Praxis Sociology study plan

Define the sociological perspective and distinguish it from psychological and journalistic explanations of behavior

Identify and give a fresh example of each of the three major theoretical paradigms: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism

Explain the contributions of founding figures such as Comte, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber and match each to the paradigm they most influenced

Distinguish microsociology from macrosociology and place each paradigm on that continuum

Differentiate status, role, role set, role conflict, and role strain with original workplace examples

Classify social groups into primary, secondary, in-group, out-group, and reference groups

Contrast Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and apply the distinction to a contemporary community

Identify the components of culture including norms, values, beliefs, symbols, and language

Distinguish material from nonmaterial culture and ethnocentrism from cultural relativism

Compare the agents of socialization and rank their influence across the life course

Explain Cooley's looking-glass self and Mead's I and Me with a concrete example of each

Distinguish primary from secondary socialization and resocialization from anticipatory socialization

Apply Goffman's dramaturgical model by identifying front stage, back stage, and impression management in a familiar setting

Describe how total institutions produce mortification of the self

Distinguish quantitative from qualitative designs and match each to an appropriate research question

Compare surveys, experiments, field research, and secondary data analysis on cost, validity, and generalizability

Define independent and dependent variables, operationalization, and spurious correlation

Explain reliability, validity, sampling error, and the logic of random sampling

Identify violations of research ethics and the function of institutional review boards

Compare the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist explanations of stratification

Distinguish caste, class, and estate systems and define social mobility types including intergenerational and structural mobility

Interpret a table of income quintile shares and describe the trend in your own words

Explain how race, ethnicity, gender, and age intersect to shape life chances

Compute and interpret a basic percentage and rate from a small dataset

Describe the core functions and manifest versus latent consequences of family, education, religion, and the economy

Explain how the hidden curriculum and credentialism operate in schools

Compare theoretical perspectives on religion including the sacred and profane and secularization

Identify how media and medicine function as institutions shaping norms

Analyze one institutional problem using two competing paradigms

Distinguish collective behavior from social movements and crowds from mobs

Compare contagion, convergence, and emergent norm theories of crowd behavior

Identify the stages of a social movement and the difference between reform, revolutionary, and resistance movements

Explain modernization, dependency, and world-systems views of global change

Describe how technology and demography drive social change

Synthesize all seven domains into a single outline linking theory, method, and application

Diagnose and repair your three weakest concepts from earlier weeks

Practice timed multiple-choice sets and justify each answer choice

Draft and revise thesis-style free-response answers using concept, example, and application structure