Welsh Joint Education Committee

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• Welsh Joint Education Committee
• 245 Western Avenue
• CARDIFF
• CF5 2YX
• 44(0)29 2026 5000

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Content of the WJECGCE AS/A2 Specification
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Unit One Acquiring culture

• Option 1 Families and culture
• Option 2 Youth and culture
• Option 3 Community and culture

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Unit One - Acquiring Culture

• Core Theme Socialisation and Culture. Candidates
  will be expected to understand and use the
  following terms and concepts for all of the
  options on this paper.
• Socialisation
• Culture and cultural identity
• Cultural transmissions
• Sub culture
• Control
• Norms and values
• Social structures
• Status
• Sanctions
• Roles
• Identity
• Agencies of socialisation primary and secondary
• Social Change

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Unit One Acquiring CultureOption 1 Families
and Culture

• Defining families and households
• Relationships within families using the concepts
  of
• Power
• Gender roles
• Social control
• Decision making
• Domestic labour
• Debates concerning the changing identity, status,
  roles and function of the family in a late modern
  or post-modern society
• Explanations of increasing family diversity
  including
• Marriage trends
• Single-hood
• Birth rates
• Divorce
• Co-habitation
• Changing family forms in relation to gender,
  ethnicity and class

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Unit One Acquiring Culture Option 2 - Youth
Culture

• Defining characteristics of youth culture as a
  social construction
• Meaning /characteristics of
• youth sub-cultures.
• ordinary youth and mainstream cultures.
• Debates concerning youth cultures, historically
  in a late modern or post-modern society and the
  reasons for the development of youth culture.
• Explanations of the social factors that
  contribute to the behaviour and formation of
  specific youth cultures including gender,
  ethnicity and class.

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Unit One Acquiring CultureOption 3 Community
and Culture

• Defining communities
• Social relationships and roles as applied to
  concepts of
• class
• gender
• ethnicity
• nation and community.
• Debates concerning the changing nature of
  communities in late-modern or post-modern society
  as applied to class, gender, ethnicity, nation,
  community.
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• Explanations for social change taking place
  within communities with regard to
• social structure
• social roles and expectations, including online
  and non-geographical communities
• notions of social inclusion and exclusion.

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Unit Three Understanding culture

• Option 1 Education
• Option 2 Health
• Option 3 Religion

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Unit Three Understanding CultureOption 1 -
Education

• Definitions
•   Differential attainment, cultural deficits,
  formal socialisation, social control, equality of
  opportunity, social selection, vocationalism,
  formal and hidden curricula, meritocracy,
  anti-school subculture, cultural deprivation,
  material deprivation, cultural capital, self
  fulfilling prophecy and vocational education
• Patterns and Trends
•   Patterns and trends in educational achievement
  among different social groupings social class,
  gender, ethnicity and locality
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• Explanations
•   Traditional and recent sociological
  explanations /theories of patterns and trends in
  educational achievement among different social
  groupings to include
• cultural and material explanations
• structural explanations
• social action explanations
• material/structural explanations

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Unit Three Understanding Culture Option 2 -
Health

• Definitions
• Illness, disability, disease, risk behaviour,
  mortality and mortality rates, morbidity and
  morbidity rates, stigma, iatrogenesis,
  medicalisation, the sick role, the illness
  iceberg, bio-medical
• Patterns and Trends
• Patterns and trends in health and illness among
  different social groupings social class, gender,
  ethnicity, locality and age.
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• Explanations
• Traditional and recent sociological
  explanations/theories of patterns and trends in
  health and illness among different social groups
  to include
• cultural explanations
• social action explanations
• material/structural explanations

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Unit Three Understanding Culture Option 3
Religion

• Definitions
• Secularisation, church, cult, sect,
  denomination, fundamentalism, new Religious
  movements, new Age movements, rationalisation,
  disenchantment.
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• Patterns and Trends
•   Patterns and trends in religious beliefs and
  involvement, differential patterns, religious
  belief and attendance of different social
  groupings gender, ethnicity, class, age and
  locality.
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• Explanations
•   Traditional and recent sociological
  explanations/theories of the changing role of
  religious beliefs and involvement in religious
  organisations to include
• classical sociological theories
• explanations/theories relating to the nature and
  extent of secularisation
• explanations of the growth of fundamentalism,
  sects, cults, new religious movements, New Age
  movements and non Christian religions.

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Unit Four Social control(A2)

• Option 1 Crime and Deviance
• Option 2 Power, Politics and the State
• Option 3 Mass Media

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Unit Four Social ControlOption 1 - Crime and
Deviance

• Theories and Explanations including
• Functionalism and sub-cultural theories
  Traditional and Neo- Marxism,
• Radical Explanations Labelling Theory
• Left and Right Realism Feminism 
• These theories and explanations may be assessed
  as individual topics or as applied to the
• following topics
• Social construction of crime and deviance the
  role of the media, including moral panics and the
  police and the social construction of crime
  statistics.
• Social control (formal and informal) agents of
  social control including the law, police and the
  state and the criminalisation of some social
  groups.
• Solutions to the problems of crime including
  Realist solutions.
• Measuring crime and the fear of crime official
  statistics, the dark figure of crime, self report
  and victim surveys.
• Patterns of crime and victimisation by social
  profile including class, age, gender, locality
  and ethnicity.
• Corporate, white-collar and global crime

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Unit Four Social Control Option 2 - Politics,
Power and the State

• Theories and explanations including
• Functionalism Pluralism
• Elite theory Marxism and Neo-Marxism
•   These theories and explanations may be assessed
  as individual topics or as applied to the
  following topics
• Voting behaviour and patterns of participation
  according to class,age, gender, ethnicity and
  locality.
• The changing role of the nation state including
  devolution, nationalism, regionalism,
  federalism, and globalisation.
• Participation and affiliation to New Social
  Movements and to pressure and interest groups
  according to class,age, gender, ethnicity and
  locality
• Changing political ideologies including the
  environmental movement, the New Right and
  radicalism of the left and right.
• Forms of resistance as agents of ideological
  change with reference to globalisation and New
  Social Movements.

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Unit Four Social Control Option 3 - Mass Media

• Theories and explanations including
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• Pluralist Marxist and Neo-Marxist
• Feminism The New Right
• Postmodernism
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• These theories and explanations may be assessed
  as individual topics or as applied to the
  following topics
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• Control of the production of the media,
  including the role of professionals and owners,
  setting agenda, the content and news values,
  censorship and constraints of the media.
• Trends in the ownership and the growth of the
  media, the power of media companies,
  multi-nationals and globalisation.
• The role and influence of moral policies
  including representation of media stereotypes and
  social groups along lines of class, age, gender,
  ethnicity and locality.
• The effects of the media on audiences, including
  the hypodermic syringe model, the two-step flow
  model, moral panics, uses and gratifications
  theory, the cultural effects theory and
  resistance theories.

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Unit Six Society Today (A2 synoptic)

• Option 1 Wealth and Poverty
• Option 2 World Sociology
• Option 3 Social Divisions

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Unit Six Society TodayOption 1 - Wealth and
Poverty

• Definitions and measurements of wealth, income,
  poverty (absolute and relative), inequality,
  social exclusion and inclusion.
• Patterns and trends in wealth and income
  distribution, including the social distribution
  of poverty and social exclusion.  
• Official statistics on local/regional, national
  and global inequality reasons for patterns
  trends with reference to gender, ethnicity,
  class, locality and age.
• Theoretical explanations of poverty, and social
  exclusion including individualistic, cultural,
  underclass conflict theories.

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Unit Six Society TodayOption 2 - World Sociology

• Definitions and measurements of development,
  income, poverty, (absolute and relative)
  modernisation, dependency and industrialisation.
• Patterns and trends statistics relating to
  wealth and income distribution, and indicators of
  development.
• Official statistics on local/regional, national
  and global poverty with reference to
  gender,ethnicity, class,locality and age.
• Theoretical explanations of development including
  globalisation, modernisation theory, convergence
  theory, neo-modernisation theory and Marxist
  theory.

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Unit Six Society TodayOption 3 - Social
Divisions

• Definitions measurements of differentiation,
  including class, gender, ethnicity, age and
  disability.
• Patterns and trends in social mobility, income
  distribution, wealth, health, poverty and
  exclusion.
• Official statistics on local/regional, national
  and global inequality.
• Theoretical explanations of structural
  differences in society, including Marxism,
  Functionalism, and Feminism

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Methodology Units 2 and Five
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Unit Two Social Research

• Candidates should be able to understand concepts,
  strengths and limitations of research.
• Key terms applied to research reliability,
  validity, ethics, qualitative, quantitative,
  generalisation, representativeness,
  operationalisation of concepts, objectivity and
  subjectivity.
• Primary methods survey, questionnaire,
  observation, interview, case-study, experiments,
  and ethnographic studies and longitudinal
  studies.
• Secondary methods documents, official statistics
  and personal data.
• Practical issues piloting, sampling, access,
  triangulation and methodological plurality.
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• Ethical issues deceit, sensitivity, bias,
  confidentiality, invasion of privacy and informed
  consent

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Unit Five Applied Social Research

• Candidates should apply and evaluate the
  following topic areas
• Theories underpinning methods including
  positivism, realism, interpretivism, feminism.
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• Key terms applied to research including
  Reliability, Validity, Ethics, Qualitative,
  Quantitative, Generalisation, Representativeness,
  Operationalisation of concepts, Objectivity,
  Subjectivity, Value freedom, Reflexivity.
•  Primary methods including survey,
  questionnaire, observation, interview, case
  study, experiments, ethnographic studies and
  longitudinal studies.
• Secondary methods, including documents, official
  statistics and personal data.
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• Practical issues relating to research including
  piloting, sampling, access, triangulation and
  methodological plurality.
• Ethical issues relating to research, including
  deceit, sensitivity, bias, confidentiality,
  invasion of privacy and informed consent.

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The end