First Part of the assignment
First Part of the assignment
Research proposal/essay plan (450 words, worth 10% of your overall mark) - due 13 May 2022 @ 23:59 (ACST) via Learnonline
The third course assignment is a research proposal in the form of an essay plan. Completion of this essay plan is intended to help you complete the major essay, which is the final and most substantial piece of assessment for the course.
To get started on your essay plan, you will first need to obtain a detailed understanding of what the major essay assignment constitutes. The major essay assignment description contains instructions about how to choose a suitable main topic to write on. Once you have carefully followed these instructions and decided what will be the main topic of your essay, then you are ready to produce an essay plan for it.
Your essay plan must contain the following elements and it must adhere to the following structure:
Title
Your essay plan needs to give your major essay a title, which succinctly describes what your major essay is about.
Sources
Your essay plan needs to list, using the UniSA Harvard referencing style guide (https://lo.unisa.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=930824), 5 scholarly sources which your essay will engage with to address its main topic. These texts should all be academic sources. They can be refereed journal articles, book chapters from edited volumes, and scholarly books, such as monographs. But Wikipedia, news articles, book reviews, and other non-scholarly sources should not be listed in your essay plan. You are also not permitted to list any sources that come from a textbook, which includes the assigned chapters from the textbooks you have read for the course.Please note the five sociological sources you identify here in your essay plan should be thought of as a starting point. When it comes time to write your major essay, you will need to cite and engage with more to satisfy the major essay assignment requirements.
For information about how to locate and search for scholarly sources in sociology, it may be helpful to consult this resource produced by the UniSA Library team: https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/sociology/findresources
Thesis statement
Your essay plan needs to briefly describe what your major essay intends to focus on and what it intends to argue. This is captured in your thesis statement. One way to produce an effective thesis statement is to complete the following sentence: In this essay, it will be argued that...'
Your thesis statement must demonstrate that you have competently followed the instructions provided for the major essay assignment. It must state clearly which topic from the pre-set list of topics you have chosen to write on. Your thesis statement must specify which sociological concepts you will be using to explain how your topic can be analysed from more than one sociological perspective. The concepts you choose must be taken from two separate weeks of the course.
Possible main points (x 3)
In addition to producing a thesis statement, your essay plan will also need to state 3 main points your essay will make. All of these main pointsshould have a clear link to your thesis statement and they should be unique from one another.
After each of your 3 main points, you need to write a short paragraph. These 3 paragraphs need to accuratelydiscuss how the scholarly sources you identified earlier support or have bearing on the main points you are making.
Please note that while your essay plan is intended to help you complete your major essay assignment, you are not bound to follow it when it comes time to produce your major essay. You are even permitted to change its main topic, although in some cases this is not recommended.
There is a word target of 450 words for this assignment, with a 10% allowance for going either over or under.Your essay plan must be largely written in your own words, with direct quoting kept to a minimum. Your essay plan must follow the UniSA Harvard referencing style guide (https://lo.unisa.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=930824).Your essay plan must be word processed in a 12 point font (e.g., Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman) with 1.5 line spacing. You must submit your assignment via Learnonline as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx), which can be run through the Turnitin text comparison software program.More information about this assignment can be found on the Learnonline course website. Under the assignment description section, you can find a link to a sample essay plan, which clearly demonstrates the format your essay plan needs to adhere to.
To make sure your essay plan has fulfilled all of the assignment requirements, please note that there is an assignment checklist via the Learnonline course website you can access. You are also encouraged to look at the feedback proforma sheet, which lists the criteria that will be used to mark your essay plan.
Please note the due date of this assignment has changed since the start of the Study Period. This assignment was originally due on 6 May 2022 but the Course Coordinator has decided to grant all students a blanket 1-week extension. The essay plan is now due on 13 May 2022 at 23:59 (ACST). Please note that students do not need to do anything for this change to take effect. The new deadline is now reflected in the Course Outline, and updates have been made to the Learnonline course website.
Research proposal/essay plan Assignment
Word count:
Essay title: How can inequality in the modern workplace be recognised and what are its effects on employees.
Sources
Lareau, A 2015, Cultural knowledge and social inequality, American Sociological Review, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 127.
Kalev, A & Deutsch, G 2018, Gender Inequality and Workplace Organizations: Understanding reproduction and change, Springer, USA.
Cech, EA, Rothwell, William, R, 2020, 'LGBT workplace inequality in the federal workforce: Intersectional processes, organizational contexts, and turnover considerations, Industrial & labor relations review, vol.73, no. 1, p.25-60.
Valerie, C & Stefanos, N 2018, Hidden inequalities in the workplace a guide to the current challenges, issues and business solutions, Springer, Nottingham, UK.
Gray, B, Kish-Gephart, JJ 2013, Encountering social class differences at work: How "class work" perpetuates inequality, The Academy of Management review, vol. 38, no. 4, p. 670-699.
Thesis Statement
In this essay, the influence of LGBT, gender and class on workplace inequality will be discussed.
Possible Main Points
Main point #1- How identifying as LGBT results in inequality in the workplace.
According to Cech et la. (2020, p. 25) LGBT employees face workplace inequality and encounter biases. This means that their workplace experiences on a daily basis are of lower quality than their other workmates. Identifying as LGBT can lead to a person being devalued by others leading to negative beliefs about a persons competence and worthiness (Cech et la. 2020, p. 27-28). The situation is even worse for LGBT people of colour. In addition, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women may also have worse workplace experiences than gay, bisexual, and transgender men (Cech et la. 2020, p. 35-36). LGBT employees are more likely to resign from their job and therefore, the organisation could be losing a talented employee. In addition, there is a link between employee satisfaction and worker productivity (Cech et la. 2020, p. 55-56).
Main point #2- Gender and its effect on inequality in the workplace.
There are gender inequalities between men and women in the workforce (Valerie & Stefanos 2018, p. 189). One of these is pay discrimination and this can be connected with the fact that many women because of household commitments work part time (Valerie & Stefanos 2018, p. 190). As women are more likely to use flexible working arrangements including part time work this puts them more at risk of the negative effect of a more flexiblelised labour market (Valerie & Stefanos 2018, p. 194). Another inequality faced by women in the workforce is sexual harassment (Kalev & Deutsch 2018, p. 262). This can have negative effects on their wellbeing, work performance and career advancement (Kalev & Deutsch 2018, p. 262). When an organisation downsizes, or outsources women are more likely to lose their jobs because these jobs are more devalued and less tenured (Kalev & Deutsch 2018, p. 263). When this happens, these women are usually unemployed longer and when they do find another job it is often with poorer pay and conditions than a job occupied by a male (Kalev & Deutsch 2018, p. 265).
Main point #3- Employees from lower classes face inequality in the workplace and less prospects for advancement.
Gray & Kish-Gephart (2013, p. 689-690) stated that organisations consider workers in lower-level jobs to have less ability and therefore, they are considered to be less suitable for advancement. This results in these employees being considered less important and gives them less consideration than others (Gray & Kish-Gephart 2013, p. 692). These policies restrict cross-class interactions and create social distance between lower-level employees and other co-workers which results in little opportunity for interaction and creating meaningful relationships (Gray & Kish-Gephart 2013, p. 694-695). Therefore, lower-level employees tend to be given positions of lower value which also reduces their influence and recognition within their organisation. Middle class youth generally gain better and more secure jobs than working class youth (Lareau 2015, p. 3)
Second Part of the assignment
Major essay (2,250 words, worth 50% of your overall mark) - due 24 June 2022 @ 23:59 (ACST) via Learnonline
Sociology aspires to produce a complex and multifaceted understanding of social life. As you have learned throughout this course, it is possible to analyze an issue using more than just one sociological perspective or concept. The goal of the major essay assignment is for you to engage with this aspect of sociology.
In order to complete this assignment, you first need to selectoneof the topics that are listed below. Your major essay needs to develop an argument that demonstrates how the major concepts we covered intwoseparate weeks of this course have bearing on the topic you have chosen to write on.
For example, you might choose to write an essay on howsociological theories of race (as covered in week 9) and sociological understandings of health and illness (as introduced to you in week 11) can help to explain what the social implications of the COVID-19 global pandemic are. Or you might decide to write an essay on how sociological theories of class (as covered in week 5) and sociological perspectives of disability and ageing (as covered in week 8) can deepen our understanding of why some inequalities continue to persist in the modern workplace in Australia. Alternatively, you might opt to write an essay that uses insights from the sociology of gender (as covered in week 6) and the sociology of disability and ageing (as discussed in week 8) to explore how the contemporary design of video games reflects, perpetuates, or challenges some kinds of social inequality.
Your essay must also satisfy these additional requirements. Your essay must:
Produce a title that succinctly describes what your essay is about;Engage with and reference at least8academic sources in sociology, which directly pertain to the subject matter you are writing on;Provide discussion of the strengths and limitations of the theories, studies, and/or approaches that you are engaging with;Provide evidence and/or support for the claims you make;Demonstrate critical thinking and analysis;Contain an introduction that puts forward a thesis statement and sets out what your essay will argue in a clear and concise fashion,
Be structured in a logical and coherent manner, using subheadings as needed;Contain a conclusion that summarizes your argument and makes a closing statement;Avoid excessive quoting and be written mainly in your own words;Follow the UniSA Harvard referencing style guide (https://lo.unisa.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=930824) in your in-text citations and in the reference list you include at the end of your essay;Have numbered pages; &
Stay within 10% of the 2,250 word limit.
Your major essay must be word processed in a 12 point font (e.g., Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman) with 1.5 line spacing. You must submit your assignment via Learnonline as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx), which can be run through the Turnitin text comparison software program.
To make sure your major essay has fulfilled all of the assignment requirements, please note that there is an assignment checklist via the Learnonline course website for you to access. You are also encouraged to look at the feedback proforma sheet, which lists the criteria that will be used to mark your major essay.
List of major essay topics
COVID-19 global pandemic
Video games
Inequality in the modern workplace
