This is a very brief introduction for first year A-level Sociology Students…
Inequality between men and women is the most significant form of inequality
Anthropological evidence demonstrates that inequalities between men and women exist in every single society in human history, and in most of these societies women have an inferior social status to men. Feminism exists to rectify the Systematic injustices that women experience because of their sex
Gender norms are Socially Constructed,
They are not determined by biology and thus gender norms can be changed
Feminism is a set of ideas which criticises the discrimination experienced by women based on their gender. Remember, there are few biological differences between men and women at birth, but the social norms associated with being a “women” result in discrimination against females. Children are taught “gender norms” from a young age i.e. what it means to be a “women” in terms of dress, language, expectations, roles within the family, how they relate to men etc. Gender norms are learned in the family, but reinforced in the school, at work and through the media.
Note, boys also learn gender norms e.g. assertiveness, confidence etc, but more importantly for feminism they also learn the behaviour they expect from a “women” based on female gender norms. Many boys will grow up watching gender norms being played out in the family and will therefore replicate the same roles with their own partners.
Patriarchy is one of the main causes of female disadvantage
‘Patriarchy refers to a society in which there are unequal power relations between women and men whereby women are systematically disadvantaged and oppressed’ (London Feminist Network)
NB – the idea of ‘structure’ is central to the concept of Patriarchy – Women are inferior because men are superior – For example, women end up staying at home looking after the kids BECAUSE it is assumed that men are the breadwinners, thus men are the ones who go out to work. Similarly, women dress up in high heels, make up and short skirts BECAUSE they have internalised the idea that that’s what they need to do to attract men. The idea behind patriarchy is that men gain and women lose from socially constructed gender differences.
Feminism is a political movement
Feminists emphasise the importance of political activism in order challenge gender inequalities. Feminism exists to rectify the Systematic injustices that women experience because of their sex. There is a lot of disagreement within Feminism over how to achieve this – strategies vary from doing research to highlight the extent of gender inequality, to having consciousness raising sessions with groups of women and men, to working with governments to create social policies, to more radical strategies such as political lesbianism.
Feminist Theory: A Criticism of Previous Sociological Explanations Gender inequality
Feminist theory arose as a reaction to the sexist, biological explanations for gender inequalities such as those of Talcott Parsons. Feminism actually sees sociology itself as sexist as all previous theories: Functionalism, Marxism and Interactionism have failed to adequately explain gender differences in modern society. Feminism is a huge body of theory. Below it is simplified into four main perspectives: Radical Feminism, Marxist Feminism, Liberal Feminism and Difference Feminism
Related Posts
This material is a basic introduction to Feminism, designed to be delivered as part of an introduction to sociology, early on in an A-level course.
The theory and methods 10 mark question appears as a special treat at the end of paper 1 (Education, Methods in Context and Theory and Methods), you’ll also get a big 30 mark essay question at the end of paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods) too, but more about the 30 markers in other blog post.
The reason for splitting the theory and methods questions across two papers is probably to make sure that more students fail the exam, and possibly because the man has a burning hatred of teenagers. Apparently every A-Level exam has one aspect split across two papers, so at least the hate is evenly distributed, otherwise this might be an example of a ‘hate crime’ against sociology students.
For 10 mark questions it’s good practice to select two very different reasons, which are as far apart from each other as possible. In this question, it’s also good practice to contrast Positivism to Interpretivism (to get analysis marks) and to use as many theory and methods concepts and examples as possible.
The first reason is that Positivists are interested in looking at society as a whole, in order to find out the general laws which shape human action, and numerical data is really the only way we can easily study and compare large groups within society, or do cross national comparisons – qualitative data by contrast is too in-depth and too difficult to compare.
Numerical data allow us to make comparisons easily as once we have social data reduced down to numbers, it is easy to put into graphs and charts and to make comparisons and find correlations, enabling us to see how one thing affects another.
For example, Durkheim famously claimed that the higher the divorce rate, the higher the suicide rate, thus allowing him to theorise that lower levels of social integration lead to higher rates of suicide (because of increased anomie).
The second reason for preferring quantitative methods is that Positivists think it is important to remain detached from the research process, in order to remain objective, or value free.
Quantitative methods allow for a greater level of detachment as the researcher does not have to be directly involved with respondents, meaning that their own personal values are less likely to distort the research process, as might be the case with more qualitative research.
This should be especially true for official statistics, which merely need to be interpreted by researchers, but less true of structured questionnaires, which have to be written by researchers, and may suffer from the imposition problem.
You may need to add in a further layer of development to each of these points!
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like to purchase more of the same…
Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of A level sociology papers 1 and 3.
Contents include:
74 pages of revision notes
15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
According to the Marxist sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, middle class parents possess more cultural capital, than working class children.
Bourdieu argues that the skills and knowledge middle class parents possess, such as themselves having benefited from education, and the fact that they are more comfortable dealing with middle class institutions such as schools, is passed down to their children, which explains why they do better in school.
Hooks in the item:
Skills – might be research skills
Knowledge (might be linked to tastes)
Better education
More comfortable dealing with middle class institutions
Suggested answer
Point 1 – More cultural capital means middle class parents are better educated than working class parents and they are more able to help children with homework and coursework.
Analysis 1 – This is especially likely to advantage children from high income earning families which can afford to have stay at home mums, so they have the time to advantage their children
Analysis 2 – This advantages middle class children early on in their school careers by boosting confidence. This early advantage accumulates over time and develops through school.
Analysis 3 – This takes place at home, not in school. It is unlikely that schools will have the resources available to close this gap
Point 2 – Cultural Capital also means middle class parents are skilled choosers – They are more able to research schools, take time filling in application forms, and networking with teachers to give their child more chance of getting into the best schools – Stephen Ball found this.
Analysis 1– The opposite of this is working class parents who are disconnected choosers, they don’t have the skills to complete large amounts of applications and so just send their children to the local school.
Analysis 2 – This aspect of cultural capital has become more significant since the introduction of the 1988 education act which introduced marketization and parentocracy and gave parents’ choice over schools.
Analysis 3 – This means that the system has changed recently to allow those with more cultural capital to have even more of an advantage.
More competition from abroad and more multiculturalism
A suggested model answer to this 10 mark analyse question, a possible question for the AQA’s education with theory and method’s A level paper (paper 7192/1)
Hooks
What you need to apply the hooks to
Item A
Globalisation, or the increasing interconnectedness of countries across the globe, creates both challenges and opportunities for the United Kingdom. For example, economic globalisation has resulted in both more opportunities abroad and more competition for jobs for these jobs; and increasing migration has resulted in greater multiculturalism in the UK.
Education has had to adapt to globalization, and as a result, pupils today experience education very differently to previous generations.
Suggested Answer
Economic globalisation means increased competition from abroad (point 1)
This means British students today are expected to spend longer in education (as evidence by the increasing of the school leaving age. So one change in the experience of education is that students stay in school for longer.
Development – globalisation has meant that most of the unskilled factory jobs have now moved abroad, and increasingly British workers need to be better educated in order to get jobs at all, thus the expansion of higher education means that more students ‘experience’ higher education and are better qualified than their parents.
Further development – however, ironically, poorer UK students are put off by the fees universities now charge, meaning that the globalisation of HE is possibly resulting in more class inequality.
Further development – increased competition also means more pressure to succeed, schools are now ranked by PISA league tables, which means even more ‘teaching the test’ and ‘narrowing of the curriculum’, which is a final way the experience of education has changed.
Increased immigration has led to more multiculturalism (point 2)
and British schools have long had multicultural education in response to this, which also changes pupils’ experiences of education.
Development 1 – For example, religious education has long taught about other religions, and increasingly schools and colleges have events such as ‘black history month’ raising awareness of diversity.
Further Development – schools have also introduced compensatory education to help recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, such as extra support for pupils who don’t have English as a first language.
Further development – however, some policies may be seen as potentially divisive, for example, the prevent agenda in schools seems to target Muslim pupils through ‘categorical suspicion’.
Further development – There is also doubt that these inclusive policies are working, many people, especially in working class areas, object to the extra resources being spent on minority groups, and given the fact that it is the white working classes who have the lowest achievement, they might have a point.
Signposting
This answer should get you 10 out 10, or full marks.
Four and Six mark outline questions appear on the education and crime and deviance AQA A level sociology exam papers. This blog post shows you some possible examples of outline questions which might appear on the Education exam paper, along with some suggested answers.
NB These questions are marked in a ‘1+1’ style – you get one mark for identifying and one mark for developing and explaining further. So to be on the safe side, make a point and then develop it – do this twice for a 4 mark question, and thrice for a three mark question.
Outline two ways in which material deprivation may affect educational achievement (4 marks)
Suggested points, you need to add in the explanations as to HOW these factors have a negative effect on educational achievement.
Smaller, overcrowded houses
Poor diets and higher levels of sickness
Less/no educational books/toys, PC’s
Parents can’t afford to support children in education after 16
Less access to nursery facilities
W/C more likely to have part time jobs.
Schools themselves, less resources etc than schools in M/C areas
Selection by mortgage
Can’t afford private tutors
Suggested full answers (outlining and explaining two ways)
(ID) Low income means families will live in smaller houses which could mean there is lack of a private study space, or children may even have to share bedrooms. (EX) This means there is no quiet space for children to do homework, which could result in them falling behind at school.
(ID) Children from low income households are more likely to have poor diets, the low nutritional content of which could result in higher levels of sickness. (EX) This could result in them having time off school, which could have a detrimental effect on their education.
___
Outline two ways in which cultural deprivation may affect educational achievement (4 marks)
Suggested full answers (outlining and explaining two ways)
(ID) Working class pupils are more likely to have immediate Gratification (wanting to work straight after school to earn money immediately) (EX) this explains working class underachievement because working class kids are more likely to be poor thus more likely to want to earn money immediately after finishing their GCSEs, which means they are less likely to stay onto further education
(ID) The working classes are more likely to be fatalistic, which is where one resigns oneself to the fact that they can’t improve their lot in life. (EX) This explains working class underachievement because they think they are inevitably going to go into working class jobs so don’t try hard at school as there is no point.
___
Outline three reasons why girls are now generally out-performing boys in education (6 marks)
Suggested full answers (outlining and explaining three ways)
(ID) Introduction of coursework: (EX) has enabled girls to do better as they are more organised, meticulous, persistent, etc than boys and this is rewarded in coursework.
(ID) Changes in the family such as more divorce (EX) has given girls a greater incentive to gain useful qualifications, as they cannot now expect to be full-time housewives permanently provided for by their husbands.
(ID) Changes in the labour market such greater numbers of women working and opportunities for promotion (EX) have given girls more role models and the inspiration to achieve qualifications with which to pursue a career.
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Outline three reasons why girls are less likely to choose science subjects than boys (6 marks)
Suggested points, you need to add in the explanations in most cases.
Teacher’s sexist ideas channelling girls into ‘girls subjects’
Science taught in a male way using male examples (engines), put girls off
Biological differences. Girls better at communication, not much discussion in science subjects
Differential parental encouragement
Boys more likely to play with technical toys
Fewer girls in text books
Fewer female science teachers
Boys dominate classroom by dominating practical equipment
Suggested full answers (outlining and explaining three ways)
(ID) Teachers may have stereotypical ideas that girls would struggle in male dominated subjects such as physics, (EX) and they may try and put them off, steering them towards other, more traditionally feminine subjects such as English, meaning fewer girls end up doing science subjects.
(ID) Science subjects are often taught using masculine examples – for example, physics text books might use cars to illustrate the laws of motion. (EX) This might put girls off doing physics because they have no interest in the masculine examples used to teach these subjects.
(ID) Girls are more likely to be socialised into discussing their feelings, (EX) and thus they might be more likely to choose subjects such as history and English where you need to discuss things more, rather than sciences where there is less discussion and ‘one right answer’.
War – organized, armed, and often a ‘prolonged conflict’ that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties. It is intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities
Civil War – a war where the forces in conflict belong to the same nation or political entity and are vying for control of or independence from that nation or political entity
Terrorism – “The use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause
Old Wars – e.g. WII – based around an alliance of Nation States involving the whole might of the nation in producing heavy scale military machinery (tanks/ fighter jets) and hundreds of thousands of troops.
New Wars – typical conflicts today which tend to be civil wars and are much smaller scale than ‘old wars’ and involve small arms (guns), often fuelled by ethnic differences and funded by ‘shadow economies’
The global shadow economy – refers to the illegal trade in the trafficking or arms, drugs and diamonds.
War, Conflict and Development – Key Case Studies
The Rwandan Genocide (1990s) Where Hutus massacred 800 000 Tutsis – a good example of ethnic tension resulting in mass murder
The Sierra-Leone and Liberian Civil Wars (late 1990s-2000s)– mainly explained through Paul Collier’s theory of the resource curse – very much fueled by the global shadow economy (‘blood diamonds)
The U.S. War on Iraq (2003) demonstrates how the West continue to use war to secure resources, just like in Colonial times according to Dependency Theory.
The Syrian Civil War (2010s) the latest civil war, mainly caused by political oppression, illustrates how civil wars can break out even in relatively developed countries
War, Conflict and Development – Key Theories
Paul Collier – 5 Main causes of civil war: primary product exporters, Diasporas, high male unemployment, ethnic conflict, dispersed populations (mountains/ desserts)
Paul Collier – Bottom Billion Theory – ethnic conflict, corruption, the resource curse – all linked with underdevelopment and conflict – e.g. Liberia/ Democratic Republic of Congo.
Noam Chomsky – The United States is the ‘world’s biggest terrorist’, based on its mostly illegal interventions in 50 countries since WWII – e.g. practically every Latin and South American country.
Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine – The United States uses war and its aftermath to advance neoliberal policies when people are in shock – e.g. Chile (1973) and Iraq (2003)
David Harvey – The war on Iraq was all about securing oil for the benefit of American consumers.
Modernisation Theory – there is less conflict in wealthy countries – people have more to lose, thus tend to sort out differences peacefully.
Dependency Theory – developed nations mainly drive war and conflict in conjunction with arms companies such as BAE systems.
Feminism – most wars are fueled by male aggression: governments, arms companies, and armies are predominantly male institutions.
Direct effects of war – include immediate effects such as higher death rates and the destruction of infrastructure.
Indirect effects of war – include the longer term effects such as displacement of people (refugees), and the destruction of the social fabric, and poverty.
Ending conflict as the primary development goal – conflict costs the global economy $13 trillion a year. It can send every other aspect of development (health/ education etc.) into reverse.
The Global Peace Index – measures the level of peacefulness in over 100 countries using over 20 indicators including number of battle deaths, number of terrorist incidents, arms expenditure and so on.
definitions of the key concepts for the A-level sociology of education module (AQA focus)
Definitions and examples of the most important key concepts for the A level sociology 7192 (1) exam, including the definition of labelling, the correspondence principal, meritocracy, privatization, and lots more.
All of the concepts below are most relevant to the education module within A-level sociology (AQA focus) but many have wider application.
Initially I include only the ‘most important’ sociology words. More to follow later, as with all tings in life, this is work in progress.
A-C Economy
Where schools focus a disproportionate amount of their resources on making sure ‘middling’ students get 5 A*-Cs, rather than helping to boost more able students or getting less able students passes below the 5- A*C threshold.
Achieved status
Where individuals gain their social position in society through their own efforts, rather than that position being based on their ascribed characteristics such as their ‘race’ or their class background.
Ascribed status
Where an individual’s position in society is pre-determined by their birth or social characteristics. An example of this is the royal inheritance in the United Kingdom: only a son of Queen Lizzie II can become King when she dies.
Banding/ Streaming
Grouping students by ability. Students are put into the same group across all subjects (unlike setting, which is where students might be placed in different ability groups in different subject.
Canalisation
Where choices of subjects become gradually more limited as children progress through school.
Compensatory Education
Educational policies which provide additional money or resources for students facing cultural or material deprivation. The idea is that the extra money/resources helps overcome disadvantage and boost results.
Comprehensive School
One type of school for all students. Non-selective schools where all students have an equal opportunity within the same school.
Comprehensivisation
The establishment of comprehensive schools in the 1960s which replaced the selective tripartite system.
Core Values
The fundamental ideas about how we should act in society which, according to Functionalists are taught to children in schools as part of secondary socialisation in industrial societies.
Core values might include such things as a belief in meritocracy, trust in government and authorities, punctuality and politeness. They are the kind of values which are necessary to keep society functioning at a national level according to Functionalist theory.
The function of and even the existence of ‘core values’ is questioned by Marxists and Postmodernists.
Correspondence principle
The Marxist idea that the norms and values pupils learn in school prepare them for their future exploitation at work.
For example, schools teach pupils to be ‘motivated by external rewards’ – they learn to put up with boring lessons in order to achieve higher grades, thus focussing on the end result of learning rather than the ‘joy of learning’ itself’. This corresponds (relates) to putting up with the dull routine of working life in a factory day to day, while focussing on the pay packet at the end of the month.
Related concepts: ideological state apparatus, Marxism, socialisation, hidden curriculum.
Counter school culture
A group within a school which has norms and values in direct opposition to the mainstream culture of the school. E.G. a group of students who see value in messing around and ‘having a laugh’ or disrupting lessons rather than working hard and studying. Status will be rewarded within the counter school culture on the basis of how deviant they are, how far they go against school rules.
Cultural capital
The skills, knowledge and attitudes associated with the dominant culture, possessed by the middle classes, which give middle class parents and children an advantage in life.
Cultural capital is a Marxist concept used to explain why middle-class pupils achieve more than working class pupils do. As part of the dominant culture, middle class pupils have an automatic advantage over working class pupils because they share the culture of the school. Their language is like that of teachers (also middle-class) and their values correspond more closely to those of the school. This ‘cultural capital’ enables middle class families to pass on their superior position to their children and in so doing, reproduce class inequalities.
Related concepts: skilled and disconnected choosers, habitus, social capital.
Cultural deprivation
Where some groups, such as the lower social classes have inferior norms, values, skills and knowledge which hold them back in life.
Cultural deprivation can have a negative effect on the education of working class children: poor language skills can mean the students struggle to understand what they are taught, and the fact that working class parents do not value education means that their children are less likely to stay on at school post-16.
Related concepts: material deprivation, immediate and deferred gratification, restricted and elaborated speech codes.
Cycle of Deprivation
Where one aspect of material disadvantage has a knock on effect and leads to other types of disadvantage, such that poverty is reinforced and carries on, often across generations. For example, being poor, means a poor diet , means more sickness, means more time of work, means more poverty.
Deferred Gratification
Where one delays immediate reward and instead works hard now in order to receive a greater reward in the future.
Deterministic
Self-fulfilling prophecy theory is often criticised as being deterministic, because it assumes that a particular input (labelling) always has the same affect (the subject accepts their label), without taking into account the fact that individuals respond in different ways based on their different subjective views of the situation in which the labelling takes place.
Disconnected Choosers
Working class parents who simply send their children to local schools rather than researching different schools and then making their choice. The opposite of ‘skilled choosers’
Division of Labour
Where production is broken down into a number of small, specialized tasks to improve efficiency. For example, instead of one person constructing a whole car, each individual specializes in adding different bits.
Education Action Zones
A New Labour Education policy which promoted links between clusters of schools (typically around 20) in deprived areas and local businesses and parents, with the intention of getting business to provide extra funds to those schools. This policy was introduced in the late 1990s, but after running for five years it had largely failed to generate any additional funds and so was axed.
Educational triage
Where schools sort students into three groups: those who will pass without help, those could pass with help, and those who probably won’t pass even if they do get help. Schools then focus most of their resources on helping the middle of these groups, while leaving the former alone and effectively ‘writing off’ the later.
Elaborated Speech Code
Language consisting of a wide vocabulary, complex sentences and which is context-free, so able to express abstract ideas. Used by the middle class and the opposite of restricted speech code.
Equality of opportunity (within education)
Where everyone has an equal chance to get into the best schools and universities and achieve good qualifications, and everyone competes for the best results on a level playing field, without being discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, disability or social class.
Ethnocentric Curriculum
Ethnocentric means seeing or judging things in a biased way. An ethnocentric curriculum is one which treats middle class European white culture as superior – having Christian assemblies or teaching history from a European rather than an Indian or African perspective are examples of this.
Ethos
The culture of a school – including its expected norms of behaviour, core values and especially the aspirations for its students.
Exclusions
Where pupils are either suspended for a set period or permanently expelled from school, typically for breaking school rules.
Exogenous Privatisation (of education)
Where schools, or school services, are taken over by private businesses such as academy chains, rather than being run directly by the state.
A related concept here is ‘endogenous privatisation’, where schools are made compete like businesses while still being run by the state. This was the idea behind marketization.
Related concepts: neoliberalism, the new right, marketization.
Faith school
A school with formal ties to a particular faith. Many have different admissions (selection) criteria to regular state schools and select a proportion of their students on the basis of their faith.
Fatalism
According to Bernstein this is an attitude held by working class children and parents. It is the belief that they will inevitably end up in working class jobs, and so prevents them from aspiring to do any better.
Free Schools
Schools set up and run by groups of parents, charities or businesses and run directly by them. They are funded directly by the government and not by Local Education Authorities.
Gender domains
The activities that boys and girls see as typically the territory of their gender. E.g. playing football for boys and playing with dolls for girls.
Globalisation
The increasing interconnectedness of people and societies across the world.
Grammar School
A selective school catering to students who pass their 11+. Offers an academic education catered to high achieving students. Part of the ethos of grammar schools is that students should aspire to go to university.
Hidden Curriculum
The Hidden Curriculum refers to the norms and values not taught directly as part of the official curriculum, but passed on informally in schools.
Whereas the official curriculum is made up of subjects, subject content, formal lessons etc. the hidden curriculum is composed of teacher attitudes and expectations, and the general ethos of school which includes such things as attitudes to punctuality, attendance, dress codes and future career aspirations.
Related concepts: Feminists argue that the hidden curriculum works against girls. Marxists believe it works against working-class pupils.
Ideal Pupil
The idea of the perfect pupil which teachers have in their heads. Such pupils are smart, have good manners, obey school rules and work hard. According to Howard Becker they are typically middle class.
Ideological state apparatus
This is main function of education in a capitalist society according to Marxists. Education works to transmit an ideological justification of capitalism, presenting the unequal capitalist system as normal and inevitable.
Schools do this directly by ‘agenda setting’ – not teaching subjects which criticise capitalism such as sociology (at least until much later on in life), and they do it indirectly by mirroring the inequality found in wider society (teacher-pupil relations, banding and streaming), thus getting students used to the idea that inequality is normal.
Related concepts: passive subservience, Marxism, socialisation, hidden curriculum, power, inequality.
Immediate Gratification
Wanting instant reward, right now. The opposite of deferred gratification
Independent (Private) Schools
Schools which are not state-funded and are paid for by parents. They do not have to follow the national curriculum, but most choose to do so.
Institutional Racism
Discrimination which is built into the everyday workings of institutions such as schools.
Labelling*
‘Labelling’ is where someone judges a person based on the superficial ‘surface’ characteristics such as their apparent social class, sex, and ethnicity.
In the case of education, the main ‘labeller’ is the teacher, the main ‘labelled’ the pupil. Howard Becker has shown that teachers have an ‘ideal type’ of a pupil. The ‘ideal’ pupil is courteous, hard working and academically able. Middle-class pupils are far more likely to fit this model than are working class students, and thus middle class students get a positive label working class students a negative label.
Related concepts: Interactionism, self-fulfilling prophecy, ideal pupil.
*American misspelling: ‘labeling’
League Tables
Published documents which show the GCSE and A level results of all schools in England and Wales. Schools are effectively ranked against each other and thus are easy to compare.
Legitimation of class inequality
A Marxist term – where schools justify inequality through teaching the myth of meritocracy. Schools teach working class pupils that it is their fault if they fail their exams and end up in working class jobs, rather than the fault of the unequal and unfair system which is biased towards the middle class.
Marketization
Making schools compete for pupils, like businesses compete for clients or consumers.
This was the basic principle behind the 1988 education act: the government introduced open enrollment (parental choice), formula funding and league tables to introduce endogenous privatisation.
Related concepts: New Right, neoliberalism, privatisation, league tables, 1988 education act.
Material deprivation
Where someone cannot afford or lacks access to basic, material resources such as food and heating.
Material deprivation can have a negative effect on educational achievement because students may not have access to computers and the Internet at home and poor diet and housing conditions may lead to health problems which can result in time off school.
Related concepts: social class, cultural deprivation, differential educational achievement.
Meritocracy
The idea that what an individual achieves is based on a combination of their ability and effort.
In education this is where the qualifications one achieves is based on a combination of their intelligence and the amount of effort they put in during their time in school.
Marxists argue that meritocracy is a myth because in reality an individual’s educational achievement is more a reflection of their class background, a result of their material and cultural capital, rather than their ability or effort. However, the working classes believe the myth of meritocracy and thus blame their own failure on themselves rather than the unequal opportunities in the system.
Related concepts: achieved status, ascribed status, Marxism, Functionalism, equality of opportunity.
Motivation by external rewards
Being motivated by the end result, not the act itself. In education this means being motivated by exam results rather than the ‘joy of learning’.
Multicultural education
Any education that raises awareness of the different cultures, traditions and religions in a society, typically aimed at promoting acceptance of (or at least tolerance of diversity).
Myth of meritocracy
Part of Marxist Theory – the idea that schools are not meritocratic but teach students that they are so as to legitimate inequality (see the legitimation of class inequality).
National Curriculum
Set subjects (and the content within those subjects) laid down by the government that all state funded schools must teach.
OFSTED
The government body which inspects schools and publishes reports, grading schools from ‘outstanding’ to ‘in need of improvement’. Has the power the put schools into special measures and change the management and staffing of failing schools.
Parentocracy
Literally ‘the rule of the parents’. It is where parents have a choice over which school to send their children to.
Parity of Esteem
Where schools teach different subjects and have a different ethos but have equal status.
Particularistic values
The specific standards by which parents judge their children.
Passive subservience
Accepting authority and doing what you are told without questioning it.
Patriarchal Ideology
Norms and values which make patriarchy seem natural. E.g. the idea that women should be the primary child carers because they give birth to children.
Patriarchy
A system of male domination, or one in which men have advantage over women.
Polarization
Moving further apart. In education, marketisation is said to have caused this: the best schools improved and the worst schools got worse.
Postmodernisation
The changes associated with the move to a postmodern society, including globalization, more consumerism, more individual choice and diversity.
Privatisation (exogenous)
Where schools, or school services, are taken over by private businesses such as academy chains, rather than being run directly by the state.
Privatisation (endogenous)
Where schools are made to compete like businesses while still being run by the state. This was the idea behind marketization.
Reproduction of inequality
Where inequality is carried on from one generation to the next.
Restricted Speech Code
Language consisting of limited vocabulary, simple sentences, and which is context specific. According to Bernstein, this is what the working class speak. It is the opposite of the elaborated speech code.
Role allocation
Where pupils are sifted and sorted into appropriate jobs based on their abilities, reflected in the qualifications they achieve.
Society requires the most able to be in the most important and demanding jobs. Education makes sure this happens- only the most able and hardest working can rise to top and get the three A grades in science required to go on to do a medical degree and become a doctor for example.
Related Concepts: achieved status, Functionalism, division of labour, meritocracy.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
This is where someone acts according to their label and the label becomes true in reality.
In education a pupil who is repeatedly told that they are unlikely to achieve may consequently give up their efforts which in turn will reduce the likelihood of gaining a qualification. The teachers’ label has thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Related concepts: interactionism, labelling, deterministic.
Social Solidarity
Where individuals work together in pursuit of a shared goal.
Social Solidarity is most commonly used in politics where the public might show ‘solidarity’ with striking rail workers who’s goals is achieving the social justice of getting appropriate wages for their labour.
But the concept can also be applied to education – social solidarity is achieved through working together in team sports, or shared creative events such as artistic productions or even whole class educational projects.
Working together is one of the main ways we achieve a sense of belonging to wider society in Functionalist theory and education is probably the first time children will get to feel this sense of connection to the wider society beyond their family.
Subculture and Counter School Culture
A subculture consists of a group of people who share norms and values which are different to mainstream values.
An important type of subculture is the counter-school culture – identified by Paul Willis (1977). A counter school culture has norms and values which are in direct opposition to the mainstream culture of the school. Thus the lads who made up the counter-school culture valued messing around and ‘having a laugh’ and got status for doing so, and did not value working hard to achieve good grades.
Related concepts: pro-school subculture; myth of meritocracy, white working class underachievement; the young entrepreneurs (Mac An Ghaill), active-passive, Marxism.
Vocationalism
Work related education or training.
Vocationalism refers to any training or education which is specifically targeted to a particular type of job or sector.
It is usually contrasted to academic education which is more subject based and purely academic (subjects such as history, english literature or sociology are ‘academic’) and involve primarily reading, thinking, debating and writing essays.
Vocational education by contrast will be more focussed on teaching the specific technical skills and knowledge that individuals will require for work in a specific field of employment such as construction, the media or hairdressing.
Examples of Vocational Education include many BTEC qualifications and Apprenticeships.
Some courses may be a mixture of both Vocational and Academic.
Signposting and Related Posts
This post was written to help A-level sociology students revise for the education aspect of their SCLY1 7192/1 exam.
For further posts on revising for that exam paper, you might like this post which is specifically about techniques for answering the AQA A-Level Sociology Paper 1.
Gender equality has increased rapidly following the genocide with more opportunities for women in work and politics.
Rwanda makes an interesting case study of a developing nation which has very high levels of gender equality in relation to its relatively low levels of economic development.
Gender Equality in Rwanda 1990 to 2021 (in bright green).
Breaking gender equality down the United Nations data shows us that:
There are more women than men in parliament in Rwanda. In 2021 55.% of politicians were female.
The proportion of women and men with at least some secondary education is 11.4% and 16.3% respectively.
Labour force participation is nearly equal for both men and women at 82%
Given that East and North African nations typically have the lowest levels of gender equality in the world Rwanda is bucking the trend here. So what’s its secret?
How to explain high gender equality in Rwanda?
I’m not exactly an expert in Rwandan history, but here are five things which might explain the high reported levels of gender equality in Rwanda:
The long-term effects of the 1990s Genocide.
Politics: women’s rights are enshrined in the Rwandan constitution.
Rwanda spends a lot on health and education, lots of social development.
A lot of women are employed in the public sector.
The continued role of women’s support groups in rebuilding after the Genocide.
The long term effects of the genocide
Firstly, the genocide, may have (somewhat perversely) played a role in female empowerment.
In the aftermath of the genocide, Rwanda found itself a country composed of 70 percent women. The violence had been perpetrated by — and largely toward — men. There were simply fewer men due to death, imprisonment, and flight. Killings also targeted civic leaders during the genocide. Out of more than 780 judges nationwide, only 20 survived the violence. Not 20 percent, 20 total.
These skewed demographics resulted in a power vacuum. Prior to 1994, women only held between 10 and 15 percent of seats in Parliament. Out of sheer necessity, and a desire to rebuild their country, women stepped up as leaders in every realm of the nation, including politics.
Or in the words of one Rwandan woman….. “Many women were left as widows because of the genocide. Others had to work hard in the place of their jailed husbands for allegedly taking part in the genocide. So even young girls got that mentality to perform genuinely to access good jobs, and good jobs means going to school first.”
The constitution guarantees women’s rights
Secondly – (and no doubt related to the above) women’s rights have been rooted in the constitution for over a decade – The constitution stipulates that at least 30% of government positions should be filled by women. Rwanda now tops global league tables for the percentage of female parliamentarians. Fewer than 22% of MPs worldwide are women; in Rwanda, almost 64% are.
Rwanda spends a lot on health and education
Thirdly (and probably a knock-on effect from point two) Rwanda spends huge proportions of its national budget on health and education, according to World Bank statistics in 2020 Rwanda spent over 7% of its GDP on health, more than double most other African countries. Rwanda also receives aid money for health from donor countries.
High expenditure on the health care has greatly improved maternal health and reduced child mortality.
High numbers of women employed in the public sector
Fourthly (and probably a knock on effect from the above three points) – A relatively high proportion of women are employed in public sector jobs – In the education system – women have also outnumbered men as primary school teachers.
More than 50% of teachers in primary schools are female, compared to 30-40% which is more typical of most Sub-Saharan African countries.
Higher up the education system, things are not so equal, but they are improving rapidly. At secondary school, however, only 30% of teachers were female in 2016, although this had increased from 21% in 2001.
Women’s support groups in Rwanda
Fifthly, there is the role of women’s support groups in rebuilding the country after the decimation caused by the genocide. These groups initially just offered a place for women to talk about their experiences of being widowed and raped, but they morphed into workers co-operatives, which has, 30 years later, led on to a very high degree of engagement with women in local politics, which is increasingly integrated with national politics.
In every local police station there is a ‘gender desk’ where incidents of gender related violence can be reported (something which I think is pretty much unheard of in most African countries).
Limitations of Rwanda’s Gender Equality….
As with all statistics, they don’t tell the full picture, one of the posts below makes the following cautions. Firstly, 60% of Rwandans live below the poverty line, and while those women how have jobs in politics and education are on decent wages, there aren’t actually that many people in the population employed in these sectors and gender equality means very little to the vast majority of women when they can’t afford to eat.
Secondly, Domestic abuse statistics don’t make for pretty reading, with 2/5 women saying they have experienced domestic violence, with 1/5 saying they have experienced sexual violence – And you can imagine how low the prosecution rate of men is for such crimes.
A few thoughts on the meaning of all this….
Rwanda has experienced excellent economic growth compared to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which suggests that Gender Empowerment has a positive effect on development, but obviously this conclusion has to be treated with caution because there are so many other variables which need to be taken into account.
If it is indeed the prevalence of women and the absence of (certain types of?) men from a society which encourages development, there are some pretty challenging implications – Most obviously it raises the question of how we are to reduce (certain types of) male influence in developing countries?
Signposting
This material is relevant to the Global Development module, an option within A-level sociology.
Five sampling techniques are random, systematic, stratified, quota, multistage and snowball.
Selecting a sample is the process of finding and choosing the people who are going to be the target of your research.
Five sampling methods used in sociology are:
Random sampling – pick at random
Systematic sampling – every nth person from a list
stratified sampling – 50% males 50% females, for example.
multistage sampling – 50% males, 50% females then within both male and female groups 50% young, 50% old.
snowball sampling – start with one person, ask them to suggest someone else to interview.
quota sample – selecting people with particular characteristics
Choosing a sampling method
The sampling method researchers choose will depend on a variety of factors including theoretical perspective (wether Positivist or Interpretivist), as well as practical and ethical factors.
Most researchers will have a ‘target population’ in mind before conducting research. The target population consists of those people who have the characteristics of the sample you wish to study. If you’re interested in conducting primary research on the experiences of working class school children in 2017 (or whatever year we’re currently in!), then your target population would be all working class school children.
Many researchers use a sampling frame to choose a sample, which is simply a list from which a sample is chosen – this might be a register of all pupils in a school, if you are conducting research in a school, for example.
NB – The people who are the targets of social research are also known as the ‘respondents’
Positivist researchers are interested in large scale research and so are especially concerned to make sure their samples are representative of wider populations – research is representative if the characteristics of the people in the sample (the people who are actually researched) reflect the characteristics of the target population.
Interpretivists generally prefer smaller scale research and are generally more interested in getting niche samples of deviant groups and don’t need to worry about generalising to wider populations.
Random sampling
An example of random sampling would be picking names out of a hat. In random sampling everyone in the population has the same chance of getting chosen. This is easy because it is quick and can even be performed by a computer. However, because it is down to chance you could end up with an unrepresentative sample, perhaps with one demographic being missed out.
Systematic sampling
An example of a systematic sample would be picking every 10th person on a list or register. This is a very convenient method when you have a list of people on a database that could be used as a sampling frame, and it’s also a method computers can use to automatically generate samples.
However, this method may also be unrepresentative, depending on how the list is organised.
Stratified sampling
This method attempts to make the sample as representative as possible, avoiding the problems that could be caused by using a completely random sample. To do this the sample frame will be divided into a number of smaller groups, such as social class, age, gender, ethnicity etc. Individuals are then drawn at random from these groups. If you are observing doctors and you had split the sample frame into ethnic groups you would draw 8% of the participants from the Asian group, as you know that 8% of doctors in Britain are Asian.
Quota sampling
In this method researchers will be told to ensure the sample fits with certain quotas, for example they might be told to find 90 participants, with 30 of them being unemployed. The researcher might then find these 30 by going to a job centre. The problem of representativeness is again a problem with the quota sampling method.
Multistage sampling
With multistage sampling, a researcher selects a sample by using combinations of different sampling methods. For example, in Stage 1, a researcher might use systematic sampling, and in Stage 2, he might use random sampling to select a subset for the final sample
Snowball sampling
With this method, researchers might find a few participants, and then ask them to find participants themselves and so on. This is useful when a sample is difficult to obtain. For example Laurie Taylor used this method when investigating criminals. It would be difficult for him to find a sample as he didn’t know many criminals; however these criminals know a lot of people who would be willing to participate, so it is more efficient to use the snowball method.
If the modern problem of identity was how to construct an identity, the postmodern problem of identity is how to avoid fixation and keep the options open. If the catchword of modernity was creation, the catchword of postmodernity is recycling.
The main identity-bound anxiety of modern times was the worry about durability; it is concern with commitment-avoidance today.
The photograph was the medium of modernity, all set in bound books with yellowing pages, the video-tape the medium of postmodernity – today’s recording only exists until something deemed more significant emerges to replace it.
Modernity built in steel and concrete, postmodernity in biodegradable plastic.
Identity as such is a modern invention – it is the name given to the escape sought from uncertainty, from the modern ‘problem’ of freedom of choice which arises with social change, and of not knowing for certain where one fits in to the order of things; the modern ‘quest’ for identity is a response to the inability of people to clearly project who they are to others so that we may all ‘go on’.
Identity is always a process, a critical projection (typically?) into the future – it is an assertive attempt to escape from the experience of under-determination, or free-floatingness , of disembeddnsess, which is the ‘natural’ condition of modernity.
Identity in modernity is presented as an individual task, but there are experts to guide us as to what identities are possible to achieve – experts such as teachers and counsellors, who are supposed to be more knowledgeable about the task of identity construction.
Modern life as pilgrimage
Modernity gave the pilgrim a new prominence and a novel twist.
For pilgrims through time, the truth is elsewhere, always some distance away. Wherever the pilgrim is now is not where he ought to be, not where he dreams of being. The glory of the future debases the present.
The pilgrim is not interested in the city, the houses tempt him to rest, he is happier on the streets, for they lead him to his destination. However, even these are perceived as a series of traps which may lead him from his path. The pilgrim feels homeless in the city.
The desert is the place for the pilgrim, who seeks a hermetic way of life away from the distractions of city life, away from duties and obligations. The desert, unlike the city, was a land not yet sliced into places, a place of self-creation, which is not possible when one is ‘in place’ in the city, which calls upon the individual to be certain ways (through the commitments of family and polis).
You do not go into the desert to find identity, but to lose it, to become ‘god like’.
The Protestants changed this by becoming ‘inner-worldly pilgrims’ – they invented the way of embarking on pilgrimage without leaving home and of leaving home without becoming homeless. In the post-Reformation city of modernity, the desert started on the other side of the door.
The protestant worked hard to make the dessert come to him – through impersonality, coldness, emptiness – protestants expressed a desire to see the outside world as null, lacking in value, of nothingness waiting to become something.
In such a land, commonly called modern society, pilgrimage is no longer a choice, pilgrimage is no longer heroic or saintly, it is what one does of necessity, to avoid being lost in the desert; to invest in walking with a purpose while wandering the land with no destination.
The desert world of modernity is meaningless, the bringing-in of meaning is ‘identity builiding’ – the pilgrim and the dessert-like world he walks acquire their meaning together. Both processes must go on because there is a distance between the goal (the meaning of the world and the future identity of the pilgrim) and the present moment (the station of the walking and the identity of the wanderer.)
Both meaning and identity can exist only as projects. Dissatisfaction with the present compared to the ideal-future and delaying gratification to realise greater pleasure in that future are fundamental features of the modern-identity building project, as is marking and measuring one’s progress towards one’s goal through time.
Time is generally perceived as something through which one progress, in a linear fashion, and modern pilgrims generally had trust in a clearly identified future state (however fantastical) – and saving for the future was a central strategy of future oriented identity-building.
Pilgrims had a stake in the solidity of the world they walked, a kind of world in which one can tell life as a continuous story – moving towards fulfilment – The world of pilgrims, of identity-builders must be orderly, determined, predictable, but most of all it must be one in which one can make engravings in the sand so that past travels are kept and preserved.
The world inhospitable to pilgrims
The world is not hospitable to pilgrims any more. The pilgrims lost their battle by winning it: by turning the social into a dessert, ultimately a windy place where it is as easy to erase footprints as it is to make them.
It soon transpired that the real problem was not how to make identity, but how to preserve it – in a dessert, it is easy to blaze a trail, but difficult to make it stick.
As Cristopher Lasch points out identity refers to both persons and to things, and we now live in a world of disposable objects, and in such a world identities can be adopted and discarded like a change of clothes.
In the life-game of postmodern consumers the rules of the game keep changing in the course of playing. The sensible strategy is to keep each game short, and ‘live one day at a time’, depicting each day as a series of emergencies.
To keep the game short means to be wary of long term commitments, not to control the future, but to refuse to mortgage it. In short, to cut the present off at both ends, to abolish time and live in a continuous present. Fitness takes over from health – the capacity to move where the action is rather than coming up to a standard and remaining ‘unscathed’; and the snag is to no longer construct an identity, but to stop it from becoming fixed.
The hub of postmodern life strategy is not identity building, but avoidance of fixation.
There are no hooks on which we can hang our identity – jobs for life have gone, and we live in the era of personal relationships. Values become cherished for maximal impact, and this means short and sharp, because attention has become a scarce commodity.
The overall result is the fragmentation of time into episodes. In this world, saving and delaying gratification make no sense, getting pleasure now is rational.
In this world, the stroller, the tourist, the vagabond and the player become the key identities, all of these have their origins before postmodernity, but each comes to be practiced by the mainstream rather than being marginal in postmodernity.
In the postmodern chorus they all sing, sometimes in harmony, but more often with cacophony the result.
The stroller
In modernity this is Walter Benjamin’s flaneur – strolling among crowds of strangers in a city, and being in the crowd, but not of the crowd, taking in those strangers as ‘surfaces’ so that what one sees exhausts what they are, and above all seeing and knowing them episodically – each episode having no past and no consequence. The distinction between appearance and reality matter not. The stroller had all the pleasures of modern life, without all the torments.
In the postmodern world, the stroller is the playful consumer, who doesn’t need to deal with ‘reality’. Shopping malls are the domain of the stroller – while you can shop while you stroll. Here people believe they are making decisions, but in fact they are being manipulated by the mall-designers. Malls are also safe-spaces, where undesirables are screened out.
Originally malls were merely physical, now all of this is intensified in teleshopping, in the private domain.
The vagabond
The vagabond was the bane of early modernity, being master-less, out of control. Modernity could not bear the vagabond because he had no set destination, each place he stops, he knows not how long he will stay. It is easy to control the pilgrim because of his self-determination, but not the vagabond.
Wherever the vagabond goes he is a stranger, he can never be native, he is always out of place.
In modernity the settled were many, the vagabonds few, postmodernity reverses the ratio as now there are few ‘settled places’ left – jobs, skills, relationships, all offer no chance of being rooted.
The tourist
Like the vagabond, the tourist is always on the move and always in the place but never of it, but there are seminal differences.
Firstly, the tourist moves on purpose, to seek new experiences. They want to immerse themselves in the strange and the bizarre, but they do so in a safe way, in a package-deal sort of way. The tourists world is structured by aesthetic criteria. Unlike the vagabond, who has a rougher ride.
Secondly, the tourist has a home, the vagabond does not. The problem, however, for the tourist, is that as the touristic mode of life becomes dominant, it becomes less and less clear where home actually is, and homesickness sets in – home lingers both as an uncanny mix of shelter and prison.
The player
In play there is neither inevitability nor accident, nothing is fully predictable or controllable, and yet nothing is totally immutable or irrevocable either.
In play there is nothing but a series of moves, and time in the world-as-play is divided into a succession of games, each self-enclosed. For the player, each game must have an end, it must be possible to leave it with no consequences once it has been completed, leave no mental scars.
The point of the game is to win, and this leaves no room for compassion, commiseration .or cooperation.
The mark of a postmodern adult is to embrace the game wholeheartedly, like children do.
