness of the main sources of data on crime, the collection of official data on crime, patterns and trends in crime figures and the ‘dark figure’.

Social Stratification Unit

• Different views of the functionalist theory of social stratification.
• The work of Davis and Moore on social stratification from a functionalist perspective.
• Different views of socio-economic class.
• The work of Marx and Weber on socio-economic class.
• Different views on factors affecting life chances.
• The work of Devine revisiting the idea of the affluent worker.
• Different interpretations of poverty as a social issue.
• The work of Townsend on relative deprivation and Murray on the underclass.
• Different forms of power and authority.
• The work of Weber on power and authority.
• Describe and explain different views on factors affecting power relationships.
• The work of Walby on patriarchy.

Year 12

Introduction to course schema

• Social structures (social institutions and groups – class, age, gender and ethnicity)
• Methods of socialisation (social control, role models and canalisation)
• Deprivation (cultural and material)
• Structural theoretical perspectives - consensus vs conflict debate
• Interactionist perspective – labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy

Education Unit

• The role and functions of the education system, including its relationship to the economy and to class structure
• Differential educational achievement of social groups by social class, gender and ethnicity in contemporary society
• Relationships and processes within schools, with particular reference to teacher/pupil relationships, pupil identities and subcultures, the hidden curriculum, and the organisation of teaching and learning
• The significance of educational policies, including policies of selection, marketisation and privatisation, and policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity or outcome, for an understanding of the structure, role, impact and experience of and access to education; the impact of globalisation on educational policy.

Culture and Identity

• Different conceptions of culture, including subculture, mass culture, folk culture, high and low culture, popular culture and global culture
• The socialisation process and the role of the agencies of socialisation
• The self, identity and difference as both socially caused and socially constructed
• The relationship of identity to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexuality and social class in contemporary society
• The relationship of identity to production, consumption and globalisation.

Research methods and methods in context

• Quantitative and qualitative methods of research; research design
• Sources of data, including questionnaires, interviews, participant and non-participant observation, experiments, documents and official statistics
• The distinction between primary and secondary data, and between quantitative and qualitative data
• The relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods; the nature of ‘social facts’
• The theoretical, practical and ethical considerations influencing choice of topic, choice of method(s) and the conduct of research

Year 13

Theory and methods in context Unit

• The relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods; the nature of ‘social facts’
• The theoretical, practical and ethical considerations influencing choice of topic, choice of method(s) and the conduct of research
• Consensus, conflict, structural and social action theories
• The concepts of modernity and post-modernity in relation to sociological theory
• The nature of science and the extent to which Sociology can be regarded as scientific
• The relationship between theory and methods
• Debates about subjectivity, objectivity and value freedom
• The relationship between Sociology and social policy.

Media Unit

• The new media and their significance for an understanding of the role of the media in contemporary society
• The relationship between ownership and control of the media
• The media, globalisation and popular culture
• The processes of selection and presentation of the content of the news
• Media representations of age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability
• The relationship between the media, their content and presentation, and audiences.

Crime and Deviance

• Crime, deviance, social order and social control
• The social distribution of crime and deviance by ethnicity, gender and social class, including recent patterns and trends in crime
• Globalisation and crime in contemporary society; the media and crime; green crime; human rights and state crimes
• Crime control, surveillance, prevention and punishment, victims, and the role of the criminal justice system and other agencies.