The BSA Applied Sociology Group curriculum in applied sociology has been developed as a free resource for UK higher education institutions.
Why this curriculum?
Sociology is foundationally a subject that faces outward: toward a world of people and their social groups, organisations and institutions; toward the natural and built environment that people inhabit; toward the ideas, beliefs, values and norms that people use to constitute their social worlds on a day-to-day basis; and toward the processes of power and resistance that mark out both divisions, stabilities and continual change within society.
Applied sociology
In the US and some other countries, sociologists are regularly making use of their specialist knowledge to address not only the big problems that face society, but also the daily issues that need addressing at work, at home or in the community. There they call this work ‘clinical sociology’. Here in the UK, we are calling it ‘applied sociology’.
We are launching this curriculum in applied sociology because we consider that sociologists have the concepts, the theories and detailed knowledge of organisations and human interactions to both explain and improve many everyday situations, from the gender pay gap to the effects of climate change on well-being and health.
Read letter of support from president of the US Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology.
Free to UK higher education
The curriculum pack we have developed is the outline for an undergraduate unit in applied sociology, probably to be studied in the third year of a degree. It is the outcome of six months’ work by the British Sociological Association (BSA) Sociologists outside Academia special interest group.
Please explore the curriculum by using the links on the right of this page. Staff at UK higher education institutions may download the curriculum as a pdf or Word document. However you will be asked to first register, giving basic information about yourself and your institution. We require this so we can keep a record of who is assessing the downloads.