Sociology AQA Paper 1 Education 2017- ANSWERS (attempted any way lol, i hate life)

For some of the exam questions I answered:
1) Two cultural factors that affect ethnic differences (4 marks)
- Social class
- Language

2) 3 factors in the school that affect gender differences (6 marks)
-SFP
- Labelling
- Peer Group (Forde- peer pressure reasserts the masculine dominant identity)

3) 2 Ways that increased parental choice has effected pupils experiences in education (10 marks)
- more school- benefits Middle and Upper working class and leads to inequalities as children low backgrounds can't access these private schools- "Passport to success" as those who are in grammar schools but do worse at tests than public schoolers still get better jobs because they come from a prestigious and positive reputable grammar school
- also i put that middle and upper class parents choose based on performance via the league tables mentioned in the item and that working class parents choose based on location= inequality because working class may be limited to low performing schools whilst middle and upper class pupils benefit from higher performing and better schools

4) Item A- Using the Item, and your own knowledge discuss the different explanations of role of education in transmitting ideas and values (30 marks)

Functionalist; develop these values, social harmony, cohesion, agency of socialism, social mobility and 3 functions; pass on society via hidden curriculum, produce a skilled workforce (schultz justified gov spending on education as it later benefitted them as they had more better and youthful workforces), produce a meritocratic society (davis and moore- if you pass you've worked hard, if you don't you on have your self to blame

ideas= deterministic other factors such as class, ethnicity and gender influence these values and ideas, education is not an natural sieve and there are weak links between qualifications and pay.

New right
Agree with maj of what the functionalist say, but think schools should run like markets= to produce a more skilled and more appropriate workforce for certain areas and not run just to please a national standard that does not benefit the community

Marxists
- social control, conformist, dom ideology, Althusser ideological state apparatus, Bowles and Gintis education aims to produce a obedient and submissive work force to benefit a capitalist society, Ilich and friere etc.

- deterministic too as they ignore the beneficial aspects of education

5) Methods in Context- What are the strengths of using a field experiment in terms of looking into effects between teacher- student labelling (20 marks)

- field experiment- class room is a natural enviro and quite controlled too so is high reliable, high ecological validity, high representative as it is not a superficial environment and reflects real life setting, more generalisable and applicable to the general population
- However field experiments> iv is manipulated> investigator effects> aim of invest accidentally revealed> hawthorne effects> students conform to the way in which they perceive is what the investigator wants> questions validity> there fore means results less representative and generalisable

6) Theory and Methods- What are two negative practical factors in terms of using documents on sociological research

- secondary data- not first hand- may be untrue and biased- one sided- may be expensive and time consuming in sociological research> for example if sociological research has been published in texts books that had used documents that are untrue/ manipulated to serve the purpose of one side of an argument it is expensive to recollect these text books and put in a plan to reproduce corrected text books. This is time consuming too.

* i didn't fully enjoy answering the theory and methods question but it could of been a lot worse, i don't know if i was right or not but i tried thinking of practical considerations and tried applying the question

Reply 1

PipNeedsHelpSRS

Paper 2 Questions (the ones I can remember aha XD)

Culture and Identity How has work and production in the last 60 years affected our gender identities (10)
Outline and Evaluate the Interactionist approach in terms of our sense of self as being socially constructed (20)

Media Explain 2 reasons why the media negatively portray ethnic minorities (10)
Outline and Evaluate the pluralist view in reference to ownership and control (20)