Agencies of Socialisation

Another day, another PowerPoint Presentation.

And this time its “All About The Agencies”

The Presentation identifies a range of primary and secondary socialising agencies (family, peers, education, workplace, media and religion to be precise) and provides some simple information / examples for each in five categories:

Behaviour

Roles

Norms

Values

Sanctions.

If this sounds a bit complicated, it’s really not.

The complicated bit was designing and compiling the slides, but since you’re unlikely to be very interested in the trials and tribulations involved in creating a monstrous, vaguely-interactive, PowerPoint Presentation with sliding menu, it’s probably best to move on.

The basic ideas behind the Presentation were two-fold:

Firstly, to develop a simple, consistent, way for students to understand the role and function of different socialising agencies – hence the fact each agency is considered in terms of the same 5 categories – as an early attempt to introduce the notion of transferrable concepts.

This is the idea that if you can remember a concept or, in this instance, set of related concepts, that can be applied in one context (such as the family as socialising agency) you may also be able to apply the same concept/s in another context (such as the media as socialising agency).

If students can grasp this idea early in their course it will stand them in good stead at the end of the course.

Secondly, and somewhat less ambitiously, the main idea underlying the Presentation was to present an example or two in each category for each agency (such as Family Values or Religious Norms) that could be used as discussion prompts. Students could use the proffered examples as a way of both generating their own examples and, if you have the time and inclination, taking them a little more deeply into the topic.

For example, while the conventional way of looking at agencies of socialisation is to divide them into two groups – primary and secondary – is this always as simple as it seems?

Education, for example, is frequently cited as a secondary socialising agency (which it is) – but it may also contain primary socialising elements (embodied in the relationship between teachers and pupils or pupils and pupils).

Oh yes.

And before I forget I’ve used an experimental “glass interface” for the Presentation.

It may not be to everyone’s taste but I felt like mixing things up a bit.