England · AQASyllabus
Sociology syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the England Sociologysyllabus, with a focused answer for each one. Click any dot point for a worked explainer, past exam questions, and links to related dot points. Written by Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic's latest AI.
Beliefs in Society
Module overview →- Does religion hold society back, drive social change, or both?The relationship between religious beliefs, organisations and social change, including religion as a conservative force and as a force for change (Weber, liberation theology, fundamentalism).12 min answer →
- Why does religious participation vary by gender, ethnicity, class and age?The relationship between different social groups and religious or spiritual organisations and movements, beliefs and practices, including by gender, ethnicity, social class and age.12 min answer →
- What types of religious organisation exist, and why are new movements growing?Religious organisations, including churches, sects, denominations and cults, and the relationship to religious and spiritual movements, including the growth and appeal of new religious and New Age movements.12 min answer →
- Is religion declining in modern society, or simply changing its form?The secularisation debate, including evidence and explanations for the decline of religion, the secularisation thesis and its critics, and debates about religion in the contemporary UK, Europe and the USA.12 min answer →
- What do the major sociological theories say religion is and what it does for society?Different theories of religion, including functionalist, Marxist and feminist theories, and their explanations of the role and functions of religious beliefs, practices and institutions.12 min answer →
Crime and Deviance
Module overview →- How do societies try to prevent and control crime, and what is punishment for?Crime control, surveillance, prevention and punishment, victims and the role of the criminal justice system and other agencies, including situational and environmental prevention and theories of punishment.12 min answer →
- How do the media shape our picture of crime, and can they actually cause it?The relationship between crime and the media, including media representations of crime, fear of crime, the media as a cause of crime, moral panics, and cyber-crime.12 min answer →
- Why are some minority-ethnic groups over-represented in crime statistics, and is the system itself biased?Ethnic patterns in crime and victimisation, including the over-representation of some groups in statistics, explanations of offending, the role of the criminal justice system, and racism and discrimination.12 min answer →
- Why does crime exist, and how do strain and subcultural theories explain it?Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crime and deviance, including Durkheim on the functions of crime, Merton's strain theory, and subcultural theories (Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin).12 min answer →
- Why do men commit far more recorded crime than women, and how is gender linked to offending and victimisation?Gender patterns in crime, including why women appear to commit less crime, the chivalry thesis, explanations of female and male offending, and gendered patterns of victimisation.12 min answer →
- How has globalisation reshaped crime, and what are green and state crimes?Globalisation and crime in contemporary society, the global criminal economy, green crime, human rights and state crimes, including genocide and crimes by states against their own citizens.12 min answer →
- Is deviance a quality of the act, or of how society reacts to it?Labelling theory and the social construction of crime, including the social construction of crime statistics, the deviant career, master status, deviancy amplification and primary and secondary deviance.12 min answer →
- Is crime rooted in capitalism, or in real social conditions that both left and right realists try to tackle?Marxist, neo-Marxist and realist theories of crime, including traditional Marxism, critical criminology, left realism and right realism, and their explanations of crime and policy responses.12 min answer →
Education
Module overview →- Why do working-class pupils tend to achieve less in education than middle-class pupils?External factors (material deprivation, cultural deprivation, cultural capital) and internal factors (labelling, streaming, pupil subcultures) explaining social-class differences in educational achievement.12 min answer →
- Why do achievement patterns differ by gender and by ethnicity in education?Gender differences in achievement and subject choice, and ethnic differences in achievement, explained through external factors and internal school processes including teacher labelling and ethnocentric curricula.12 min answer →
- How have educational policies tried to shape equality, standards and the structure of schooling?The significance of educational policies, including selection, comprehensivisation, marketisation and privatisation, and policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity or outcome by class, gender and ethnicity.12 min answer →
- How do everyday processes inside schools shape pupils' experiences and outcomes?Relationships and processes within schools, including teacher labelling, the self-fulfilling prophecy, streaming and setting, pupil identities and subcultures, and the hidden curriculum.12 min answer →
- What is the role of education in society, and do its effects benefit everyone or only the powerful?Functionalist, Marxist, New Right and other perspectives on the role and purpose of the education system, including socialisation, role allocation, the correspondence principle and human capital.12 min answer →
Families and Households
Module overview →- Is childhood a natural stage of life or a social construction that varies across time and place?The nature of childhood and changes in the status of children, the social construction of childhood, the march of progress versus conflict view, and debates about whether childhood is disappearing.12 min answer →
- How equal are couples in their division of domestic labour, money and power?The domestic division of labour, including the symmetrical family debate, the dual burden and triple shift, decision-making and control of money, and domestic violence within couple relationships.12 min answer →
- How have changes in birth rates, death rates, migration and the age structure reshaped families?Demographic trends in the UK since 1900, including changes in birth rates, death rates, family size, life expectancy, the ageing population and migration, and their effects on family and household structure.12 min answer →
- How does the family relate to wider social change, and what do different perspectives say it is for?The relationship of the family to the social structure and social change, including functionalist, Marxist, feminist, New Right and personal-life perspectives on the family and industrialisation.12 min answer →
- Is there one dominant family type, or has family life become increasingly diverse?Changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, childbearing and the life course, family diversity, and the increasing variety of household and family structures.12 min answer →
- How do government policies and laws shape family life, and whose interests do they serve?The nature and extent of changes within the family, and the impact of social policy and laws on family structure, gender roles and the balance of power within families.12 min answer →
Theory and Methods
Module overview →- How do the major structural theories explain how society works and holds together?Consensus, conflict, structural and social action theories, including functionalism, Marxism and feminism, and their explanations of order, conflict and social structure.12 min answer →
- Can sociology be a science, and what does being scientific even mean?The nature of science and the extent to which sociology can be regarded as scientific, including positivism, Popper's falsificationism, Kuhn's paradigms and the realist view of science.12 min answer →
- What can sociologists learn from observing people and from data that already exists?Observation (participant and non-participant, overt and covert) and the use of secondary sources, including official statistics, documents and other existing data, and their strengths and limitations.11 min answer →
- Should sociology measure social facts like a science, or interpret the meanings behind human action?The distinction between primary and secondary data and quantitative and qualitative data, and the theoretical positions of positivism and interpretivism on how society should be studied.12 min answer →
- How do sociologists use experiments, questionnaires and interviews, and what shapes their choice of method?Quantitative and qualitative methods of research, including experiments, social surveys, questionnaires and interviews, and the practical, ethical and theoretical factors influencing the choice of method and topic.12 min answer →
- How do small-scale interactions and individual meanings build up the social world?Social action and interactionist theories and postmodernism, including symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, Weber's social action theory and the structure-action debate.12 min answer →
- Can and should sociology be free of the researcher's values?The relationship between theory and methods, and debates about objectivity, values and value freedom in sociological research, including the views of Weber, the positivists and committed sociology.12 min answer →