Sociology
Sociology Curriculum Vision
To promote academic rigour in our Key Stage 5 sociology students they build core skills to succeed in the modern world and we ensure that they have ample substantive and disciplinary knowledge when they leave EEHS. We aspire to provide sociology students with the opportunity to develop an understanding of the development, structure, and functioning of human society grow.
Sociology students at EEHS will be inquisitive and determined to understand more about key sociological issues within British society. Our students will cultivate an awareness of the political, religious, social and educational changes that have and still continue to influence society. They will acquire the knowledge and skills in order to enable them to develop a greater awareness of the cause of social problems and the influence that gender, class and ethnic diversity play in the institutions which they study. Through the topics chosen, our students will build a strong foundation of knowledge and skills to enable them to appreciate and consider the power of challenging the status quo. Most crucially though, sociology students will develop their ability to be more tolerant of differing perspectives in order that they can contribute positively within society.
The rationale for the choice of topics in our sociology curriculum can be understood by the four key curriculum aims which determine how we plan our linear schemes of work.
How do we help our students to ROAR?
Resilient: Teachers empower students to take ownership of their learning and hold them accountable for their own learning. In sociology students are required to conduct their own sociological studies and reflect extensively on the successes and failures of these projects. We establish guide them through effective questioning but we ask them to take responsibility for their learning and note taking.
Open Minded: We encourage student debate in the sociology classroom, with at least one lesson per topic devoted to structured debating. This gives space for thinking outside the box and challenge the status quo when it comes to societal perceptions about issues. Students are challenged to keep up to date with current affairs and apply their sociological understanding to the world around us. With the competing theoretical approaches, we encourage students to challenge opinions of others and analyse the implications sociological theory has on and in the modern world.
Aspirational: Teaching is energetic, personalised and delivered with high intensity and good pace in order to inspire students to want the very best for themselves. Students are encouraged engage with pre-university reading and texts in order to challenge themselves intellectually. There are occasional opportunities attend live lectures with academic researchers in London also.
Reflective: Every lesson we ask students to reflect on their understanding and knowledge through ‘Do Now’ knowledge recall activities on particular sociologists and their studies. These activities involve interleaving knowledge from prior topics in order to increased knowledge retention and understanding. Moreover, students have FIT books where all work which is marked is improved upon over time. Significant lesson time is devoted to spending time on their improvement tasks.
Year 12:
Intent:
In year 12 students are introduced to sociological theory and research methods in order to build the foundations to prepare them for the application to more complex topics. Students will begin the course through the exploration of investigative techniques when carrying out sociological research in order that they can begin to critically analyse and evaluate different sociological approaches within the subject. In this first year, students will also be encouraged to think independently and open their minds in order to question contemporary issues through, for example, creating their own research projects and evaluating the success and failures of them. It is through this understanding of research that students build their skills in analysis of statistics and data. It is important to note that the theory and methods of research approaches are referred to constantly throughout the course as part of the assessment of knowledge and understanding of social structures and institutions so it is imperative that it is taught in the first year of the course.
Implementation:
Year 13:
Intent:
In Year 13 students are encouraged further to develop their critical analysis of key sociological topics to continued explore and examine the impact and influence sociology factors play on and in these areas. In year 13, topics are interleaved with knowledge of key concepts established in the building blocks of year 1, with significant reference to sociological theory being applied to beliefs about religion and crime respectfully. These two topics are taught in the second year because they rely heavily on detailed knowledge of sociological theory in order to be able to critically evaluate perspectives. In year 13 we embed interleaving as part of each scheme of work in order that every lesson begins with a ‘Do Now’ knowledge recall activity to develop memory techniques and challenge students to recall knowledge across the course and prepare them for the examinations at the end of the academic year.
Implementation:
