High School Block:

Sociology 120

Sociology 120 is a humanities course that provides a systematic way of understanding the structures that run our daily lives. The course explores how people behave and live their lives, and why. Learners will apply social theories to current events, pervasive social issues and urgent social problems at local, national, and international levels. In this course, learners will address the challenges facing their communities and examine research and lived experiences that can inform solutions to these problems. The course is framed by care and concern for society as a whole and focuses on our responsibilities to and for one another. It is for any learner open to challenging their perspectives and analyzing social aspects of the world.

The goal of the course is to support learner socialization in a rapidly changing world and introduce them to the social structures that frame that socialization. In this course, learners will encounter and engage with multiple perspectives and worldviews to support their informed and critical engagement in public life. Sociology 120 promotes open dialogue on societal issues, providing learners with the tools to understand the social world. Learners will explore quantitative and qualitative analytical methods for exploring sociological theories in the context of their lives, including research methodologies and ethics. This course will challenge learner perspectives on the social world in a safe environment, provide structure to have civil dialogue across difference, and create opportunities for learners to express their views. Learners will examine where social beliefs come from, engage with concepts that explain social structure and power (e.g. decolonization). 

CONTEXTS AND CONCEPTS

Sociology as a discipline

  • How knowledge is produced
  • What is a discipline?
  • Research methods
  • Research ethics
  • The sociological imagination
Sociological Perspectives

  • Social theory
  • Early and contemporary sociological thinkers, e.g: Robert K. Merton, Durkheim, Weber, George Herbert Mead, Marx, C. Wright-Mills, Martineau, Du Bois, Dorothy Smith
  • The role of urbanization and industrialization in the development of sociological thinking
  • The four contemporary sociological perspectives: functionalist, symbolic interactionist, conflict, feminist
Socialization

  • Stage theory
  • The continuum of structure-agency
  • The agents of socialization: family, school, peer groups, mass media and gender
  • The components of culture: language, values, norms, and symbols
  • Legislated or formal social structures (e.g. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms)
  • Cultural or informal social structures (e.g. social class)
  • Social interactions (norms and values)
  • Social movements (e.g. voting rights for women)
Social inequality

  • Systems theory
  • Race and anti-racism
  • Colonialism and decolonization
  • Sex and gender
  • Patriarchy
  • Capitalism and alternative economic models
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GRADE 12

Strand: Humanities

Big Idea: Sociology as a discipline

Skill Descriptor: Explain sociology as a discipline.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Discuss how knowledge is produced
  • Examine sociological research methods
  • Explain research ethics

Skill Descriptor: Discuss the concept of the sociological imagination.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS, SASM

Achievement Indicators:

  • Define the concept of the sociological imagination
  • Explain the sociological imagination in the context of a social issue
  • Connect a personal problem with larger societal forces

Big Idea: Sociological Perspectives

Skill Descriptor: Explain the key ideas of early sociological thinkers.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Identify the core ideas of early sociological thinkers
  • Distinguish between the key ideas of early thinkers of sociology

Skill Descriptor: Discuss the four contemporary sociological perspectives.

Global Competencies: CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Distinguish between the four contemporary sociological perspectives
  • Analyze an example provided using the four perspectives

Skill Descriptor: Apply sociological perspectives to a current event or societal issue.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Make a claim about the causes of a current social issue based on a specific sociological perspective
  • Support that claim with evidence using that sociological lens

Big Idea: Socialization

Skill Descriptor: Discuss the role socialization plays in human development.

Global Competencies: CM

Achievement Indicators:

  • Define socialization
  • Explain the agents of socialization
  • Describe theoretical perspectives on socialization

Skill Descriptor: Assess socialization as a lifelong process.

Global Competencies: CM, SASM, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Explain stage theory
  • Reflect and report on how agents of socialization have impacted oneself
  • Discuss the changes in roles/rules/relationships that humans experience throughout their lifetime.

Skill Descriptor: Assess social structure as a means of social control.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Explain the components of social structure
  • Describe how social interaction occurs at either a micro or macro level
  • Examine social movements that resist, uphold, or extend social norms

Big Idea: Social Inequalities

Skill Descriptor: Explore how the concepts of race, sex and gender, and economic structures operate in our lives and the lives of others

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS, SASM, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Explain systems theory
  • Define race, sex, gender, and capitalism
  • Explain how these social constructs can create equality or inequality
  • Examine how these social constructs are related and influence one another
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