Module 1: Culture and Identity

9 dot points, in syllabus order. Each dot point has a focused answer, with exam-style questions and worked answers where available.

What is culture and how does it shape who we are?

Define culture and explain how its values, beliefs and practices shape individual and group identity in Australian society.

What culture means in Society and Culture, the difference between material and non-material culture, and how shared values, beliefs and practices shape individual and group identity using Australian examples.

6 min read →

How do values and norms hold a society together and keep behaviour predictable?

Explain how values, norms and mechanisms of social control regulate behaviour and maintain social order in Australian society.

How values and norms differ, the types of norms from folkways to laws, and how formal and informal social control maintains social order and responds to deviance in Australian society.

6 min read →

How do individuals learn the culture of their society?

Explain the process of socialisation and the agents that transmit culture, and evaluate how they shape behaviour, values and identity.

How socialisation transmits culture to individuals, the difference between primary and secondary socialisation, the main agents such as family, school, peers and media, and how they shape values, behaviour and identity in Australian society.

6 min read →

How is the self constructed through social interaction and group membership?

Explain how personal and social identity are constructed through interaction, roles and group membership in contemporary Australian society.

How personal and social identity are constructed through socialisation, roles, the looking-glass self and group membership, and how multiple and hybrid identities form in contemporary Australia.

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How does Australia manage cultural diversity and build social cohesion?

Analyse ethnicity, multiculturalism and the factors that build or undermine social cohesion in contemporary Australian society.

What ethnicity and multiculturalism mean, Australia's shift from assimilation to multiculturalism, and the factors such as racism, inclusion and shared values that build or undermine social cohesion.

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How are gender roles socially constructed and how are they changing?

Analyse how gender is socially constructed, how gender roles are transmitted, and how gender shapes opportunity and inequality in Australian society.

The difference between sex and gender, how gender roles are socially constructed and transmitted through socialisation, and how gender shapes inequality and is changing in contemporary Australia.

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How do popular culture and the media shape values, identity and behaviour?

What popular culture and the media are, how they act as agents of socialisation, the difference between high and popular culture, media representation and agenda setting, and their effect on Australian identity.

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How are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures sustained and what challenges do they face?

Analyse the nature, continuity and contemporary situation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australian society.

The nature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, connection to Country, kinship and language, the impact of colonisation, and contemporary issues of recognition, self-determination and reconciliation.

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How and why is the structure and role of the family changing in Australian society?

Analyse the family as a social institution, the diversity of family forms, and how and why family structures are changing in Australia.

The family as a social institution, its functions, the diversity of family forms in Australia, and how and why family structures have changed under social, economic and legal forces.

6 min read →