40 000 students should be sitting the A-level Sociology of Education with Theory and Methods Paper (7192/1) today, but they’re not because of Coronavirus.
In case you feel like you’re missing out, why not design your own exam paper and answer the questions for fun.
Below is a list of the main key words taken from the AQA’s A-level sociology specification, just the education topic:
A-level Sociology of Education Key Word List from Specification
the role of education
functions of the education system,
the economy
class structure
differential educational achievement
social class,
gender
ethnicity
teacher/pupil relationships,
pupil identities
subcultures
the hidden curriculum
the organisation of teaching and learning
educational policies
policies of selection,
marketisation policies
privatisation
policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity
experience of education
access to education globalisation
Make your own exam questions!
All you need to do to design your own questions is cut and past this list into this random word generator, click ‘create random anything’ and then you’ve got the basis for some 10 mark and 30 mark questions.
You have to be a bit creative to make up the questions, by adding in your own action words, but the question formats are quite limited in variety: 10 mark analyse questions ask for ‘two ways/ reasons’ and a 30 mark will ask to evaluate the extent to which something is true, so making up your own questions should be fairly easy to do.
Pupil Identities and the Functions of the Education system example
To take one example above, the generator randomly selected ‘pupil identities‘ and ‘functions of the education system‘, so two potential questions might look like the following:
- Analyse two ways in which pupil identities might come into conflict with the functions of the education system (10)
- Evaluate sociological perspectives on the relationship between the functions of the education system and pupil identities (30)
I’m not even sure if the above questions make sense, so answering them might be a challenge – maybe something about social control and hyper-masculinity and work related functions and class based identities.
NB both of the links above take you to two examples of 6 mark ‘outline’ questions I put together a while back, so they’ll give you some idea of how you might start to build up an answer to the more complex 10 and 30 mark questions.
Other random sociology word combinations I got:
- policies of selection and pupil identities
- social class and globalisation
- marketisation policies and the hidden curriculum
- policies of selection and the economy
- the experience of education and the hidden curriculum
- gender and the economy
Have a go, and post your questions below!
Remember that the AQA bots can’t distinguish between a sensible and terrible question so it’s best to be prepared for all potentialities – so why not have a go and generate some random questions, and have a think about the answers.
What else have you got to do after all, no Glastonbury, no Reading, and certainly no Gap Yah!
Keep in mind that this technique doesn’t provide you with an item, which you would need to use in both the 10 mark and the 30 mark questions in the actual exam.
