Category: A level sociology exam practice

Analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

This is a possible ’10 mark with item question’ question which might come up on the AQA’s A level sociology crime and deviance with theory and methods paper (7192/3).

I’ve just got this intuitive feeling that IF a 10 mark question comes up on gender, it will ask candidates to focus on masculinity and male crime rather than female crime.

Below I include a question, with item and a suggested model answer…

10 Mark ‘with item’ Question

Read Item A, then answer the question below.

Item A

‘Normative masculinity’ is the socially approved ideal of what a ‘real man’ is. This involves being successful in terms of money and sexual conquests, being in control/exercising power. Messerschmitt argues that high levels of male crime are simply down to men trying to prove they are ‘real men’.

This goes some way to explaining white collar crime (mainly male) – it’s about status and competition. It might also also explain domestic violence and working class street violence – these are the means men with low status use to act out their masculinity when they lack power in mainstream society.

Using material from Item A, analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

Hints and Tips

  • Being successful: money, sex, in control, excercising power
  • normative (traditional) masculinity
  • Elite (white collar) crime
  • Low status crimes (WC street violence)
  • Also DV!

Suggested Model Answer

Firstly

  • Men might commit more crime than women because they believe that they need to be financially successful to prove they are a ‘real man’. The most obvious way a man can ‘act out’ this ‘traditional breadwinner’ aspect of his masculinity is to get a well-paid job.
  • However, according to Merton’s Strain Theory, not all men can achieve this goal through the legitimate means of getting a high paid job, as there are relatively few of these available, and as a result some will turn to crime in order ‘show they are successful’.
  • For some men this may ‘simply’ mean earning money by criminal means – by dealing drugs or doing ‘moped thefts’ for example – all of which seem to be mainly male pursuits.
  • Other men who lack the opportunity or ‘smartness’ to do utilitarian crime may just get frustrated and seek to prove their status and toughness through violence, as Winlow found with mainly working class men in Newcastle.
  • However, it isn’t just working class men who turn to crime to prove status: within companies some highly paid men turn to fraud to make even more money than their male peers.

Secondly…

  • Men might commit more crime than women to ‘prove they are in control of women’.
  • From a radical feminist perspective this is largely what explains domestic violence which happens across all class groups.
  • Heidensohn suggests DV is just one criminal way men express control in in private – it also happens in public through ‘harrassment’ on the streets
  • This is further perpetuated by ‘the male gaze’ and the objectification of women in the media, especially porn, all of which are interwoven in a network of patriarchal control over women.
  • However, men don’t necessarily just use sexual violence to control women, they also use it to control other men – male rape has been used against captured combatants in the DRC for example, and it can also be used in prisons where ‘situational homosexuality’ can be used as a means some men use to express their power over others.

 

 

Applying material from Item A, analyse two reasons why situational crime prevention strategies may not be effective in reducing crime (10)

My attempt at a model 10/10 answer for this A-level sociology exam question (crime and deviance topic)

This is the 10 mark question in the crime and deviance section of the AQA’s 2015 Specimen A-level sociology paper 3: Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods.

I used this question as part of our department’s own paper 3 mock exam this year (February 2018).

In this post I consider a ‘lower middle mark band’ student response (4/10 marks) to this question and the examiner commentary (both are provided by the AQA here) before considering what a ‘top band’ answer might look like.

The Question (with the item!)

sociology exam question

The Mark Scheme:

AQA sociology 10 mark question mark scheme.png

Student Response:

student response.png

Examiner Commentary: (4/10 marks)

sociology examiner commentary.png

A top band answer?

The first problem with situational crime prevention techniques such as installing burglar alarms is that they mail fail to increase the risk of getting caught in the subjective opinion of the burglars.

Many criminals are indeed rational and thus may reason that burglar alarms are ineffective – most members of the general public ignore them after all, and some may even be ‘fake’. There is also the fact that the police may take a long time to respond to an alarm, thus if criminals can act quickly enough, they may ‘calculate’ that they can get away with a smash and grab type robbery before the police respond, thus reducing the likelihood of getting caught.

A more effective form of situational crime prevention, other than a burglar alarm, might be a security guard, which would increase the risk of getting caught significantly as they can simply phone the police if there is any suspicious behaviour nearby.

However, security guards are expensive compared to alarms, and so while those places which hire security guards may be protected, crime will just be displaced to those areas with lesser protection (like ineffective alarms or no alarms’.

Finally, if we apply Felson’s ‘Routine Activity Theory’, we know that criminals ‘size up’ their targets when going about their day to day business, so they know the areas which are the least effectively protected and the least risky…. thus target hardening strategies like those mentioned in item are only going to be effective if all properties. use them equally, which is unlikely.

A second problem with Situational Crime Prevention talked about in item A is that not all crime is a rational decision, some crimes are done on the ‘spur of the moment’, for the ‘thrill of the act’, or out of sheer desperation.

Situational Crime Prevention failed, for example, to prevent the London Riots happening – here many of the rioters engaged in looting and vandalism in order to ‘have fun and join in with the party atmosphere’ despite the fact that all of the properties looted were locked and under surveillance, and there being thousands of police on the streets.

The Riots were also fueled by a sense of injustice at police brutality and economic inequality, which suggests that inequality in society ultimately fuels crime, which can spill-over at flash points, no matter how much one ‘hardens targets’: and target hardening does nothing to address the underlying causes of crime such as injustice and inequality.

Another example of a crime which is not rational is football hooliganism – which increasingly just seems to be about ‘fun’ – ‘teams’ of hooligans arrange fights after the match for thrills, and it is difficult to see how situational crime prevention can reduce this, as it’s just about ‘fun’ rather than ‘reward’ in the eyes of those involved.

 

Outline and explain two social changes which may explain the decline of marriage in recent decades (10)

A model answer for a 10 mark ‘outline and explain’ question on the AQA’s A level sociology paper 2 (families and households)

A model answer to a possible 10 mark ‘outline and explain’ question, written for the A-level sociology AQA A-level paper 7192/2: topics within sociology: families and households section).

Question

Outline and explain two social changes which may explain the decline of marriage in recent decades (10) 

outline explain decline marriage.png

Model Answer

The first social factor is in more depth than the second. 

Economic changes such as the increasing cost of housing and the increasing cost of weddings may explain the decline of marriage:

Young adults stay living with their parents longer to save up for a mortgage, often into their 30s. Men especially might feel embarrassed to marry if they still live with their parents, because it’s not very ‘masculine’. This also reflects the importance changing gender roles: now women are taking on the ‘breadwinner role’, there’s no obvious need to marry a man. This applies especially to low income earning, working class men.

Furthermore, it’s often a choice between ‘marriage’ or ‘house deposit’: most people just co-habit because they can’t afford to get married. People would rather by a house because ‘material security’ is more important than the ‘security of marriage’. People also fail to save for weddings because of the pressure to consume in postmodern society. However, this only applies to those who want a big ‘traditional’ wedding, which costs £15K.

The significance of economic factors criticise the postmodernist view that marriage declining is simply a matter of ‘free-choice’.

A Second reason for the decline of marriage is secularisation, or the decline of religion in society.

Christianity, for example emphasises that marriage is a sacred union for life before God, and that sex should only take place within marriage. With the decline of religion, social values have shifted so that it is now acceptable to have sex before marriage, and with more than one partner, meaning that dating, serial monogamy and cohabitation have all replaced marriage to a large extent.

The decline of religion also reflects the fact that marriage today is not about ‘pleasing society’, it is simply about pleasing the two individuals within the relationship, the ‘pure relationship’ is now the norm, and people no longer feel like they need God’s approval of their relationshp, so there is less social pressure to get married.

However, this trend does vary by ethnicity, and Muslims, Hindus and Jews within Britain are all much more likely to get married in a religious ceremony.

Visual Version for social change one:

AQA Sociology exam practice questions 10 marks

Other posts you may find useful:

Evaluate the Functionalist View of the Role of Education in Society (30) #LONG VERSION

Essay practice for A-level sociology!

An A-level sociology essay written for the AQA’s 7192 (1) specification, exam paper 1. This is the long, ‘overkill’ version of the essay, written using the PEAC system (Point – Explain – Analyse – Criticise)

An obvious starting point before reading this essay would be to read my post on the Functionalist Perspective on Education.

NB – At time of posting, it’s half an essay, more to follow!

Introduction

Functionalism is a somewhat dated structural theory popular in 19th century France (Durkheim) and mid-20th century America (Parsons). Functionalist theorists adopted a ‘top-down’ approach to analysing the role which institutions, such as schools play in relation to other institutions, such as work, and generally believe that schools form an important part of a society’s structure. Functionalism is also a consensus theory: functionalists generally emphasise the positive functions which schools perform for individuals and society, arguing that schools tend to promote social harmony and social order, which they see as a good thing.

Below I will analyse and evaluate four specific ‘functions’ or roles which schools perform according to Functionalist theory, ultimately arguing that it obscures more than it enlightens our understanding of the role of education in society.

Education and Social Solidarity

POINT 1: According to Emile Durkheim (1890s), the founder of modern Functionalism, the first role of education was to create a sense of social solidarity which in turn promoted value consensus.

EXPLANATION: Social Solidarity is where the individual members of society feel themselves to be a part of a single ‘body’ or community and work together towards shared goals. According to Durkhiem schools achieved social solidarity through children learning subjects such as history and English which gave them a shared sense of national identity, which in turn promoted value consensus, or agreement on shared values at the societal level.

Analysis: Durkheim thought schools were one of the few institutions which could promote solidarity at a national level – he may have a point. It is difficult to imagine any other institution which governments could use to socialise individuals in to a sense of national identity.

Evaluation: To evaluate this point, there do seem to be examples of where schools attempt to promote a sense of social solidarity. Writing in the 1950s, Talcott Parsons pointed to how, in American schools, children pledge allegiance to the flag; while today British schools and colleges are obliged to promote ‘British Values’ (woohoo!)

However, it is debatable whether schools are successful in instilling a genuine sense of social solidarity into most, let alone all students. A minority of students are excluded from schools, and around 5% are persistent absentees – if students are not in mainstream education, then schools cannot promote a sense of belonging; while for those students who are at school, many are there ‘in body, but not necessarily in spirit. Finally there is the fact there is such a huge diversity of schools (faith schools, private schools, home education) that surely education is too fragmented and divided for it to promote true solidarity at the national level – to the extent that postmodernists suggested there is no such thing as a unified culture anymore.

Education teaches Skills for Work

POINT 2: A second function of education, again according to Durkhiem, is that schools teach individuals the specialist skills for work, which is crucial in a complex, modern industrial economy. (Schools thus have an important economic function).

Durkhiem argued that school was an efficient way of teaching individuals these diverse skills while at the same time teaching them to co-operate with each-other – schools thus instilled a sense of organic solidarity, or solidarity based on difference and interdependency, with school being one of the only institutions which could do both of these functions simultaneously within the context of a national economy.

The idea that schools have an economic function certainly seems to be true – basic literacy and numeracy are certainly important for any job today, and ever since the New Right, Vocational education has expanded, right up to the present day in the form of Modern Apprenticeships, and today. There is also a relationship between government expenditure on education and economic growth – more developed countries tend to have stronger economies.

However, it is debatable whether schools prepare children adequately for work – for example, there is a shortage of STEM graduates, and many doctors come to Britain from abroad, so maybe the education system today focuses on the wrong subjects, not the subjects the economy actually needs to grow effectively? There is also a Postmodern critique from Ken Robinson that suggests that ‘schools kill creativity’ – a system obsessed with standardised testing hardly prepares people to go into the creative industries or become entrepreneurs, both of which are growth areas in the current UK economy.

More to follow…!

Short version of this essay

  • Point – Simply state something Functionalists say about education
  • Explain – Explain what is meant by the ‘Function’ of education mentioned previously
  • Expand – this could mean giving examples, evidence, or explaining in more depth
  • Criticise – criticise with evidence against or limitations

(P1) Secondary Socialisation and Value consensus       

  • The teaching of norms and values after the family – leading to agreement around these norms and values
  • Formal Curriculum – Shared history/ Shared language/ Shared religion
  • Team sports – working together shared aim
  • Ethnocentric Curriculum
  • Sub cultures
  • More school types – more diversity, surely = less value consensus?

(P2) Teaching skills for work – economic function          

  • Diverse subjects,
  • Punctuality
  • Vocationalism and apprenticeships have expanded
  • Are apprenticeships useful?
  • Tea servers

(P3) Bridge between home and school  

  • School prepares us for the world outside the family – it acts like a society in miniature
  • Particularistic/ Universalistic Standards
  • Doesn’t apply to everyone – Home schooling

R(P4) Role Allocation  

  • Different qualifications sift people into appropriate jobs
  • Does this through exams – sifting and sorting
  • Meritocracy (since 1944)
  • Marxism – not meritocratic – myth of meritocracy,
  • Private schools
  • Feminism – gender stereotyping and subject choice

Evaluate using other perspectives –

  • Marxism – Agrees with Functionalists that school socialises us into shared values, but these values are the values benefit the ruling class (we get taught that inequality is natural and inevitable, we believe in the myth of meritocracy and so end up passively accepting society as it is.
  • Feminism – Functionalism ignores the gender divide in school
  • Interactionism – Argues Functionalism is too deterministic – it sees individuals as passive, but there is a lot more evidence that pupils are active and aren’t just moulded by the school system

Conclusion – You must point out that this perspective is too optimistic and overgeneralises!

Signposting

This essay plan is based on these class notes on the Functionalist perspective on education.

For more essays, please see my main post on exam advice, short answer questions and essays.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

AS Sociology Education Short Answer Question and Answers

Some examples of possible short answer question and answers for the education section of AS Sociology Paper 7191 (1)

Examples of ‘define’ questions (2 marks)

Question: Define the Term ‘meritocracy’ (2)

Answer: where an individual is rewarded on the basis of ability and effort – a fair system of reward

Question: Define the ‘the reproduction of class inequality’ (2)

Where social class based differences in income, education and wealth are carried on from one generation to the next

E.g. – Where working class children fail in education and go on to get working class jobs, and vice versa for middle class children.

Question: Define the term ‘neoliberalism’ (2)

Answer: A theory that believes in societies being run according to market principles. The idea that the government should be as small as possible and keep out of the affairs of private enterprise (businesses)

Examples of ‘using one example, explain what is meant by’

Question: Using one example identify and briefly explain what is meant by the term ‘Role Allocation’ (2)

Where individuals are sifted and sorted into appropriate jobs based on the qualifications they achieve – E.G. someone passes a law degree to get a job as a lawyer.

Question: Using one example identify and briefly explain what is meant by the term ‘correspondence principle’ (2)

Where what pupils learn at school prepares them for future exploitation at work – E.G.  accepting authority of teachers at school then accepting the authority of managers at work,.

Question: Using one example identify and briefly explain one way in which neoliberal ideas have influenced education policy (2)

Answer: The idea that businesses should play more of a role in running the education system – E.G. The setting up of academies

AQA A-Level Sociology Paper 2: Families and Households Section – Exam Advice

How to answer the AQA’s A-level sociology paper 2. A guide to answering 10 mark outline and explain questions, 10 mark analyse questions and 20 mark essay questions.

Hints and tips for answering the AQA’s Sociology A Level Paper 2: Topics in Sociology (7192/2): families section only.

Please see this post for an overview of the three AQA sociology A level exam papers.

Families Households Sociology AQA Paper 2

A-Level Sociology Paper 2

A quick guide to the entire AQA A-Level Sociology: Topics in Sociology Exam:

  • Paper 2 is a 2 hour paper, out of a total of 80 marks.
  • You get a booklet of questions, split into two sections (A and B), you write your answers into a separate answer booklet.
  • You answer one topic from each section (whichever two topics you’ve studied), one topic from section A, one from section B.
  • There are three 3 questions per topic (10/10/20)
  • So across the two topics, you answer a total of 6 questions
  • You have 1.5 minutes per mark.
  • This blog post only refers to section A, families and households option!

AQA Families and Households Specification

The AQA’s families and households specification is in bullet points, which I reproduced below.

The questions from the families and households section of paper 2 will be drawn from across the bullet points. Usually questions are drawn from a broad range and typically more than 60% of the bullet points below are covered within any one exam year:

  • the relationship of the family to the social structure and social change, with particular reference to the economy and to state policies
  • changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, childbearing and the life course, including the sociology of personal life, and the diversity of contemporary family and household structures
  • gender roles, domestic labour and power relationships within the family in contemporary society
  • the nature of childhood, and changes in the status of children in the family and society
  • demographic trends in the United Kingdom since 1900: birth rates, death rates, family size, life expectancy, ageing population, and migration and globalisation.

The 10 Mark ‘outline and explain’ (no item) question 

Modified from the AQA’s advice on 10 mark questions sheet…

  • These ask about two elements from one or more bullet points within the specification topic (e.g. the nature of childhood in relation to demographic trends).
  • It will generally ask about the links or relationships between these two elements.
  • For example: ‘Outline and explain two ways in which the decline in birth rates has affected the position of children in society’ (10 marks)
  • Students don’t need to evaluate. Analysis is specified in the mark scheme for assessment objective 3.
  • Using PEEL (Point, Explanation, Evidence, Link) is useful for developing sufficient analysis.
  • Expressing each of the two ways in at least two separate paragraphs is useful tool.

Two examples of outline and explain families and households questions

Modified from the AQA’s advice on 10 mark questions sheet…

  • Outline and explain two ways in which women’s going into work has affected relationships (10)
  • Outline and explain two ways in which changes to gender roles have affected diversity of family structures (10)

10 Mark Analyse using the item questions 

  • These have an item which is linked to the question. It encourages linking two elements from the same or different bullet points in the specification.
  • The first part of the item contains a number of points about the first of these elements.
  • These points provide possible hooks, designed to be developed into an explanation of the relationships between the two elements.
  • The second part of the item links these points back to the question.

Example of a 10 mark ‘analyse from the item’ question

Read item A then answer the question below

Item B
Many commentators seem to agree that the ageing population is a problem for society – as it leads to an increasing strain on public services, and results in a greater burden being put on the younger generation to care for the elderly.

However, some claim that such problems have been exaggerated, and are based on stereotypical views about the elderly.

Applying material from Item B, analyse two consequences of the ageing population for British society (10 marks)

20 Mark Essay Questions 

  • Allow yourself enough time – 1.5 minutes per mark = 30 minutes.
  • Read the Question and the item, what is it asking you to do?
  • Do a rough plan (5-10 mins) – initially this should be ‘arguments and evidence’ for and ‘against’ the views in the question, and a few thoughts on overall evaluations/ a conclusion. If you are being asked to look at two things, you’ll have to do this twice/
  • your conclusion should bring the two aspects of the essay together.
  • Write the essay (35 mins)– aim to make 3-5 points in total (depending on the essay, either 3 deep points, or 5 (or more) shallower points). Try to make one point at least stem from the item, ideally the first point.
  • evaluations – don’t repeat yourself, and don’t overdo this, but it’s useful t tag this in before a conclusion.
  • Conclusion (allow 2 mins minimum) – an easy way to do this is to refer to the item – do you agree with the view or not, or say which of the points you’ve made is the strongest/ weakest and on balance is the view in the question sensible or not?

General Structure 

  • Introduction
  • Point (relate to question)
  • Explain
  • Expand
  • Criticise
  • (repeat 3-5 times)
  • Overall Evaluations
  • Conclusion (refer to item)

Some possible examples of 20 mark families and households essay questions…

  • Assess the view that the main aim of the of the family is to serve the needs of capitalism (20)
  • Assess the view that the family has become more child-centred (20)
  • Assess the reasons for changes in the birth rate and family size (20)

And repeat for section B!!!

Signposting and related posts

My main post on exam can be found on my essays, exam advice and short answer questions page.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

How I Would’ve Answered Yesterday’s AS Sociology Exam Paper (7191/1 – Education)

A few thoughts on how the AQA’s 7191 (1) Education AS exam from May 2017 –

If any teacher finds this annoying because they like to keep these papers back for next year’s mock exam, forget it –

  • Any student can find out the questions on social media, very easily
  • The AQA seems to be publishing last years’ exam on their public access web site earlier, rather than keeping them secure.

You can easily just make up yr own exam papers and mark schemes using adobe editor. Also, I’m not giving the exact questions (well, with the exception of Q01) 

Question 01 – Define term hidden curriculum

Boom! Easy starter – in my 13 key concepts for the sociology of education

The norms and values taught at school which are not written down as part of the formal curriculum – for example the norm of respecting authority and being punctual.

Question 02 – Selection policies and social class

Covered here

Some oversubscribed schools select by catchment area – pupils have to live in a house within a certain distance from the school to stand a chance of getting in – this has resulted in covert selection by mortgage – house prices near the good schools increase and so poorer, working class families cannot afford to move into those areas, thus they have no real choice of getting into the best schools.

Question 03 – Three ways in which school mirrors capitalism

Classic Marxist correspondence theory: see here for three ways, explain school – work…

  • hierarchy
  • authority
  • motivation by external rewards
  • even the reproduction of class inequality 

Question 04 – Education policy and ethnic minorities’ experience of education 

Looks awful, but I’m assuming the policies don’t have to be about ethnicity in particular.

Policy 1 – Tony Sewell’s Generating Genius Programme – linked to positive aspirations for black boys, pro-school subcultures. 

Policy 2 – Banding and streaming – linked to institutional racism, Steve Strand, Gilborn and Youdell, educational triage. 

Question 05 – In school factors, the gender gap and educational achievement 

Simple really – It’s covered here and you could’ve bolstered it with this stuff

  • Point 1 – teacher labelling and evaluations 
  • Point 2 – Feminisation of teaching and evaluations
  • Point 3 – Subcultures – laddish ones obviously, also hyper-feminine and evaluations
  • Point 4 – Gender identities – I’d use sexual harassment of girls as an evaluation
  • Overall evaluations using out-of school factors and changing gender roles linked to in-school factors, probably concluding that schools really don’t change very much! 

Question 06 – Questionnaires and class differences in educational achievement.

It’s quite similar to this question here

My answer would have focused on the strengths of the method for making comparisons, and the ease of measuring material deprivation compared to the problems of measuring things like cultural deprivation and cultural capital and gaining access to working class parents. 

I would’ve covered all of Theoretical, ethical and practical of course. 

Interestingly the item didn’t give you very much….

You may have noticed that if you follow this blog, you can pretty much game the sociology exams just by memorizing the content. Personally I’ve no problem with this, being good at exams and being able to think sociologically are two different things, and one of these is a useful life-skill, the other isn’t!

Game on!

AQA A level Sociology – The Three Exam Papers

There are a total of three exam papers for the AQA A-level sociology exam, papers 7192 (1) – Education with Methods in Context and Theory and Methods; paper 7192 (2) Topics in Sociology (typically families and religion are the options); and paper 7191 (3) Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods.

Papers 1 and 3 are ‘write in’ papers – they are gapped booklets, and you write your answers after each question. For these two papers, you answer every question.

Paper 2 is the ‘options paper’ – the exam paper and answer booklet are separate. There are 4 options in each section, you select one topic from section A (most centres do the families option) and one section from section B (most centres do the religion option, I teach the global development option).

A level exam summary posterA3.png

There are 5 ‘question types’ across all 5 papers…

  • 4 and 6 mark outline questions (papers 1 and 3)
  • 10 mark outline and explain questions, no item (papers 1,2 and 3)
  • 10 mark ‘applying material from the item analyse’ questions (papers 1,2 and 3)
  • 20 Mark Methods in Context question (paper 1)
  • 20 and 30 mark essay questions – 30 marks on papers 1 and 3, 20 marks (*2) on paper 2

All exams are 2 hours long, and are marked out of 80

please see this page on exam advice for specific advice on how to answer all of the above questions.

Related Posts 

Outline Three Ways in Which Schools Have Become Increasingly Privatised in Recent Years (6)

Privatisation involves the transfer of public assets to private companies

This is an example of a possible 4 or 6 mark question for the A Level sociology paper 1 education exam, possible answers below…

  • Marketization = exogenous privatisation, or introducing the principles of the free-market, private sector into how schools are run. This involved giving parents the right to choose (like consumers) and making schools compete for funding (funding per pupil) =
  • The expansion of Academies – Many academy chains are private companies (such as Harris) and have an ‘executive structure’ like businesses, with one ‘CEO’ overseeing many schools.
  • The control of exam boards by international companies – Edexcel is owned by the global publishing company Pearson’s for example, which makes money from exams (colleges pay for students to enter exams), but also publishing text books and running revision courses linked to those exams.
  • Global ICT companies such as Apple and Google producing educational hardware and software which schools are required to purchase. iTunes Edu is a good example of this (may overlap with the point above!
  • Education or knowledge becoming a commodity – through the introduction of fees in higher education – this turns students into ‘consumers’ and makes them want knowledge they can use to get a career and make money, rather than knowledge for its own sake. So Marketing courses expand, English Literature courses decrease.
  • The emergence of the Education Services Industry – Private companies building and maintaining schools through public-private partnerships – in which the state enters into a long term contract and pays a private company to either build a school or carry out repair and maintenance work (electrics/ plumbing/ gardening)
  • The expansion of private tuition – increased competition for results has led to most parents employing private tutors in addition to regular education – sometimes through agencies, which are private businesses.

* (you don’t need to write the definition when you answer this particular question!)

Sociology of Education CoverIf you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle –

This document contains the following:

  1. 34 pages of revision notes
  2. mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering various topics within the sociology of education
  3. short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers
  4. how to write sociology essays, including 7 specific templates and model answers on the sociology of education

Assess the Usefulness of Positivist Approaches to Social Research (30)

Just a few thoughts on how you might go about answering this question… if it comes up on paper 3 of the A level sociology exam

 Paragraph one – outline the key ideas of Positivism

  • Positivists believe that sociology can and should use the same methods and approaches to study the social world that “natural” sciences such as biology and physics use to investigate the physical world.
  • By adopting “scientific” techniques sociologists should be able, eventually, to uncover the laws that govern societies and social behaviour just as scientists have discovered the laws that govern the physical world.
  • Positivists believe that good, scientific research should reveal objective truths about the causes of social action – science tells us that water boils at 100 degrees and this is true irrespective of what the researcher thinks – good social research should tell us similar things about social action
  • Because positivists want to uncover the general laws that shape human behaviour, they are interested in looking at society as a whole. They are interested in explaining patterns of human behaviour or general social trends. In other words, they are interested in getting to the ‘bigger picture’.
  • To do this, positivists use quantitative methods such as official statistics, structured questionnaires and social surveys
  • These methods also allow the researcher to remain relatively detached from the research process – this way, the values of the researcher should not interfere with the results of the research and knowledge should be objective

An example of the Positivist tradition in Sociological research – Durkheim’s cross national study of suicide in 1897. Durkheim believed that if he could prove that one of the most individual acts any human being could perform, that is, killing himself or herself, could be explained through social factors, then surely any action could be examined in such a way.  Durkheim’s analysis of official statistics, showed that rates of suicide were higher in countries experiencing rapid economic growth , among unmarried men rather than married men and in Protestant countries rather than Catholic countries.

Durkheim further theorised that the ‘causes’ of a higher suicide rate were low social integration and low social regulation. Thus Durkheim’s ‘general law of social action’ is that if people become detached from society they are more likely to kill themselves.

Paragraph two – Two Interpretivist criticisms of Positivism

Firstly, they argue that the ‘objective’ quantitative methods favoured by positivists are not actually objective at all, arguing that if we look at positivist methods in more detail, there are a number of subjective factors that influence the research process. Somebody has to write the structured questionnaires that are used to collect quantitative data, meaning there is probably selection bias over the questions used – and official statistics are collected by people.

Atkinson criticised Suicide Stats and Interpretivists more generally have criticised both police crime stats and imprisonment stats for being socially constructed.

Secondly, Interpretivists argue that human beings are not just puppets, merely reacting to social forces. In order to fully understand human action, once again, we need more in depth qualitative approaches to see why and how certain students can turn disadvantage around and make schooling work for them! People are also unpredictable, and sometimes irrational. Because individuals are thinking and self-aware, they can react to their situations in different ways.

Max Weber argued that human behaviour that has a “sense of purpose”. Human beings attribute their own meanings to their actions, and different people can engage in the same action for different reasons.   In order to understand human action, we need to ask individuals why they are doing what they are doing!

Interpretivists, or anti-positivists argue that one can only truly understand social action by understanding the meanings and motivations that people give to their own actions. They don’t believe that one’s actions are simply shaped by one’s position in the social structure, rather that they are a result of micro level interactions in daily life and how individuals interpret these micro-level interactions.

An Interpretivist approach to social research – An Interpretivist Approach to social research would be much more flexible and qualitative seeking to see the world through the eyes of the respondents. Good examples of Interpretivist research include Paul Willis’ study of ‘The Lads’, Venkatashes’ study – gang leader for a day and Douglas’s study of suicide – which explored the different meaning behind suicide.

What all of these qualitative studies provide is an in depth account of the lives of the people being researched. You get ‘their story’ and get to see the ‘world through their eyes’ – the researcher allows the respondents to speak for themselves and we can an empathetic understanding as they tell us what they think is important, find out why they act in the way they do according to their interpretation of the world.

The rich data the above studies doesn’t easily translate into stats and you can’t generalise these findings to the wider population, but Interpretivists argue that these qualitative studies are better because you get a much fuller understanding, at a human level, of why people act in the way that they do.

Paragraph three – Positivist criticisms of Interpretivism

A Positivist Criticism of Interpretivist research is that it may lack objectivity because of the intense involvement of the researcher with the respondents and that the government cannot use Interpretivist research to inform social policy because it is too expensive to get sample sizes that represent the whole of the population

Positivists are also uncomfortable with the idea that there is no ‘end goal’ to Interpretivist research, it just goes on and on, leading to an open ended post-modern relativism.

Paragraph four – Positivist research today/ Conclusion  

Sociologists have not completely abandoned the positivist tradition today – many researchers still do quantitative research focusing on correlations and generalisations. Two excellent recent examples of this are Inglehart’s World Values Survey and Richard Wilkinson’s cross national research on the effects of inequality – published in the spirit level – both suggest that a general ‘law’ of society is that the greater the level of inequality in a society, the more social problems such as crime and depression there are.

However, most researchers today have abandoned the extreme idea that society exists independently of the individual and that people are predictable – for example Anthony Giddens developed the concept of structuration to point out that people have to consciously make society, even though they often end up reproducing similar structures, while many recent events such as Brexit clearly show that people are not that predictable.

In conclusion, there is clearly still some usefulness in understanding society at a macro level and recognising the fact that individuals are ‘steered’ by the social structure, but we need to combine this will understanding people’s thoughts and feelings to truly explain human action.

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