Sociology Curriculum Intent

The intent of the Sociology curriculum is to enable pupils to participate in our interconnected world with understanding and humanity, and the higher-level skills needed for the knowledge-based economy. Through the study of sociology, pupils will examine social phenomena that affect people’s lives in profound ways.

The two-year course is designed and delivered to nurture thoughtful and motivated young people, who can act responsibly as active citizens, and who believe in being able to change their local community for the better. The Sociology curriculum challenges pupils to look beyond appearances and set aside their own personal beliefs to enable them to grow in compassion and kindness. It empowers pupils with intellectually challenging ideas and concepts and essential skills of critical thinking.ssues, constructing reasoned arguments, making substantiated judgements and drawing reasoned conclusions.

Curriculum Overview

The curriculum overview for Sociology

The curriculum overview provides a high level guide to the subject matter taught, this also links to the detailed subject learning plan for each year group.

Click anywhere on the overview to see the more detailed learning plan.

Pupils will not only gain worldly knowledge

We expect pupils to:

Develop knowledge and understating of a variety of areas of social life including crime, education, families, stratification and inequality. In particular, to understand how different social groups experience these differently.

To be able to critically analyse information and use evidence to make informed arguments and reach judgements and conclusions.

To gain understanding of sociological theories and be able to apply these to understand social issues, debated and changed over time.

To be able to use sociological terminology correctly and appropriately.

To be able to describe and evaluate the appropriateness of different sociological methods in different contexts.

To develop literacy skills through producing essay responses which are well-structured, address the question and make accurate use of sociological vocabulary.

To become more open-minded and willing to question their own assumption and consider the opinions of others.

The curriculum is sequenced logically and progressively; pupils have not undertaken Sociology in KS3 hence it is a brand new subject at KS4. The course requires building blocks of sociological vocabulary via an introduction to how sociologists study society and sociological theory through the relative theoretical perspectives. This is followed by pupils learning the topic of research methods. This sets the foundation of how society is studied. This will allow pupils to embed the disciplinary knowledge through interleaving. This is followed by Families and Education all completed in year 1. In year 2 we learn Crime & Deviance and Social stratification. The sequence of learning is accordance with the sequencing of examinations at end of year 11.

Knowledge and skills assessments are undertaken on a regular basis with exam style questioning in chunked retrieval mini-assessments to develop and cement the skills of examination style responses and content. Independent learning and research tasks are built into homework and research projects that are designed to map across curriculum topic areas to enable pupils to develop the skills of independent learning where tasks take steps from scaffolded note taking to the development of broader understanding and developed note taking to synthesis their own knowledge with extension materials to ensure undertaking of the synoptic elements of the course and make cognitive links between content to extend evaluative and analytical thinking.

Progress through the course is tracked through regular checks of the pupil’s books, assessment folders and assessment tracking. Taxonomy and command words along with assessment objective skills requirements are embedded in teaching and learning with pupils drawing from scoffolded exemplar responses and upgrading their own work to ensure high expectations for all pupils. Pupils monitor their own assessment through the pupil checklist. Pupils are encouraged to manage their own books, revisions and wider reading takes place. This supports pupils to achieve independence in their organisation and management of their learning.

The Sociology Team:

Mrs J. McCue (Assistant Headteacher)

Mrs R. Parveen