mock exam(will continue later)

1.(a)Explain what is meant by material deprivation.
Material deprivation is lack of money and things that money can buy.
(b)Suggest three reasons why girls and boys often choose different subjects to study.
-Parental expectations – because parents might encourage boys to choose subjects that are more suitable for them in their opinion such as science
-Role models – girls and boys choose subjects according to their parents’ choice
-Stereotyping- because of traditional division of subjects into categories for boys and girls
-Career opportunities- it can be easier for boys to find a job in science, business
(c)Outline some of the current education policies that affect the achievement of social classes
There are many policies exist nowadays that affect achievement of different social classes, however some of them reduce inequalities, and while others widening the gap between classes.
In 1997 when Labor party became the major party, it’s priority was to improve standards of current education and raise attainment of students. Introduction of policy Excellence in Schools, which aimed to encourage young people in deprived inner city areas study and find motivation of going to the higher education, was an example of policies which give equality of opportunities for everyone. Education Action Zones have similar aim as they were located in deprived areas to increase attainment of students by running extra classes and activities. These zones were replaced by more successful program Excellence in Cities which was funded by individuals, businesses, government and aimed to raise achievement in deprived areas by replacing poorly performing schools and providing more school places where necessary. Another policy Education Maintenance Allowance gave opportunity for students from poor backgrounds to continue education as they were given bonuses for good attainment and progress in education.
However other policies weren’t so successful as they made the situation with class inequalities even worse. Current policies reflect New Right ideas of marketisation of education and introduction of grant maintained schools, which were partly independent from government and they could choose their specialization, publication of exam results and creating league tables increased opportunity for parents to choose the schools for children. However, as Stephen Ball argued, marketisation of education put middle class children into advantage. League tables were aimed to increase competition between schools and encourage them to raise standards, however parents by looking at league table would choose the school with higher results while those schools in inner city areas where population mostly consists of people from working class will lose its popularity since pupils from poor background are not so concerned about education. Introduction of National Vocational Qualificationst aimed to provide training courses and vocational education for young people and raise skill levels in a wide range of jobs. This gave opportunities for working class students instead of going into higher education, get qualification and find a job. However, as Marxists- sociologists argued, this vocational training provide cheap labour with low skills and helps only in lowering unemployment statistics. And also as Lee claimed vocational education is for the less able people which channels them into low status and low paid jobs.
As we can see, some policies are useful while others can make achievement of some group of people even worse, however marketisation of education have many advantages and reflects increased diversity of young people in the modern life.
(d)Asses the view that ethnic differences in achievement are primarily the result of home backgrounds.
Hmm, we wrote about that last lesson.

2. Asses the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of teachers’ attitudes.
Unstructured interviews are those interviews where questions are less likely to be pre set, though the researcher usually have a certain topic to cover and just discuss it with the interviewee by asking about appeared details.
Interpretevists are in favour of unstructured interviews since they achieve validity. This type of interviews allow the interviewee express himself in his own words without any limitations in answers and the interviewer have opportunity to ask any questions he wants which helps him to get data in depth. When investigating teachers’ attitudes about towards pupils, unstructured interview may help to establish rapport since teachers are used to “putting on an act in front of pupils” and not telling their real thoughts. That’s why in this case structured interviews may reduce validity of answers as teachers due to their occupations are good in hiding emotions and being formal.
Positivists reject unstructured interviews since it is almost impossible to replicate them. Every interview is unique, the interviewer might ask any questions when exploring the topic and so this data will be unreliable. Also unstructured interviews can not be pre-coded which makes them to be uncomparable, and it is more difficult to generalize the data. Positivists argue that structured interviews could give more reliable data and study larger sample.
When researching teacher using unstructured interviews, researchers will be able to study only small amount of people as each interview takes time, this reduces possibility of having a representative sample if researcher studies particular school where for example there are more modernistic teachers who try to be equal for everyone and don’t show their attitudes towards a particular student. Also there are might be ethical issues and teacher has to be guaranteed of anonymity and be fully informed about the aim of the interview as it might affect his reputation and pupils’ expectations.
Unstructured interviews in some cases might not produce expected result with teachers, because people of this occupation are usually over-worked and will not be happy to spend a lot of time for interview which lowers the response rate. In this case, structured interviews might be more helpful as they take less time and teacher will not be asked extra questions.
One of the advantages of unstructured interviews is that they give opportunity for the interviewer to use non-directive or directive approach. For some teachers direct and aggressive interviewing techniques will be more useful as they give more valid information. Teachers are skilled in controlling their emotions and behavior and as Howard Becker showed in his interview with teachers, aggressive approach helped in finding attitudes and reasons for prejudice of some pupils. This information teacher would not give as volunteer.r
Oh, I will continue later. I don’t know why but it is really hard to think now(

Why do intepretevists prefer documents?

The documents cover a wide range of secondary data, written and recorder material such as biographies, letters, novells, photos, radio and TV broadcasts. From interpretevists’ point of view, this type of data is very important and plays a significant role in their research methods since some kinds of documents are based on people’s understanding of the world and explains reasons for human’s behavior. Diaries, letters may help in understanding the past and compare how people’s views and attitudes are changed over the period of time. It helps to discover and interpret the meanings which guide people’s actions. There are different types of analysis of documents that are used by interpretevists: they might classify the content of the documents into different categories to make the data quantitative( Content analysis) This type of analysis might be valued by positivists since they see translating all the things into numbers as the most suitable way of research because it helps to make comparisons. Also intepretevists might pay more attention on the motives and ideologies of a particular document.( Thematic analysis) And some sociologists may be more interested in text analysis when looking at the text to understand how can it affect people’s ideas and create an impression.
However when using the documents, no one it is difficult to be sure whether what is written is genuine and sociologists can rely on that. While positivists by using Official statistics, will be surer that this data is valid and reliable.

Official Statistics

Secondary data refers to the data that are already exists. This might include historical documents, autobiographies, photos, novells, statistics.
Official statistics are one of the major types of secondary data and they are produced by local and national government, its agencies and organizations. Official data is widely used by positivists since they see all types of quantitative data as the main source of information. While intepretevists see statistics as not useful source of data because they do not help in answering why certain group of people committed to suicide, for example, and what made them to do so, but they just give a factual information about the situation.
When using Official Statistics, for sociologist it is important to know how was these statistics constructed. For example, statistics about the educational attainment might be different for different ethnic groups and social classes, however statistics may not provide with such information.
Also use of this source of secondary data may reflect somebody’s interests and as it is governments who is responsible for the statistics, it might try to show itself in favourable light and hide the real information about the current situation. Also another limitation of Official Statistics that sociologists can not affect the topic and sources of information that will be used for creating the statistics and governmental representatives and officials decide what is useful and what is not.
However, there are many advantages for using official statistics. They are available and cost usually nothing for researchers. Also they are often updated and so sociologists can compare change in the survey over time.

Pupils

a) When making a research among pupils it is important to consider some problems which sociologists have to avoid such as sensitivity of children: they might be shy and not answer questions for example in group interviews, that are interviews based on a group of people and where the interviewer asks questions and respondents answer in turn. So sociologists are more likely to choose unstructured interview where the interviewer can develop rapport that is friendly and trusting relationship and thereby collect more valid and in depth data. However,
Willis, for example, used in his study of ‘lads’ group interviews which allowed pupils to talk freely about their views and values and this gave him opportunity to understand reasons of creating counter school culture. However the researcher could find it difficult to interpret interviewees answers and this might lead to the interviewer bias.
Questionnaire is another convenient type of research which might help to collect data among pupils about some sensitive topics which they might not discuss orally, however this type of research does not guarantee validity of data since pupils might not respond correctly and they just may not understand a question. Also questions might mean for every person something special, so they can answer for the same question in different ways. This makes quantifying and making statistics more difficult. Marxists Bowles and Gintis in their research used self-completion questionnaires for employers and students to compare which personal traits are valued by students themselves and which personal traits are valued by employers in their workers. They could compare and find a correlation between these personal traits to explain and support their Marxist approach. Questionnaires gave opportunity for the researchers to use a large sample and use comparative method. However, questionnaires may be biased since some students could try to show themselves in favourable light and also they could misunderstand some questions.
When researcher wants for example find out how many pupils like mathematics, it is difficult to decide which sample he has to choose. Because if it is a random or systematic sample, it doesn’t mean that it will be representative, because a lot of pupils might be from science ability group and the result of the research will not be valid. Stratified samples are more useful since they give opportunities for researchers to divide the sample into strata such as age, type of school, type of ability group, etc. and make the sample more representative.

more sociology

Politicians about the Family.Some quotations which might be useful when writing essays. (Can’t remember from where I quoted them)

LABOR PARTY.
Family breakdowns are leading to youth crime, unemployment and anti-social behaviour, according to a parliamentary report; women's attitudes have shifted significantly, undermining traditional ideas of patriarchal control and economic dependency.

New Labour's consultation document Supporting Families says that "women increasingly want to work and have careers as well as being mothers". There is no attempt to force women back into the home. On the contrary, the thrust of New Labour's Welfare to Work policy has been to get lone parents, the section of women least likely to work outside the home, into the workforce.

- “Marriage is the "healthiest environment" for the family.” – report Supporting Families

The report comes as Home Secretary JACK STRAW is expected to announce that the government will set up an Institute for the Family, aimed at preventing the breakdown of family life in the UK.
- The New Deal program is primarily motivated by the need to cut back on benefits by encouraging, and as this isn't working, coercing lone parents into work. Those that stay at home to look after their children, either through choice or because they can't get a job, are made to feel guilty for doing so.
- Married couples should get better tax-breaks and child allowances.


CONSERVATIVE PARTY

DAVID CAMERON insisted the modern Conservative party was the party of all families – single parents, divorced parents, widows – and it would be supporting all of them.
So a Conservative Government will give families the support, flexibility and financial help they need.
Financial help:
- Money worries can put a huge strain on relationships – so we will end the couple penalty in the benefits system and recognise marriage in the tax and benefits system
Flexibility:
- We will introduce a new system of flexible parental leave which gives mothers and fathers 12 months' leave to split between them
- We will extend the right to request flexible working to all parents with children under the age of 18, and ensure the public sector becomes a world leader in providing flexible working opportunities

As we can see, both parties are for traditional nuclear family.

Sociology. some important laws and organisations.

The United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child. (UNCR)
From 15 January 1992, when the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights.

The Children Act 1989. Welfare rights of children

Children support agency
“Our role is to make sure that parents who live apart from their children contribute financially to their upkeep by paying child maintenance.”

Women's Aid is the national domestic violence charity that helps up to 250,000 women and children every year. We work to end violence against women and children, and support over 500 domestic and sexual violence services across the country.

Refuge's network provides emergency accommodation for women and children when they are most in need. -- Financial guide for women experiencing domestic violence.

The new Adoption and Children Act 2002, in force from 30 December 2005.
Improvements in adoption services. Unmarried couples may now apply
to adopt jointly, for example, making sure that any child they adopt will have
two full legal parents.

The Civil Partnership Act - December 2005. The act grants same sex couples identical rights and responsibilities with heterosexual couples

The Divorce Reform Act 1969( since 1971). Don’t have to prove guilty of a partner and have to be married at least three years in order to get divorced.

The Family Law Act 1996. A one year waiting period before a couple can get divorced


Links used:
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/family_parent/family.htm
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/
http://www.csa.gov.uk/en/about/index.asp
http://www.refuge.org.uk/homepage.html