National Year 10 Sociology
Chapters: 5
1. 3.1 The sociological approach
3.1 Key sociological ideas
- Sociological Perspectives: How Sociologists See Society – Sociology studies society and how people act in groups. Consensus views (functionalism) see society as parts working together on shared values; conflict views (Marxism, feminism) see groups competing for power. Structural views look at the big systems; interactionist views look at everyday face-to-face meanings. Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Parsons, Mead and feminists such as Oakley shaped these ideas.
2. 3.2 Social structures, social processes and social issues
3.2 Social structures, processes and issues
- Culture and Socialisation: How We Learn to Live Together – Culture is the whole way of life that a group learns and shares: its ideas, rules and things. It is learned, not born with us. Culture has three sides: cognitive (what we know and believe), normative (rules for how to behave) and material (tools and objects). Socialisation is the lifelong process by which a baby becomes a member of society by learning this culture. It happens through agencies: family, peer group, school, mass media, and others like work, religion and community.
3. 3.3 Families
3.3.1 Functions of families · 3.3.2 Family forms · 3.3.3 Conjugal role relationships · 3.3.4 Changing relationships within families · 3.3.5 Criticisms of families · 3.3.6 Divorce
- The Family in Sociology – A household is everyone who lives in one home; a family is people linked by blood, marriage, partnership or adoption. Families do four main jobs: having and raising children, socialisation, economic support and emotional care. Families take many forms: nuclear, extended, lone-parent, reconstituted (step-families), same-sex and beanpole families, and the mix differs between societies and over time. Conjugal roles, the jobs of partners at home, have moved from segregated to more joint, though women still often do more housework and care. Relationships between parents, children and grandparents have changed too. Functionalists see the family as good for society, while Marxists, feminists and others point to its dark side. Divorce rose in many countries after 1950 because of new laws, women's financial independence, less stigma and higher expectations of marriage.
4. 3.4 Education
3.4.1 Roles and functions of education · 3.4.2 Education and capitalism · 3.4.3 Educational achievement · 3.4.4 Processes within schools
- Sociology of Education: What Schools Do and Why Results Differ – Sociologists ask what school does for society and why some groups do better than others. Functionalists say education builds shared values, teaches job skills and sorts people into roles by merit. Marxists say school copies the unequal workplace through a hidden curriculum, so class inequality is passed on. Results differ by social class, gender and ethnicity because of home factors (money, cultural capital, language, parents' help) and school factors (labelling, setting and streaming, the self-fulfilling prophecy, pupil subcultures). Governments use policy to shape schools: selection, marketisation, privatisation and equality measures. Getting more pupils into school (massification) does not by itself give everyone equal chances (democratisation).
5. 3.7 Sociological research methods
3.7 Research design · 3.7 Methods and data · 3.7 Evaluating research
- Sociological Research Methods – Sociologists study society by doing research, step by step: choose a topic, write an aim or hypothesis, run a small pilot study, choose a sample, collect data, analyse it and draw conclusions. A sample is a small group picked from the whole population; it should be representative so the results can be generalised. Quantitative data are numbers (from questionnaires, structured interviews, official statistics); qualitative data are words and meanings (from unstructured interviews, observation, documents). Primary data are collected by the researcher; secondary data already exist. Good research is reliable (repeatable), valid (a true picture) and representative. Researchers choose methods based on practical issues (time, cost, access), ethical issues (consent, confidentiality, harm, deception) and theory: positivists prefer scientific, numerical methods, while interpretivists prefer methods that capture people's meanings.