AQA- AS Sociology Unit 2 question

Hi there people. I'm trying to plan an essay for "Assess the ways in which home factors may affect social class differences in educational achievement". I'm not exactly sure what we include in it. Is it just just home factors or is it both home factors and school factors. Thanks

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 1

CarCrashHeart

Stick to the actual question, just the home factors. You shouldn't spend too much time simply explaining each one, only outline briefly and give examples of each - this is very important. Spend most of the time actually assessing them so you gain plenty of AO2 marks. Also, don't forget evidence to back up your points :smile:

Reply 2

Chris.Livesey

The question specifically says "assess...home factors" so this should be the core of your answer; i.e. you should focus your statements on how and why various home factors affect achievement.

However, this doesn't mean you can't use "outside home" factors as a way of evaluatiing home factors; in other words, you can throw in various arguments about the importance of, say, inside school factors if and when they're appropriate.

You really just have to be a bit careful about how you construct your answer to this type of question - make sure the foucs is on home factors but use other factors as part of your assessment of the the former - because it's very easy to tip the balance away from the question and onto an assessment of "outside home" factos.

Reply 3

mrsay

To tackle this type of question you need to briefly outline the home factors for e.g. cultural deprivation theory, material dep, cultural capital, language and attitude and how they contribute to achievement etc
and then for the evaluation you need to put HOWEVER..
internal school factors also contribute to this for example: labelling, subcultures, setting and streaming, self fulfilling prophecy etc.
im also doing this exam tomorrow, but marxism is the 20 mark question predicted to come up most likely so i suggest you revise that too!

Reply 4

sammy110

Pretty much what everyone else here is saying core of answer should be focusing on internal factors such as cultural deprivation,material deprivation, however you need to demonstrate evaluation for the higher marks so include internal factors such as labelling,streaming,self fulfilling prophecy,anti school subcultures and relevant studies that apply to this when appropiate. Good luck =D