Sociology
Vision:
Social Sciences (Business, Health and Social Care, Psychology and Sociology) are a broad range of real world subjects, which give students knowledge of how to be a kind and well rounded human beings, and improve their community. While studying Sociology, students experience enjoyable lessons which challenge their understanding of how to work with others, how to analyse sociological theories such as functionalism and marxism, and how to develop academic literacy in writing evaluative essays on topics such as education and the role of the family. We encourage students to be ambitious in their learning by tackling difficult topics such as post modern explanations of media, and outside of their learning in their future aspirations to study Sociology at degree level. Students studying Sociology are expected to be determined to complete all work to the best of their ability and to meet their academic goals. We want students to leave Sociology with the ability to critically evaluate the structures and roles within society whilst being able to articulate their love for sociology.
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/sociology/as-and-a-level/sociology-7191-7192
Yearly Intent Statements
What are the aims of specific stages of the curriculum?
Year 12: By the end of the year sociology students will be able to discuss the underlying principles of functionalism, marxism, feminism, postmodernism and social action theories. Students will understand the methods positivists and interpretivists use to conduct research and the strengths and weaknesses of these methods. Students will also understand the role and function of the education system in British society. Students will know differential education achievement in social groups, and how processes inside and outside of the education system impact inequalities in attainment. Students will be aware of educational policies, such as marketisation and selection and how these impact educational achievement.
Students will develop an understanding of how the role and structure of the family has changed over time, including changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, childbearing and the life course. Students will understand how theoretical perspectives explain the division of labour in the family and how this relates to the economy.
Year 13: By the end of the year 13 students will have a good understanding of sociological perspectives and research methods. They will be able to apply these to the topic of the media. Students will understand how the media has changed in society and the relationship between ownership and control of the media. Students will also understand how the media represents different social groups and possible reasons for this.
Finally students will be able to apply sociological theories to explanations of crimes and deviance. Students will understand how to read trends of crimes and articulate differences in rates and types of crimes from different social groups. Students will be able to analyse global variation of crime and methods of crime control.
Rationale behind sequencing:
Year 12
Starting in Year 12, students begin by studying sociological theories and perspectives. Perspectives such as Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism and Social Action Theory are relevant to most future topics they will study in the course. The aim of this is to get students to critically think about how each sociological perspective (i.e. Functionalism) would view a social institution (i.e. The education system) and to evaluate how effective this perspective is at explaining how social institutions operate.
Sociological perspectives are embedded in the education, media, family and households, crime and deviance and research methods topics that students go on to study further. By beginning the course studying these perspectives, it allows for interleaving and ensures that future topics build on prior learning. For example, the figure below shows how sociological perspectives need to be applied to understand and evaluate the functions of the education system. A similar approach is applied to the remaining topics of study throughout the course.
A benefit of the AQA specification is that students study research methods in context of the education system. After studying sociological theories/perspectives, students move on to study education. This naturally progresses into the topic of ‘methods in context’ (MIC) which aims to combine students' understanding of educational contexts to their knowledge of research methods. ‘Methods in context’ provides students with an opportunity to think on their feet about researching different contexts of the education system and the suitability of certain research methods to pursue this research.
For example, students may be asked to ‘Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of using questionnaires to research parental views on educational policy’. This type of question is unable to be planned prior to the exam using traditional ‘rote learning’ methods and therefore requires students to have both an in-depth and flexible knowledge of the group they are studying within the educational context (i.e. parents), the subject matter (i.e. parental attitudes to educational policy) and the strengths and limitations of the selected research method (i.e. questionnaires)
Students often find the education and research methods knowledge and evaluation straightforward. However, when students are required to discuss research methods within the context of educational settings they tend to struggle as their thinking tends to be rigid. Therefore, this topic is taught in depth, combined with exam techniques, during Year 1 as it then boosts confidence for future topics which also require flexibility of thought. Furthermore, both sociological theories and research methods can appear in isolation as extended written response questions on both papers 1 and 3, so this knowledge continues to be revisited and retested throughout the two years.
Year 1 is brought to an end with the topic of ‘Family and Households’ which allows students to further expand their knowledge of sociology by learning more about the role, structure and function of families in British culture. Family and Households links to education as inequalities in education may be perpetuated by family structure and poverty.
Year 13
Year 2 builds on students' understanding of theories and research methods by applying this knowledge to the topics of media and crime and deviance. This allows for interleaving of topics such as research methods and sociological theories. Crime and deviance is taught last to coincide with the psychology teaching of forensic psychology. Both topics link together and therefore allow for cross subject links. Media representations of crime are included in the crime and deviance topic. This allows for revision of the media topic within crime.
