1. SOCIOLOGY KEY WORDS and CONCEPTS– AUTUMN TERM
FAMILY
• Nuclear family
• Extended family
• Lone parent family
• Reconstituted family
• Households
• Positive approach to family:
o Functionalist approach
 Reproduction
 Primary socialisation
 Emotional gratification and nurture
 Economic provision
o the New Right
• Negative approach to family
o The conflict approach
o The feminist approach
• Pre-industrial families
• Early industrial families
• Families in the twentieth century
• Symmetrical families and domestic division of labour
• Different forms of marriage
o Monogamy
o Polygamy
o Serial monogamy
• Separation
• “Empty shell marriage”
• Divorce - trends
o Changes in the law
o Changes in attitude
o Secularisation
o Media influence

2. • Changing trends in marriage
o People are getting married later
o Increase in cohabitation
o Decline in marriage rate
o Increase in births outside marriage
• Trend in families and households today
o Apparent decline of nuclear family
o Increase of lone-parent families
o Increase of reconstituted families
o Decline in fertility rate
o Increase in abortion increase in dual-worker families
EDUCATION
• Functionalist view
o Teaching skills and knowledge
o Selective role: meritocratic
o Socialisation role: teaching acceptance of rules and authority (agent of
social control – formal and informal)
• Marxist view
o Reinforcing the class system
o Selective role: no equal opportunities
o Socialisation role: reflects social control in the wider society
• The political role
• Official curriculum: formal learning
• Hidden curriculum: informal learning
o Hierarchy
o Competition
o Social control
o Gender role allocation
o Lack of satisfaction
• The education system in Britain
o Before 1870
o The 1870 Education Act
o The 1944 Butler Education Act
 The tri-partite system
o 1965: the start of the comprehensive system
 Why are comprehensives a good idea?
 What are the problems with the comprehensive system?

3.  Do comprehensives break down class barriers?
• How is the education system organised in Britain?
o Pre-school education
o Primary education
o Secondary education
o further and higher education
• Independent sector: private schools and public schools
o Low teacher-pupil ratio
o Better resources and facilities
o Academic culture (good results)
o High parental input (fees, expectations, support)
o Full immersion of staff and students in school life
• State schools
o Free
o More socially mixed
o May provide a route of upward social mobility
o No need to travel far for pupils
• Educational achievement
o Gender and single sex schools
o Why are boys achieving less than girls?
o Ethnicity
o Social class
o Naturenurture debate
o Parents’ expectation
o Material deprivation
o Cultural deprivation
o School and teachers’ judgements and expectations
 Labelling
 Self-fulfilling prophecy
 Halo effect
o Streaming and sets
WORK
• What is work?
• Formal economy
• Informal economy
o Hidden
o Domestic

4. o Communal
• Is housework work?
• Why do people work in paid employment?
o Intrinsic satisfaction
o Economic motive
o Social contacts
o Status and identity
• Different types of employment
o Primary sector
o Secondary sector
o Tertiary sector (service work)
• How work affects non-working life
o Life chances
o Standard of life
o Family life
o Health
• Mechanisation
• Automation
• Deskilling and reskilling
• Alienation
o Lack of power
o Lack of meaning
o Isolation
o Lack of fulfilment
• Women at work
o Sex discrimination
o Vertical segregation
o Glass ceiling
o Invisible walls
o Triple shift
• Ethnicity and work
o Racial discrimination
• New work patterns
o Flexi work
o Short term work
o McJobs
• Retirement
• Trade unions
• Leisure