SOC111 Fundamentals of Sociology Module PDF

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CAVENDISH UNIVERSITY ZAMBIA

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMMES

Fundamentals of Sociology (SOC111) Module

@2015

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COURSE OVERVIEW: Sociology enables us understand the structure and dynamics of society and their intricate connections to pattern of human behaviour and individual life changes. It examines the ways in which the forms of social structure, groups, organisations, communities, social categories such as class, sex, age, race and various social institutions such as kinship, economic, political, and religion affect human attitudes, actions, and opportunities. The discipline also explores how both individuals and collective construct, maintain and alter social organisation in various ways. Sociology asks about the sources and consequences of change in social arrangements and institutions, and about the satisfactions and difficulties of planning, accomplishing, and adapting to such change. Areas studied in examining social dynamics include: culture, values, socialization, cooperation, conflicts, power, exchange, inequality, deviance, social control violence and social change.

Course Contents         

The Sociology Culture Aspects Socialization Social Institutions Civil Rights Movements Society Social Problems and Society Social Mobility Social and Leadership

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Subject

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Introduction What is culture? Material & Non material Culture Culture & Society Elements of Culture Perception of Culture & Norms

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Introduction What is socialization Nature Vs Nurture Theories of Socialization Types of Socialization Social Roles Role Conflict Role Exit

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Introduction Types of Institution Stages of Socialization Types of Families Functions of Family

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UNIT FIVE: BELIEFS AND MARRAGIES       

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Introduction The Concept of Sociology Background of Sociology Sociology Some Great Sociologists of the World

UNIT FOUR: SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS     

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UNIT THREE: SOCIOLIASATION        

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UNIT TWO: CULTURAL ASPECTS      

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UNIT ONE: THE CONCEPT OF SOCIOLOGY     

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Introduction The Concept of Marriage Marriage Rights and Obligation Law of Marriage Types of Communities Pre-industrial Societies

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UNIT SIX: SOCIAL PROBLEMS 3

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UNIT SEVEN: SOCIAL MOBILITY    

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Introduction Social Problems Deviance The Concept of suicide Methods of Suicide Urbanization Gender and development Introduction What is Social Mobility Upward Mobility Downward Mobility

UNIT EIGHT: SOCIOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP Introduction Formal and Informal Leadership Charismatic Leadership Authoritative Leadership Democratic Leadership Other Types of leadership Quality of Leadership Characteristics of Good Leadership

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ACADEMIC PEDAGOGY: 7.1 Teaching Methodology

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The teaching methodology is based on the following: - Face to face counseling with the help of audio visual aids - Field training - Internship project Delivery Mechanism – To encompass the following aspects: - Conduct classes through audio visual aids. - Organise theory cum practical classes. - Use innovative training aids like cut out model, running training models and blow ups of computer components along with their working mechanism for in depth learning. - Use practical training as the primary mode of training. - The teaching faculties to act as a mentor for assignment.

Methods of Assessment -

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The assessment aims to carry out objective and periodic evaluation of knowledge and skills, acquired by the students. This will enable any midcourse correction for desired improvement during conduct of the course. The system of evaluation of the program is based on assessment of the assignments, Term End Examination and Internship Project.

EVALUATION PROCESS: Assignment: Student will be given one assignment during the course as per the academic schedule. It will carry 40% weightage. Students are required to write responses based on their understanding of courses, discussion and interactions with the instructor and fellow learners. They are required to submit hand written solutions.  While preparing the assignment response, the students should keep in mind the following points:  Read assignment questions carefully and identify various sources of material.  Make their answer precise, concise, systematic and relevant to assessment question.  Write answers in their own handwriting and don’t send typed assignments.  Write their enrolment number, name and full address at the right hand corner of the 1st page of their assignment response. Term End Examination. The Term End Examination will be conducted by the Community College three times a year in the months of February, September, and December. It will be of practical nature. It will carry 60% weightage towards the overall marks of the course. 

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Introduction: The module introduces the students to the basic knowledge and understanding of sociology of education. It explores and analyse sociological issues raised by founding fathers and theories relevant to the field of education. The module covers a number of topics as “what is sociology of education, background of the subject of sociology, founding fathers, theory of labeling, social functions of the school, socialisation, society, culture, leadership model in school as an organisation, community and the school, the role and status of a teacher.

Module Aims: 

To encourage rational thinking about educational and sociological problem.

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To explore sociological, moral and social issues affecting education development

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To examine current educational problems in the light of sociological development.

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To show relationship between the society and educational process

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To analyse how the use of sociological concepts can be utilised in an analysis of the educational system and how these can be related to the nature of society.

Module Learning Outcomes: After successful completion of this module the student will be able to: 

Demonstrate a knowledge of terms, concepts, processes and principles relating to sociology of education.

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Understand the nature and purposes of education in society.

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Examine how education reflects the need of the society and how society exert pressure on the educational process.

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Demonstrate the skill of critical thinking and analysis of problem by applying different sociological perspectives.

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Appreciate the teacher’s social status and position both as a leader of social change as exemplar of established moves.

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UNIT ONE: SOCIOLOGY: Introduction: Sociology is about structure of society and pattern of human behaviour and individual life changes. This unit covers the following topics, “what is sociology, background of the subject sociology, founding fathers, theories and society.

Learning Outcomes: 

Understand the subject of sociology

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Discuss the founding fathers of sociology

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Explain theories involved in sociology.

Topic 1: The Concept of Sociology Sociology enables us understand the structure and dynamics of society and their intricate connections to pattern of human behaviour and individual life changes. It examines the ways in which the forms of social structure, groups, organisations, communities, social categories such as class, sex, age, race and various social institutions such as kinship, economic, political, and religion affect human attitudes, actions, and opportunities. The discipline also explores how both individuals and collective construct, maintain and alter social organisation in various ways. Sociology asks about the sources and consequences of change in social arrangements and institutions, and about the satisfactions and difficulties of planning, accomplishing, and adapting to such change. Areas studied in examining social dynamics include: culture, values, socialization, cooperation, conflicts, power, exchange, inequality, deviance, social control violence and social change. The Sociology is the study of how public institutions and individual experience affects education and its outcome. It is most concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult and continuing education. Sociology has always been seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour characterised by aspirations for progress and betterment. It is understood by many to be a means of overcoming handicap, achieving greater equality and acquire wealth and status. Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potential. It is also perceived as one of the best means of achieving greater social equality. Many would say 7

that the purpose of education should be to develop every individual to their full potential and give them a chance to achieve as much in life as their natural abilities allow (

). A few

would argue that any education system accomplishes this goal perfectly. Some take a particular negative view arguing that the education system is designed with the intentions of causing the social reproduction of inequality.

Topic 2: Background of the subject sociology: A systematic sociology of education began with basic for organic solidarity and that by

work on moral education as a , on the Chinese literati as an instrument of

political control. It was after the Second World War, however, that the subject received renewed interest around the world, from technological functionalism in the US, egalitarian reform of opportunity in Europe, and human-capital theory in economics. These all applied that, with industrialization, the need for a technologically-skilled labour force undermines class distinctions and other ascriptive system systems of stratification, and that education promotes social mobility. However, statistical and field research across numerous societies showed a persistent link between and individual’s social class and achievement and suggested that education could only achieve limited social mobility. Sociological studies showed how schooling patterns reflected rather than challenged, class stratification and racial and sexual discrimination. After general collapse of functionalism from late 1960s onwards the idea of education as an unmitigated good was even more profoundly challenged. Neo-Marxists argued that school education simply produced a docile labour-force essential to late-capitalist class relation.

Topic 3: Some Great Sociologists of the World: There are a lot of great sociologist of the world, a few discussed below:

(a) Pierre Bourdieu was a

ociologists, anthropologist, philosopher, and a champion of the

anti-globalisation movement, whose work spanned a broad range of subjects from anthropology to art, literature, education, language, cultural tastes and television. Bourdieu’s most famous book is the Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (1984). It was named one of the 20th century’s 10th most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association. Pierre Bourdieu was born in a

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His father was a village postmaster. At school Bounrdieu was bright student but also gained fame as star rugby player. He moved to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole normale superieure - his classmate was the philosopher

ourdieu became interested in Merleau-Ponty,

Husserl- Heidegger’s being at a time he had read earlier and also in the writings of the you ng Marx for academic reasons. His thesis from 1953 was a translation and commentary of the Animadversiones of Leibniz. After attaining a agrege in philosophy, Bourdieu worked as a teacher for one year and was then drafted into the army. He served for two years in Algeria, where French troops tried to crush the Algerian rebels. In 1959-60 he lectured at the University of Algiers and studied traditional farming and ethnic Berber culture. “I thought of myself as a philosopher and it took me a very long time to admit to myself that I had become an ethnologist,” Bourdieu once again said. In 1960 he returned to France as a self taught anthropologist. Bourdieu married in 1962 Mare-Claire Brisard. He studied anthropology and sociology and taught at the University of Paris 1960 62 and at the University of Lille 1962-64. In 1964 he joined the faculty of the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes. In 1968 he became director of the Centre de Sociologie Europeenne, where with a group of colleagues he embarked on pioneering extension collective research on problems concerned with the maintenance of the system of power by means of transmission of a dominant culture. One of the central in the affirmation of differences between social classes and the reproduction of those differences. In La Reproduction (1970) Bourdieu argued that the French educational system reproduces the cultural division of society. He also implied a correspondence between “symbolic violence” of pedagogic actions and the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of physical violence. Key terms in Bourdieu’s sociological thought are “social field, capital and habitus. Habitus is adopted through upbringing and education. The concept means on the individual level “ a system of acquired dispositions functioning on the practical level as categories of perception and assessment as well as being the organising principles of action.” Bourdieu argued that the struggle for social distinction is a fundamental dimension of all social life.

(b) Basil Bernstein: Basil Bernstein was born on 1 st November 1924 and died on 24th September 2000. He was a British sociologist and linguist, known for his work in the sociology of education. He was born 9

into a Jewish immigrant family in the East of London. He was late in coming to an academic career gaining a doctorate aged nearly 40,a fter work including teaching and social work. He became of the Karl Mannheim Chair Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University of London. Basil Bernstein made significant contribution to the study of communication with his sociolinguistic theory of language codes. Within the broad category of language codes are elaborated and restricted codes. The term code, is defined by Christie and Martin (2007), “refers to a set of organising principles behind the language employed by members of a social group”. Christie and Martin (2007) suggest that Bernstein’s theory shows how the language people use in everyday conversation both reflects and shapes the assumptions of a certain social group. Furthermore, relationships established within the social group affect the way that group uses language and the type of speech that is used. Bernstein’s “code theory” in the sociology has undergone considerable development since the early 1970s and now enjoys a growing influence in both education and linguistics, especially among systemic functional linguists. Moton and Muller (2007) described how Bernstein argues that different positions that influence the ability of these groups to succeed in schools. These social positions create as later put it.” different modalities of communication differentially valued by school and differentially affective in it, because of the school’s values, modes of practice and relations with its different communities” (Sadovnik, 1995). The notion was codified first in terms of “classification” and “faming”, where classification conceptualises relations of control within these contexts and practices and their relations to the dispositions- coding orientation brought to education by different social groups.

(c) Charles Binwell: Charles Bidwell is a sociologist and the William Claude Reavis Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He is best known for his contributions to the sociology of education. His research topics have been included in the formal and informal organisation of schools, the role of schools in society and how their role has changed over time. Bidwell is a past editor of the American Journal of Sociology, the sociology of education and the American Journal of Education. In 2007, he received the Willard Waller Award in recognition of his career of distinguished scholarship. 10

Some of his Selected Publication: 

The Collegial Focus and student Achievement : Consequences of High School Faculty Social Organisation for students. Achievement in Mathematics and Science, Sociology of Education 74 (2001)

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The School as a Formal Organisation: In Handbook of Organisation (Ed) James G March, Chicago: Rand McNally (1965).

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The organisation and its Ecosystem: A theory of structuring in organisation, Greenwich, Conn, London: JAI Press

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School as context and construction: A Social Psychological Approach to study of schooling, In Handbook of the Sociology of Education Ed. Hallinan, M. T. (2000).

(d) Michael Apple (Born 1942): Michael Apple is a leading critical educational theories, recognised for numerous books and scholarly interests, which centre o education and power, cultural politics, curriculum theory and research, critical teaching and development of democratic schools. He is currently the John Bascom professor of curriculum, instruction and educational policy studies, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, where he has taught since 1970. Before completing his Ed-D at Teachers College, Columbia University, Apple taught in elementary and secondary schools in New Jersey, where he grew up, as well as served as president of his teachers union. For more than three decades Apple has worked with educators, unions, dissident groups and governments throughout the world on democratising educational policy and practice.

(e) Some of his selected works: 

Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God and inequality. (2nd Ed) NY: Routledge,

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2006.

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Idiology of curriculum, 25th anniversary (3rd Ed) NY: Routledge 2004.

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The State and politics of education, NY: Routledge 2003.

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Cultural politics and education, NY: Teachers College Press, 1996.

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Education and power, (2nd Ed), NY: Routledge, 1995.

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(e) James S. Coleman: James Coleman was an American sociologist. He was born on 12th May 1926 at a plce called Berdford, IN. He died on 25th March 1995 in Chicago, IL. The cause of his death is unspecified. James Coleman was a sociologist and professor who worked at the University of Chicago 195659; John Hopkins University 1959-73 and University of Chicago 1973 upwards. He was a member of National Academy of science; American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy...