Tag: AQA

Analyse two reasons why the media portray minority ethnic groups negatively. [10 marks]

Read Item M below and answer the question that follows.

AQA 10 mark question item.PNG

Applying material from Item M, analyse two reasons why the media often portray minority ethnic groups negatively. [10 marks]

Commentary on the question

A non-standard question about representations, focusing on ‘why’ rather than on ‘how’ one group is represented. There are two clear hooks in the item – the first about power and the second just about difference, suggesting that candidates make two points – one from a broadly hegemonic perspective, the other focussing on the public/ pluralism.  Remember that you can pick up marks for evaluating in this type of 10 mark ‘with item’ question.

Before reading the answer you might like to review the material on ethnicity and representation, and some of the theories of ownership and control such as Pluralism, Instrumental Marxism and Hegemonic Marxism, all of which can be applied to this question.

Answer

The first reason why minority groups are represented negatively is because they have different values/ beliefs and practices from ‘mainstream’ society and are perceived by the wider public as not being fully integrated into the ‘British way of life’. The public at large is thus prejudiced against ethnic minorities, and anything which seems to threaten British identity.

By focusing on negative representations of minorities – Islamic terrorists, benefit claiming immigrants, Romanian beggars, for example, newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Mail can sell more newspapers and make more profit – it is easier to do this by perpetuating stereotypes compared to running stories which challenge such negative representations.

It is relatively easy for papers to find stories about ethnic minorities which have many news values because some ethnic minorities do engage in activities which are ‘shocking’, and it’s maybe understandable why newspapers may choose not to publish stories in which minority groups are just ‘being British’ – because there’s nothing ‘newsworthy’ about such stories.

This theory fits in with the pluralist view – newspapers aren’t deliberately prejudiced against ethnic minorities, they just run stories which reflect public bias to increase profits.

Hegemonic Marxists would argue that ethnic minority groups are represented negatively because they are underrepresented in positions of power – both in society/ government and within the media itself.

According to Stuart Hall, ethnic minorities have been used as scapegoats for society’s larger economic problems – knife crime by black youths in London in the late 1970s was turned into a moral panic by negative reporting in the press, even though the rate of that crime was declining.

In a similar way gang crime today is largely constructed in the media as a black problem, rather than a multi-ethnic phenomenon.

A further reason why such negative representations are so common could be the lack of black voices among media professionals, meaning the white majority just go along with the racial victimization of young black youth by the government and police.

However, such negative representations may be changing in the age of New Media, which gives more power to ethnic minorities to challenge stereotypes and power inequalities in society more directly.

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Exam Advice from the AQA’s 2018 Examiner Report – Paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods)

Below I summarise the 2018 AQA’s examiner report for crime and deviance with theory and methods and add in the questions, which aren’t in the report. You can get both the report and the question paper here!

General Advice 

  • Most students seem to have managed their time appropriately, with few signs that they were unable to complete the paper.
  • Some students showed detailed sociological knowledge and sophisticated understanding that they applied successfully to the set questions, and in general students seemed reasonably well versed in relevant material.
  • However, fewer found success in evaluating the issues raised by the questions.

Question 1

Outline Two ways in which gender may influence the risk of being a victim of crime

  • Most students successfully identified two ways in which gender may influence being a victim of crime.
  • Most answers referred to the vulnerability of women or the influence of patriarchy; many linked this with domestic abuse or sexual crimes.
  • References to male victims usually referred to socialisation and/or to violence related to masculinity, leading to men becoming victims of the violence of other men when they became gang members or spent time in the wrong places.
  • The main reason for failing to score marks was to write about committing crime rather than about being a victim.
  • Some gained partial reward for identifying a particular type of crime of which men or women are likely to be victims but without going on to elaborate on this.

Question 2

Outline three criticisms of the labelling theory of crime and deviance

  • The most frequently cited criticism was that labelling theory is deterministic; this was usually explained correctly.
  • Other frequently cited criticisms included the theory’s failure to explain primary deviance, its romanticised view of deviants or its neglect of structural factors.
  • A significant minority of answers outlined criticisms of the labelling process (for example that labelling is discriminatory or unfair), rather than of the theory.
  • Some students tended to recycle the same criticism in different guises.
  • A few wrote excessively long answers to this question.

Question 3

Sociology examiner report 2018.png

Applying material from Item A, analyse two reasons for social class differences in official crime statistics

  • Most students were able to draw on one or two appropriate points from the Item.
  • More effective answers then developed these points appropriately by employing relevant sociological concepts and studies.
  • For example, ‘agencies of the criminal justice system, such as the police’ was linked to how the police use typifications in activities such as stop and search, how justice may be negotiated etc.
  • ‘some individuals may also have greater… pressure to offend’ was applied to utilitarian crime via relative deprivation or blocked opportunities faced by the working class.
  • In less effective answers, the connection between the potential point from the Item and the material presented was less clearly made.
  • In a minority of cases, students simply offered various sociological explanations of class differences in the statistics but with no application of material from the Item.

Question 4

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological contributions to our understanding of the relationship between crime and the media (30)

Screenshot 2019-06-09 at 08.29.08.png

Good answers included…

  • the social construction of crime news;
  • media representations of crime,
  • criminals and victims; t
  • he role of the media in creating crime (for example, relative deprivation, moral panics and the deviance amplification spiral)
  • the role of new media in contributing both to crime and to its policing.
  • Good answers also had evaluation which was explicit and well linked to the specific issues raised in the answer.

Some answers took a ‘perspectives’ approach, including Marxist, functionalist, feminist or other views. Unfortunately, this approach led many to focus on tangential material, with detailed accounts of the general sociological perspectives that quickly lost sight of the media, crime, or both. However, there were a few very good answers of this type that did succeed in applying such perspectives to the set question.

Question 5

Outline and explain two disadvantages of using laboratory experiments in sociological research (10)

  • Most students could offer two disadvantages of laboratory experiments.
  • Most often these included the artificiality of the setting (often conflated with the Hawthorne effect)
  • other disadvantages included difficulties in identifying and controlling variables, a lack of representativeness or ethical problems.
  • However, many answers failed to explain or develop these points successfully; some simply described an example of an experiment that experienced such problems. Some students did not know the difference between reliability and validity.
  • A minority of students included evaluation, for which no marks were available on this question.

Question 6

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge, evaluate the advantages of using  structured interviews in sociological research [ 20 marks]

Screenshot 2019-06-09 at 08.30.17.png

  • This question proved to be quite challenging for some students.
  • Most were able to put together a list of positivist characteristics as advantages, such as objectivity, reliability, quantification and generalisability.
  • However, most could not evaluate these advantages.
  • Instead a typical response, having provided a paragraph or two on the advantages, gave a list of disadvantages, or a list of reasons why interpretivist sociologists would not like the method.
  • The result was an essay of two halves with little to link them into a coherent answer to the set question.

 

Summary of the 2018 A-level sociology examiner report for beliefs in society, paper 2

Below I’ve reformatted the examiners report for the 2018 A-level sociology exam, paper 2 (families and households section) into bullet points and included the exam questions.

This is really just designed to make this more user friendly!

This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018.

Beliefs in society 2018 Questions and examiner commentary 

Question 13

Outline and explain two ways in which globalisation may affect religious beliefs and practices (10)

  • Most students able to explain two ways in which globalisation may have affected religious beliefs and practices.
  • Popular answers included pluralism and greater choice, deterritorialisation and the growth of fundamentalism.
  • Some weaker answers described recent changes in beliefs or practices without making the role of globalisation clear.

Question 14

Beliefs-10-mark-question.png

Applying material from Item I, analyse two reasons why minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom are often more religious than the majority of the population (10)

  • This question was generally answered well.
  • Popular answers included cultural defence and cultural transition (although the difference between these two concepts was not always clear), and the idea that migrants are simply more likely to be religious when placed in a secular society.
  • This question referred specifically to the United Kingdom and so answers about other countries could not be credited.

Question 15

Beliefs-20-mark-essay.png

Applying material from Item J and your knowledge, evaluate the view that an increase in spirituality in the United Kingdom has compensated for the decline of organised religion (20)

  • Answers here showed a good range of knowledge.
  • Most students took cues from the item and discussed a range of developments, such as variations of secularisation, growth of science and rationality and the growth of New Age activities.
  • There was pleasing evidence of knowledge of contemporary postmodern approaches but only the best answers explicitly addressed spirituality or considered that there might be a difference between the spiritual and the religious.

 

Summary of the 2018 A-level sociology examiner report for families and households, paper 2

Below I’ve reformatted the examiners report for the 2018 A-level sociology exam, paper 2 (families and households section) into bullet points and included the exam questions.

This is really just designed to make this more user friendly!

This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018.

Families and Households 2018 Questions and examiner commentary 

Question 04

Outline and explain two ways in which government policies may affect family structure. [10 marks]

  • There was a tendency to go into detail about the chosen policies rather than to discuss effects on family structures.
  • Some answers assumed an effect and did not take the opportunity to use their sociological understanding to explore the ideas in greater depth. For example, some answers said that changes to divorce laws increased the number of lone parent families, but few discussed increases in reconstituted families or bi-nuclear families.
  • Similarly the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act of 2013 was recognised as increasing the number of same sex married couples but also led to same sex divorces, changes in adoption, surrogacy and so on.

Question 05

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Applying material from Item C, analyse two ways in which demographic trends since 1900 may have affected the nature of childhood in the United Kingdom today. [10 marks]

  • Many answers went into reasons for the demographic changes referred to in the item rather than focus on effects on childhood.
  • Others discussed childhood a hundred years ago or earlier.
  • However, many did develop points about child centeredness by looking at its positive consequences for childhood and then developing this to link it to over protectiveness, age patriarchy, pester power, toxic childhood and so on.
  • Similarly, the presence of grandparents was in better answers not merely described but analysed as to how it could be both positive and negative in contributing to socialisation and childcare and in adding to the burden of care for the family with some children becoming young carers.
  • Better answers were distinguished by, as the mark scheme says, ‘developed applications’, going beyond the immediately apparent.

 

Question 06

Screenshot 2019-05-29 at 09.46.26.png

Applying material from Item D and your knowledge, evaluate the view that individual choice in personal relationships has made family life less important in the United Kingdom today

  • Many answers discussed changes in family life such as divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage and gender roles in terms of greater choice but few explored whether these developments made family life more important or less important.
  • More developed analysis showed how diversity did not always lead to less importance being given to family life, importance of a changed form of family life. Functionalism and the New Right were often included but, sometimes with Marxism, described rather than being applied to the question.
  • There was a shortage of postmodernist views in addition to choice and diversity. Better answers referred to pure relationships, confluent love, negotiated families and alternative life courses.

 

 

A-level sociology exams: hints for paper 2 from the 2018 examiner report

This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018. It is relevant to both the families and households and beliefs sections of paper 2.

General advice

Get your timings right and make sure you spend enough time on the final 20 mark question in section B

The report notes that most students answered the questions in the order they appeared in the question paper, answering the last question they attempted was the 20 mark question in section B.

Some students messed the timings up and wrote a very brief answer to this question!

Advice on 10 mark questions

Don’t write introductory paragraphs or conclusions

These are unlikely to gain extra marks, they just take up time

Write two distinct points in your answers 

The report notes that some students made only one point, others made more than two, you need to make two points (as it says in the question!)

The report also notes that ‘sometimes it was unclear how many points were being made’ – you should make your two points distinct by leaving a blank line between them, or starting each of them with ‘one way is…’, and later on ‘a second way is…’

Don’t evaluate in the 10 mark ‘Outline and explain’ question (the one with NO item)

Evaluation is not a requirement for answers to 10 mark “outline and explain” questions, there are no marks for evaluation here.

You can get evaluation marks for the the ‘with item’ 10 mark questions.

Develop each point by using sociological concepts, theory and evidence

The best answers to 10 mark questions were focused, clearly stating a point and then developing it, using sociological concepts, evidence and theory where appropriate.

Make sure you link the two aspects of the question together 

For example, both of the questions below have two aspects (highlighted for emphasis)

‘Outline and explain two ways in which government policies may affect family structure‘ (10)

Applying material from Item C, analyse two ways in which demographic trends since 1900 may have affected the nature of childhood in the United Kingdom today (10)

What you need to do (ideally) is link the red to the blue in each question, using appropriate concepts, theories and evidence.

Furthermore, you want to pick different aspects for each point – for example, in the first question above start with two different policies and link them to two (or more) different aspects of family structure. (And don’t forget that you must use the item for your ‘aspects’ in the Item question)

NB – both of those questions were in the 2018 Sociology A level paper 2.

Advice on 20 mark questions 

‘It may be more effective to cover a limited number of views or theories in some depth rather than to include every possible theory’

I’ve always said ‘3-5 points’ for an essay – this report confirms that you can get a decent mark with 3 points/ theories.

Stay focused on the question 

The report notes that there was a tendency for answers to progressively lose sight of the question and to become a list of different views’.

This ties in with the above point – it might be that the item only directs you to two or three theories, stay focused on them!

Link evaluations to your points and theories

The report notes that ‘evaluation which meets the demands of the questions is better than points which have been learned and included’.

The report also notes that evaluation means strengths as well as limitations – there is a tendency for students to just focus on criticisms.

Plan your essays in advance 

This will help you select appropriate material, stay focused on the question and evaluate effectively!

Sociology Revision Webinars for the 2019 exams!

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my revision webinars. We’re focusing on families and beliefs this coming Sunday!

For more information on Revision Webinars, please click the above gif, or check out this blog post.

Exam advice from the AQA’s Examiner Reports from 2018

The AQA produces an examiner report after every exam, and it’s very good advice to look at these reports to see common mistakes students made last year, so you can avoid making the same mistakes this year!

AQA sociology examiner report 2018.png

Below I’ve selected FIVE choice pieces of advice based on the two most common errors from the 2018 Education with Theory and Methods paper.

  1. For the short answer questions, make sure you get your ID and Development the right way round – for example, last year’s 4 mark question was on ‘two reasons why marketisation policies may create social class differences in educational achievement’ – many students started with a policy rather than a reason, they should have started with a reason and then illustrated with a policy.
  2. The six marker was ‘outline three reasons for gender differences in educational achievement – the report says that many students did not get a second mark because they failed to be specific enough in their application to gender or educational achievement, so be specific!
  3. For question 5 – the methods in context question – the best answers used the hooks in the item, so use the item!
  4. At the other end of the paper – the final 10 mark theory and methods and question, a lot of students seemed to run out time to answer this, so make sure you get your timing right. Remember that it’s almost certainly going to be easier to get 4/10 for a 10 mark question than to go from 12/20 to 16/20 on a methods in context question – the bar’s lower after all!
  5. Focussing on the final 10 marker – if you get another ‘criticise a theory’ type question’ then the best answers simply used other perspectives to develop their criticisms.

It seems that the 10 marker with item and 30 mark essay question were OK!

Sources 

All information taken from the AQA’s 7192/1 examiner report.

You can read the full report here.

You can view the 2018 paper here.

A-level Sociology Revision Webinars 2019 (AQA focus)

Get ahead with your A-level sociology revision with these cheap online webinars covering the entire A-level sociology specification over a 12 week period.

A Level Sociology Revision Webinars starting April 2019

I will be running a series of 12 A-level sociology revision webinars to cover the entire two year A-level sociology specification (AQA) including exam technique for the various question formats on the three AQA A-level sociology exam papers (7192/1, 7192/2 and 7193/3).

The webinars are scheduled for 19.00 every Monday (with one on a Thursday) and will run from Monday 1st of April to Monday 20th June, 2 days before the last exam (crime and deviance with theory and methods). Webinars are scheduled early so that we can get through the entire specification BEFORE the first paper (on May 22nd).

To register for the Revision Webinars, please click here.

NB Registration will only be open during March and the first two weeks of April, then it will close!

Schedule (please see below for a more detailed version)

  1. Monday 1st April – Education 1
  2. Monday 8th April – Education 2
  3. Monday 15th April – Families and Households 1
  4. Monday 22nd April – Beliefs in Society
  5. Monday 29h April – Crime and Deviance 1
  6. Monday 6th May – Crime and Deviance 2
  7. Monday 13th May – Research Methods
  8. Thursday 16th May – Social Theories
  9. Monday 20th May – Education and Theory and Methods 3 (exam on 22nd June )
  10. Monday 27th May – Request webinar, content TBC
  11. Monday 3rd June – Families and Beliefs 2 (exam on 4th June)
  12. Monday 10th June – Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods 3

All of these webinars will last 45 minutes to one hour during which I will provide a brief overview of some of the content within each topic, and a discussion of at least three specific exam practice questions. Students will be able to ask questions during the Webinar, via text, and there will also be time for students to ask questions at the end.

I will be conducting the Webinars via Click Meeting, which allows students to download support materials in advance of the seminars, ask questions during the seminars via ‘chat’, and which will also allow students to review the seminar afterwards as they will be recorded and stored on the site. Recordings will be available until the 16th of June (several days after the final A-level sociology exam).

Webinar Support materials

The first eight revision Webinars are supported by a PowerPoint, revision notes and exemplar exam questions, and the education, families and methods topics (basically the first year content) have gapped revision hand-outs too, so these really are being offered at a bargain price!

NB – if you have purchased any of my revision bundles, some of these resources are the same. If you’ve already purchased one or more, please let me know and please contact me by email and I can arrange a partial (10% per bundle refund) via PayPal only.  

Detailed Schedule..

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Please click below for the full schedule (PDF)

Revise Sociology Webinars ScheduleV2

How to access the Webinars and resources

Access to all 12 Webinars is only £49.99, which is less than £5 a Webinar. 

To register for the Revision Webinars, please click here.

The link will take you to a registration page for my ‘Permanent Room’ on the ClickMeeting platform. This is the room I will be running all revision Webinars from, every Monday (and one Thursday) from April 1st.

Once registered you will receive an email from ClickMeeting which will provide you with an access link which will allow you access my permanent room for March-June 2019. (NB I will only be using this at the scheduled times, as outlined in the schedule.)

Following registration I will also send you an email containing all the relevant revision resources for the 12 Webinars. These will also be downloadable during and immediately after each revision session.

Reminder emails will be sent out the day in advance of each of the 12 Webinar Revision Sessions, and also watch out for a bonus ‘introducing revision Webinars’ session on the final Monday in March, to give you an opportunity to familiarise yourself with how ClickMeeting works.

Payment is via PayPal only!

About your Tutor

I’ve taught sociology for 20 years, 16 of those in a successful sixth form college between 2002 and 2018 (10 years as Head of Department).

In 2014 I set up this blog, and managed to save enough off the back of it to quit working for the ‘man’ and now I work independently, developing non-corporate support materials to facilitate the teaching and learning of A-level sociology.

I also see myself as something of a trail-blazer in developing 16-19 online education: in 2019, we should be doing better than 20 teenagers all having to travel to a central location and then ‘sitting in a room’ for an hour or two. To my mind this all seems a bit 19th century. These Webinars are a move towards making A-level education more flexible and decentralised.

 

 

Outline three ways in which surveillance may be used to control crime in modern societies (6)

This is a possible example of a 6 mark ‘outline’ question which may appear on A-level sociology paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods).

It struck me as a particularly likely possibility for a 4 or 6 mark question given the fact that most A-level sociology text books point towards three types of surveillance – the panopticon, the synopticon and categorial surveillance.

This means this is a suitably narrow question, given that you are pretty much required to use some ‘proper’ sociology concepts in each point.

Also, don’t forget that ‘outline’ really means ‘outline and explain a little bit’. Think make a point, and then explain how/ give an example.

Outline three ways in which surveillance may be used to control crime in modern societies (6)

  • The first way is through the Panopticon model, which is where a centralised authority watches a population, who cannot see whether they are being watched or not. The population does not engage in deviant behaviour for fear of being seen, caught and punished.
  • The second way is through the synopticon model – this is where everyone watches everyone else, as through social media. People do not engage in deviance for fear of being socially shamed.
  • The third way is through ‘categorical surveillance’ – often used in schools and is where students with certain characteristics known to be correlated with deviance are made to attend extra lessons for example – so they are physically prevented from being deviant by direct surveillance.

Related posts 

Sociology tuition online! From April 2019…

Online sociology revision webinars April to June 2019, covering the AQA A-level sociology content : education to crime and deviance!

I will be running a series of A-level sociology revision webinars from April to mid-June 2019. The focus will be on maximising marks in the three AQA sociology exams, as well as reviewing basic content across the main sociology options: education, methods, families, beliefs, crime and theories.

These Webinars will be live events, with 30-40 minutes of structured lecture/ Q n A revision supported by a PowerPoint, followed by 20 mins to deal with student questions and popular requests. Webinars will be recorded and accessible if students wish to go back over them, or if they cannot make a particular session.

The online revision sessions will be fully supported with work packs containing revision notes and activities and plenty of practice exam questions and model answers covering all of the short answer questions, the two types of 10-mark questions and the 20- and 30-mark essay questions.

I’m going to be offering access to these via a subscription through Patreon, so there will be tiered access ranging from £20 a month to £40 a month. If you subscribe to the lower tier, you get access to the revision webinars  and resources (NB this is a bargain price!), if you subscribe to the higher level tiers, you get the webinars, resources AND I will provide you with feedback to any practice exam questions you do (basically I’ll mark more essays the higher up the tiers you go).

These Webinars will run on Tuesday evenings at 19.00 GMT, with the exception of the one before the families and beliefs exam, which will be on a Monday, because paper 2 is on a Tuesday!.

There will only be 20 places available* on these webinars. Subscriptions will open on March 1st 2019, but if you want to register your interest early just drop a comment below or email me and I can make sure you get a place.

(*There are more than 30 000 students who study A-level sociology , so these are actually ver rare!)

Quality Guaranteed!

I taught sociology for 16 years between 2001-2018 until I quit recently (because I live frugally I’ve retired from full-time work early) and I’m still an AQA examiner, so I know the content of A-level sociology and the exam rules intimately. I now spend most of my ‘working time’ maintaining this blog and keeping up to date with all things sociology, A-level and exams.

Provisional Timetable

Month/ Week Content
1 April Education
08 April 2 Methods and Methods in Context
15 April 3 Theories (the theories part of theories and methods)
22 April 4 Families
29 April 1 Beliefs
6 May 2 Crime
13 May 3 Education and Theory and Methods (exam on 22nd May)
20 May 4 Education and Theory and Methods
27 May Families and Beliefs
3 June 2 Families and Beliefs (exam on 4th June)
10 June Crime and Deviance and Theory and methods (exam on 12th June)

A reminder of this years exam dates!

A level sociology exam dates 2019.png

NB the above timetable is from the AQA exam board, other boards may have different times! Click here for the AQA’s A-level timetable.

Influence the content of these webinars – Requests!

What do you want covered in these Webinars? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll use the feedback to make sure certain topics are covered…. I know what the real bogeymen of A-level sociology are (selection, the fully social theory of deviance, green crime etc.), but I also know different students struggle with different things, so if you’re thinking of ‘attending’ and want something specific covered let me know and I’ll make sure I go over it!

 

 

A-level sociology of education summary grids

I’ve been designing some sociology of education summary grids to try and summarise the AQA’s A-level sociology of education specification as briefly as possible. I’ve managed to narrow it down to 7 grids in total covering…..

  • Perspectives on education (Functionalism etc)
  • In-school processes (labelling etc.)
  • social class and differential achievement
  • gender: achievement and subject choice
  • Ethnicity
  • Policies
  • Globalisation and education (I couldn’t fit it in anywhere else!)

Here’s a couple of them… I figure these should be useful for quick card sorts during revision lessons. And let’s face it, there is only ONE thing students love more than filling in grids, and that’s a card sort!

Perspectives on education summary grid:

sociological perspectives education.png

Education policies summary grid:

education policies.png

Of course I couldn’t resist doing fuller versions of these grids too, but more of that laters!