AQA AS Level Sociology: Education with Methods in Context 2018: How I Would’ve Answered It.

Last Updated on April 8, 2019 by Karl Thompson

Just a few quick thoughts on what I thought about this paper and how I would have answered some of the questions…

Q01: Define the term social solidarity…

‘Nice simple start:

Social solidarity is…

‘instilling a sense of belonging to wider society, a sense of commitment to the importance of working towards society’s goals and a feeling that the society is more important than the individual’, as I’ve said in this post on ‘Durkheim’s Perspective on Education

Q02 – using one example briefly explain how boys’ behaviour in school may make it difficult to do well in the education system…

Also fairly easy… you simply need to contrast how ‘laddish subcultures’ conflict with elements of the formal curriculum…. e.g. status gained for bunking lessons, compared to the requirement to attend.

Q03 – Outline three examples of how the education system could be seen as fair to everyone.

Initially seems to be one of those ‘grimace’ type questions… but you could probably get there by drawing on mainly functionalist ideas such as

  • National Curriculum means all children do the same subjects
  • Meritocracy through standardised exams
  • School uniforms>?
  • Equality and diversity programmes.

Obviously you need to say a bit more to get the + 1s for all of the above.

Q04 Outline and explain two ways in which social class may affect subject choice

To start you off two lead points might be…

  • Cultural capital of middle class parents … higher career aspirations, more likely to do science subjects
  • Teacher labelling and stereotyping might mean lower class students are steered into easier BTEC type subjects (because, objectively, they are easier).

Your problem is…. how do you pad out the middle bit?!?

You basically just need to invert this essay plan I knocked up on ‘in-school factors’

Standard essay…. cultural differences, each evaluated then evaluating using the relative importance of in school factors.

Q06: A methods in context question on the strengths and limitations of using official statistics to investigate how successful a school is…

Actually well done the AQA, this is a good Methods in Context question

Q05: Applying material from item A and your knowledge, evaluate the view that ethnic differences in educational achievement are a result of factors outside the education system (20)

Simply use practical, theoretical ethical as a base… just some of the points you might make…

  • Practical – every school required to collect them, in the same way, good for comparisons, HOWEVER, different schools might be failing because of different reasons, stats may not tell you this.
  • Practical – don’t have to go into schools
  • Theoretical – validity problems – as mentioned in the item…. there is no depth of insight.
  • The item mentions how stats can’t measure things such as pupil happiness, or a sense of community, you might discuss why these can’t be measured
  • Theoretical – good representativeness.
  • Ethical – you could discuss how much harm league tables have done.

All in all, quite a good exam paper!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from ReviseSociology

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading