Why does the average man living in Blackpool live 12 years less than a man living in the City of London? Why are there more young black men in prison in the USA than in college? Why do the richest 80 people in the world have the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population? These are the kinds of questions that a sociologist seeks to answer. Sociology is extremely diverse in its content and at A level students will get a real taste of the range of different topic areas. You will study topics as varied as educational inequality, mental illness and crimes committed by the state. The key to success at A level, however, lies in developing a ‘sociological imagination’; that is, to develop an appreciation of the unique perspective sociologists adopt when attempting to explain human behaviour and human societies. This will involve delving beyond common sense and through adopting a rigorous methodological and theoretical analysis of social issues. As a sociologist, you need to be able to appreciate the limits of your own experiences and to construct explanations which are appreciative of the strengths and weaknesses of different viewpoints. In the first year, you will study all the topics from Paper 1 and half of the topics from Paper 2. Education involves studying issues such as the structure and functions of education, the relationship between social class, gender and educational achievement as well as the impact of educational reform on educational inequality. Research Methods involves reviewing the different ways of designing and implementing sociological research, the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of data collection and their relationship to sociological theory. In Health, you will examine issues such as sociological explanations of systematic variations in patterns of health by social class, gender, ethnicity and age, while Families and Households involves examining variations in family types, the functions of the family and trends in marriage and divorce. In the second year, you will study the remainder of the Paper 2 topics and all the topics from Paper 3. Global Development examines issues such as sociological explanations of global inequalities, and variations in global patterns of development, trade and aid. Beliefs in Society will involve studying topics such as the functions of religion, new religious movements and the decline in religious belief. The Media explores the sociological explanations for the role of media, globalisation and popular culture, and how media represent age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability in their presentations and different audiences. In Crime and Deviance, you will look at issues such as different sociological explanations of the causes of crime, the social distribution of criminality by social class, sex and ethnicity and associated sociological explanations. Finally, with Sociological Theory, you will examine the key concepts associated with the major perspectives in sociology.