Sociology
Sociology Teaching Staff
- Mrs R Cummings
Key Stage 4
There are two exam papers at the end of Year 11. These exams are now graded 1-9 and are assessed by examination only.
Unit 1
Studying Society – Looking into the research process and evaluating methods including observations, questionnaires and interviews.
Families & Households – explaining family diversity i.e. couple/lone-parent, heterosexual/gay, extended/nuclear and reconstituted. Sociological approaches to the family – functionalist, Marxist and feminist as well as New Right perspectives. Changes in relationships and roles within the family and explanations of the growth in the divorce rate and its consequences.
Education – explaining variations in achievement according to social class, ethnicity and gender. Influences on achievement including parental values, peer groups, streaming, labelling, teacher expectations, economic circumstances and cultural background. The functions of the educational system and other educational debates.
Unit 2
Crime and Deviance – The social distribution of crime in terms of class, age, gender, ethnicity and locality. Explanations for criminal and deviant behaviour such as sub-cultural theories, labelling theory and relative deprivation. The usefulness of official crime figures, and self-report and victim studies.
The significance of Social Stratification– Explaining the nature of stratification e.g. the unequal distribution of wealth, income, status and power. Stratification systems based on class, gender, ethnicity and religion. Sociological explanations of poverty e.g. the cycle of poverty, the culture of poverty, the culture of dependency and structural explanations. The major debates about inequality including the extent to which modern Britain can be considered a meritocracy and the continued significance of class. The power relationships that exist in society.
Methods in Context – applying the methods learned in unit one to novel stem material associated with areas of the specification.
GCSE Specifications
Links to the GCSE specifications for Sociology can be found below: