Sociology

Course summary

WHAT YOU WILL BE TAUGHT: Education with Theory and Methods: Education - Role and function of education - Reasons for differential educational achievement - Relationship and processes within schools - Significance and impact of educational policies Methods in context - Students will need to apply sociological research methods to the study of education Research methods - Quantitative and qualitative methods, and data for research - Sources of data - Relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods - Factors affecting researchers’ choice of topic and methods Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods (A Level Only) Crime and deviance - Patterns and trends in crime and social distribution of crime by social class, gender, and ethnicity - Theories and explanations of crime and deviance - Globalization and crime in contemporary society - Crime control, surveillance, prevention, and punishment Theory and methods - Consensus, conflict, structural, and social action theories - Concepts of modernity and post-modernity - Can/should sociology be a science? - Value freedom - Sociology and social policy Topics in Sociology Families and Households - Impact of social policies on the family - Changing patterns of marriage, divorce, cohabitation, separation, childbearing - Gender roles, domestic labor, and power relationships - The social construction of childhood - Demographic trends in the UK since 1900, and the impact of globalization Beliefs in society (A level only) - Ideology, science, and religion (including both Christian and non-Christian religious traditions) - Is religion a conservative force or an institution for social change? - Religious organizations and their relationship to religious and spiritual belief and practice - The differences between different social groups, their religiosity, and membership to religious organizations - Significance of religion in the contemporary world