Sociology

Education and socialisation into shared values

Durkheim: social solidarity and specialist skills

Parsons: meritocracy and role allocation

Functionalism: bridge from family to wider society

New Right: market principles and standards in education

Neoliberalism: competition, choice and performance

Marxism: education and class inequality

Althusser: ideological state apparatus and legitimation

Bowles and Gintis: correspondence principle

Willis: counter-school culture and class reproduction

Feminist views on gendered socialisation in schools

Cultural capital and educational advantage

Material deprivation and educational outcomes

Class identity, aspirations and achievement

Gendered subject choice and achievement patterns

Teacher expectations and gendered interactions

Ethnicity, language and educational outcomes

Institutional racism and ethnocentric curriculum

Intersectionality in achievement patterns

Setting, streaming and banding: grouping and outcomes

Labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy

Pupil identities and pro-school/anti-school subcultures

Hidden curriculum: norms, values and compliance

School organisation: rules, hierarchies and ethos

School policies and exclusion: who is disadvantaged?

Selection by ability: policies and consequences

Marketisation: league tables, choice and competition

Privatisation: outsourcing and profit motives

Policies to reduce inequality: aims and limitations

Policy outcomes for class, gender and ethnicity groups

Globalisation and education policy: pressures and reforms

Using contemporary evidence to evaluate education theories

Turning an education issue into aims and hypotheses

Choosing qualitative vs quantitative approaches in education

Operationalising concepts (achievement, identity, subculture)

Sampling pupils, teachers, parents: access and representation

Ethics in school research: consent, power and safeguarding

Practical barriers: permissions, time and gatekeepers

Questionnaires: designing closed and open questions

Reliability vs validity in pupil questionnaires

Interviews: structured, semi-structured, unstructured

Rapport, power imbalance and leading questions in interviews

Observations: participant vs non-participant in schools

Overt vs covert observation in education settings

Hawthorne effect and observer bias in classrooms

Experiments: lab, field and natural experiments in education

Documents: policies, reports and school records

Official statistics: strengths, limits and interpretation

Triangulation: combining methods for stronger findings

Writing evaluations in context: theory, practical and ethical issues

Quantitative data: meaning and uses

Qualitative data: meaning and uses

Primary vs secondary data: strengths and limits

Research design: aims, hypotheses and variables

Pilot studies and improving research instruments

Sampling: random, stratified, systematic methods

Sampling: quota, snowball, opportunity methods

Representativeness and sampling bias

Reliability and how sociologists improve it

Validity and how sociologists improve it

Generalisability: when findings apply more widely

Objectivity and risk of researcher bias

Questionnaires: pros, cons and evaluation

Structured interviews: strengths, limits and topics

Unstructured interviews: depth, meanings and evaluation

Participant observation: access, insight and ethics

Non-participant observation: detachment and practical issues

Experiments: control, causality and ethical constraints

Documents: personal vs official documents

Official statistics: trends and social construction issues

Positivism: social facts and scientific approaches

Interpretivism: meanings, verstehen and social action

Social facts and their impact on method choice

Theoretical considerations when choosing a method

Practical issues: time, cost, access and skills

Ethical issues: consent, harm, deception, confidentiality

Consensus theories: order and shared values

Conflict theories: power, inequality and competing interests

Structural theories: institutions shaping behaviour

Social action theories: meanings and interaction

Modernity: key features and social change

Postmodernity: identity and scepticism of meta-narratives

Can sociology be scientific? arguments for and against

Relationship between theory and methods

Subjectivity vs objectivity in research

Value freedom: meaning and possibility

Sociology and social policy: research influencing decisions

Social policy problems: funding, bias and political agendas

Using theory and methods to evaluate evidence in essays

Defining deviance: norms, values and social context

Social order: why societies need rules and compliance

Social control: informal and formal mechanisms

Functionalist explanations of crime and deviance

Durkheim: anomie and functions of crime

Merton: strain theory and adaptation types

Marxism: capitalism, class power and crime

Neo-Marxism: hegemony, resistance and crime

Interactionism: labelling, stigma and moral careers

Becker: labelling and rule enforcers

Lemert: primary and secondary deviance

Realism: right realism and social control

Left realism: relative deprivation and marginalisation

Feminist theories of crime: gender and patriarchy

Postmodern views: media, consumerism and identity

Measuring crime: official stats and the dark figure

Victimisation surveys: strengths and limits

Self-report studies: strengths and limits

Trends in crime: interpreting change over time

Gender and crime: patterns and explanations

Ethnicity and crime: patterns and explanations

Youth crime: patterns and explanations

Victimisation by class, gender and ethnicity

Media amplification and public fear of crime

Crime data bias: policing, reporting and recording

Over-representation: structural vs cultural explanations

Intersectionality in offending and victimisation

Transnational crime: trafficking, drugs and organised networks

Cybercrime and global digital networks

Global inequality and crime: exploitation and profit

Media representations of crime and criminals

News values and constructed crime stories

Moral panics: folk devils and amplification

Green crime: defining environmental harm

Green crime types: pollution, depletion, species harm

Green crime: power and denial in defining harm

Human rights: defining rights and abuses

State crime: why states break rules

Crimes of the powerful: corporate and state harm

Neutralisation and state justification narratives

Global governance and limits of enforcement

Formal agencies: police, courts, prisons and probation

Policing: community policing vs zero tolerance

Surveillance: CCTV, data and monitoring

“Surveillance society” and social control

Situational prevention: target hardening and design

Punishment and inequality: who is punished and how

Prison: functions, effectiveness and alternatives

Rehabilitation vs punishment debates

Victims: typologies and victim blaming

Victim support and restorative justice

Evaluate the criminal justice system using evidence

Families and Households

Health

Work, Poverty and Welfare

Subculture and how subcultures form

Folk culture and traditions

Mass culture and standardisation

High culture vs popular culture

Global culture and cultural hybridity

Socialisation as a life-long process

Primary vs secondary socialisation

Main agencies of socialisation

How socialisation shapes identity

The self: identity as socially constructed

Identity and difference: labelling and categorisation

Age and identity: youth and ageing

Disability and identity: stigma and social barriers

Ethnicity and identity: belonging and racism

Gender identity: femininities and masculinities

National identity and global influences

Sexuality and identity: norms and change

Social class and identity: lifestyle and status

Identity and production: work and role identities

Identity and consumption: brands, taste and lifestyle

Globalisation and identity: choice, hybridity and tension

Family and economy: how work shapes family life

State and families: policy shaping family patterns

Social change and family change: key drivers

Marriage trends and explanations

Cohabitation trends and explanations

Separation and divorce trends and explanations

Childbearing patterns and explanations

Life course: family experiences over time

Sociology of personal life and intimacy

Family diversity: lone parent, reconstituted, same-sex, extended

Gender roles in the family: change and continuity

Domestic labour: measuring and explaining inequality

Power in families: decision-making and control

Childhood as a social construction

Changing status of children over time

Birth rates since 1900: trends and explanations

Death rates and life expectancy since 1900

Ageing population: causes and consequences

Migration and family patterns

Globalisation and family life in the UK

Disability: social model vs medical model

Body: social meanings and regulation

Biomedical vs social models of health and illness

Class inequalities in health chances

Gender inequalities in health chances

Ethnic inequalities in health chances

Regional inequalities in health chances

Measuring health inequalities: data and interpretation

Access to healthcare: barriers and inequalities

Healthcare provision: variation and rationing

NHS role and contemporary pressures

Mental illness: definitions and labelling

Social distribution of mental illness

Medicalisation: normal life turned into illness

Medical profession: power and control

Health professions and division of labour

Globalised health industry: pharma and private providers

Globalisation and health risks: pandemics, lifestyle, markets

Evaluate explanations for inequalities using evidence

Measuring poverty: strengths and indicator limits

Why poverty persists in the UK

Poverty distribution: class, gender, ethnicity and age

Wealth inequality vs income inequality

Sociological explanations of wealth inequality

State responses: welfare policies and debates

Private and voluntary welfare: charities and NGOs

Informal welfare: family, community and care networks

Labour process: how work is organised

Division of labour: skilled vs unskilled work

Technology and work: automation and control

Skill change: de-skilling and re-skilling

Managerial control and worker resistance

Worklessness: who is affected and why

Worklessness and life chances

Globalisation and labour markets

Precarious work and the gig economy

Evaluate poverty solutions: effectiveness and consequences

Global Development

The Media

Stratification and Differentiation

Religion, science and belief: key distinctions

Christian traditions in the UK: key features

Non-Christian traditions: diversity and change

Social change and religion: why beliefs shift

Social stability and religion: integration and control

Religious organisations: churches and denominations

Religious organisations: sects and cults

New Age movements and spiritual markets

Explaining sect growth and conversion

Religiosity patterns: social class

Religiosity patterns: gender

Religiosity patterns: ethnicity

Religiosity patterns: age

Religion today: changing significance

Secularisation in the UK: evidence and debate

Global secularisation vs global religion trends

Globalisation and spread of religions

Fundamentalism and modern society

Evaluate evidence on belief, practice and belonging

Underdevelopment: meaning and causes

Global inequality: patterns and explanations

Modernisation theories of development

Dependency and world-systems approaches

Globalisation: development winners and losers