Who said what in the sociology of education
The sociology of education
Pick a name
Questions people ask
Do I need to name sociologists in AQA A-level Sociology?
Names help when they carry an argument. AQA rewards accurate knowledge, application and analysis; a name with no explanation earns little. Use a sociologist to support a developed point: what they argued, how it works, and what it shows for the question.
Which sociologists should I know for the role of education?
Functionalists Durkheim, Parsons and Davis and Moore; the New Right, such as Chubb and Moe; and the Marxists Althusser, Bowles and Gintis, and Willis. The debate between them is a common 30-mark essay.
How do I evaluate Bowles and Gintis?
Use Willis to show pupils can resist the hidden curriculum, and postmodernists to argue the economy now needs flexible, creative workers rather than obedient ones. Then say what the challenge means for the correspondence principle.
What is the difference between Bernstein and Bourdieu?
Bernstein is about language: working-class pupils tend to use a restricted code while school uses the elaborated code. Bourdieu is about capital: middle-class pupils bring cultural capital that school rewards, and it converts into qualifications.
Which studies show labels can be resisted?
Fuller's Black girls in a London comprehensive worked to prove a negative label wrong, and Mac an Ghaill found boys forming different identities. Both challenge labelling theory's determinism.
How we work this out
What it does
28 sociologists and studies for AQA A-level Sociology Education, each with the idea, the concepts to use and the challenge that evaluates it.
Theorists and studies A-level students commonly use for AQA 7192 Education (3.1.1): the role of education, class, gender and ethnic differences in achievement, what happens inside schools, and educational policy.
Method
- Each entry is our own short summary of what the sociologist or study argued, written for this page. No results, sample sizes or quotations are reproduced.
- Each lists the concepts you can use in an answer and one challenge that evaluates it, usually another sociologist or a limit of the evidence.
- Search matches names first, then concepts, then the wording of the idea. Topics come from the Education section of the AQA specification.