01 Section A, Key question 2 - Lifelong socialisation and its agencies (part 1)

Learning culture through socialisation

Socialisation is the process through which people learn the culture, expectations and ways of participating in their social world.

It involves more than being sociable or spending time with friends. Learning how to address a teacher, care for a relative or behave in a new job can all involve socialisation. A norm is an expectation about behaviour, such as waiting your turn. A value is a broader idea about what matters, such as fairness. A social role is the set of expectations attached to a position, such as student, parent or colleague. Socialisation helps people learn these expectations and their meanings.

These processes overlap. A young child may learn everyday manners from a carer while also learning how to share equipment at nursery. Secondary socialisation can therefore begin during childhood; it does not start at a fixed birthday or mean “secondary school”. Family influence does not disappear when someone enters school or becomes an adult. The distinction concerns the kind of learning and its social setting, rather than a universal age boundary.

An agency of socialisation is a group, organisation or social institution through which this learning happens. The family is a central agency of primary socialisation; the wider agencies are particularly important for secondary socialisation. Agencies teach deliberately, but also through ordinary routines. People observe behaviour, try it themselves, discuss its meaning, and receive approval or correction. Over time, they may internalise an expectation: accept it as their own, so they follow it even without someone checking.

Identity concerns how people understand who they are and how others recognise them. Learning a role can contribute to identity: someone who learns to organise and encourage a team may begin to see themselves as a leader. However, behaving as expected in one situation does not prove a person privately accepts that identity or value.

Family relationships and early identities

Family relationships can make cultural expectations familiar through close, repeated interaction and everyday care.

Children may learn a language by hearing and using it with carers. They can learn what counts as polite by watching how relatives greet one another and receiving explanations or praise when they try it. Regular participation matters: a value such as responsibility becomes concrete when family members show a child how to help with a shared task. This is socialisation because the child is learning the meaning and expectations of participation, rather than merely completing a physical action.

Consider this original teaching example. A grandmother teaches a child a family recipe, explains why it is prepared for a celebration, and invites the child to teach a younger cousin. The child learns a skill and the value placed on sharing it. Being treated as a knowledgeable family member can also strengthen a sense of belonging to that family or cultural tradition. The mechanism links interaction, learned meaning and identity; “the family influences identity” alone leaves that link unexplained.

Family socialisation varies across households and social circumstances. It can involve siblings, grandparents, foster carers and other caring relationships, as well as parents. It does not require one particular family structure. Relatives can disagree about expectations, and children may challenge them or introduce practices learned elsewhere.

Annette Lareau's 2002 US study used interviews and observations concerning 88 children aged 8–10 and their families, including intensive home observations of 12 families. Data were gathered in stages between 1989 and 1997. In the middle-class families studied, organised activities and reasoning with children commonly encouraged confidence in questioning adults. Working-class and poor families more often used direct instructions and left children to organise their own leisure. Lareau connected these practices to different ways of interacting with professionals. This illustrates how daily relationships can build a sense of what a child may expect or ask for. It does not show that one class loves its children more, or that all families within a class act alike. The small, non-random cases reveal processes rather than establish representative rates for all US or UK families. Lareau, Invisible Inequality

Family influence also continues in adulthood. An adult learning to care for an older relative may discuss responsibilities with siblings and revise their sense of themselves as a carer. Ongoing family influence should not automatically be labelled primary socialisation: the foundational early process and later learning of new roles are different things.

Peer groups and education

Peer groups and education can socialise the same person in different ways, even when the interaction happens in the same school.

A peer group consists of people of broadly similar age or social position who interact with one another. It can exist among children, students or adults. Peers often make belonging important. Members learn shared speech, tastes and expectations by participating, observing respected members, and responding to approval or disapproval. This influence can encourage cooperation or confidence; it is not necessarily harmful “peer pressure”. Group members can develop expectations together rather than receive a finished set of rules from an adult.

In an original teaching example, members of a music group show a newcomer how to give constructive feedback and praise them for helping another performer. The newcomer learns the group's expectation of mutual support and may come to identify as a reliable band member. They might still disagree with the group's preferred musical style. Membership does not require copying every preference, and a person can belong to several peer groups.

Education socialises through teachers, organised learning, assessment and institutional routines. Explicit lessons may teach shared knowledge or discuss citizenship and responsibility. Teachers can model how to justify a claim, and feedback can encourage a learner to see themselves as capable of independent thought. School or college routines also communicate expectations about time, authority, cooperation and achievement.

For example, a timetable requires learners to organise themselves around agreed times. Repeated participation can teach punctuality and the student role without a formal lesson called “punctuality”. A group project can communicate cooperation, while competitive awards may communicate the importance of individual achievement. Different educational settings can place different emphasis on these values. The hidden curriculum is not necessarily a secret plan: the term identifies learning that occurs through institutional practice.

The two agencies can reinforce or conflict with each other. Peers might praise preparation for a lesson, supporting the school's expectations, or reward joking during a discussion, challenging them. In the second case, a learner may face competing identities as an approved student and an entertaining friend. A teacher's action illustrates education; classmates negotiating expectations illustrate the peer group. Location alone does not tell you which agency is operating. Institutional account of socialising agencies

Media and religious communities

Media and religion can provide cultural meanings and role models that connect personal choices to wider communities.

The media include channels such as television, film, news and digital platforms that circulate information and representations. A representation is a way of portraying a person, group or situation. A story may show which behaviour is admired, what kinds of people are treated as successful, and what choices appear possible. These portrayals can provide models with which audiences identify, even without face-to-face contact with the people shown.

In an original teaching example, a series repeatedly portrays men caring for children as skilled and respected. A viewer may draw on these portrayals to imagine caregiving as part of a masculine identity. That is a possible socialising mechanism; it is not evidence that watching the series necessarily changes every viewer. Audiences select material and interpret it using previous experiences. A viewer may welcome, ignore or criticise the portrayal. Family discussions and peer responses can affect what it means to them.

Digital communication also involves overlapping agencies. A creator's public video is media content, while friends discussing it and deciding what is acceptable are acting as a peer group. People can produce content as well as consume it, contributing new models or challenging existing ones. The socialising influence is therefore more complicated than a message being placed into an otherwise empty mind.

Religion can socialise through teachings about right conduct, participation in rituals, relationships with religious leaders and the practices of a community. A ritual is a repeated, meaningful practice, such as a ceremony or shared act of worship. Participation can connect a person to a history and community and help them understand themselves as a member of a faith. Repeated shared activity makes an abstract value part of everyday experience.

In an original teaching example, a religious community explains an obligation to help others, organises a food collection, and welcomes a young volunteer into its team. Teaching communicates the value; participation gives it practical meaning; recognition can strengthen an identity as a responsible member of that community. This does not imply that charity belongs only to religious people. Secular organisations can teach the same value through other settings.

Religious beliefs and practices differ within and between traditions, and people vary in how they participate. Some accept inherited beliefs, some reinterpret them and some leave or join a community later in life. Religion is often discussed as a secondary agency, but a young child may first encounter religious meanings through primary socialisation in the family. The family relationship and the religious institution can work together; they are not mutually exclusive boxes.

Workplace learning across the life course

The workplace shows why adults continue to learn social expectations after their initial family and educational experiences.

Work involves more than learning technical tasks. A new worker must also discover expectations about communicating with colleagues, dealing with customers, asking for help and accepting responsibility. A formal induction may explain procedures explicitly. Colleagues can model behaviour, offer feedback, tell stories about respected workers, or informally indicate what the team values. These experiences can develop an occupational identity, a sense of oneself as a particular kind of worker or professional.

Consider this original teaching example. An apprentice in a repair workshop learns a checking procedure from a trainer, watches experienced colleagues admit mistakes, and receives praise for reporting a fault. The apprentice learns that carefulness and honesty are valued parts of the role. This may support an identity as a responsible craftsperson. If colleagues instead ridicule people who ask questions, the informal group may communicate a competing expectation. The official training and everyday workplace culture need not agree.

This is secondary socialisation because the worker is learning expectations in a setting beyond their initial family context. Adults may bring earlier habits into work, but those habits are not always sufficient for a new role. A promotion can require a person who previously followed instructions to learn how to guide colleagues. Changing occupation can require different ways of speaking and judging priorities. A workplace is therefore not just where an already completed identity is displayed; it can help reshape that identity.

The life course is the sequence of experiences and transitions through a person's life. Becoming a parent or carer, joining a community, migrating, returning to education and retiring can all involve learning expectations. These are possibilities, not a compulsory sequence that everyone follows. An older person learning how a new online community communicates is also experiencing socialisation. Family and peers remain influential, and adults can teach younger people while learning from them.

Sometimes a transition involves revising expectations previously learned. Resocialisation means learning new norms, values or roles that replace or substantially modify earlier ones. It does not require complete loss of an earlier identity, and not every small skill learned in a job amounts to resocialisation. For example, moving from a tightly supervised role to one demanding independent judgement could involve reconsidering an established habit of waiting for permission. Other transitions mainly extend or reinforce earlier learning. Socialisation across the life course

Negotiating expectations and identities

People can interpret and negotiate social expectations, so socialisation shapes identities without mechanically producing identical people.

Agency is the capacity to act, make choices and influence a situation. It is different from an agency of socialisation, which means a socialising group or institution. Having agency does not mean unlimited freedom: people face different resources, opportunities and pressures. It means their response cannot be reduced to automatic copying.

Agencies may reinforce one another. A family, school and friendship group that each encourage reading offer repeated opportunities and recognition for developing a reader identity. Alternatively, they may communicate conflicting expectations. In an original teaching example, a family values security in a familiar occupation, while teachers encourage a learner to apply for a new course and online creators present stories of changing careers. The learner might choose the family occupation, choose the course, or combine training with work. Any choice needs explanation through the learner's interpretation, circumstances and relationships; the mere existence of three influences does not predict the outcome.

People can also negotiate identities within an agency. Someone may value belonging to a religious community while questioning a particular local practice, or value friendship while refusing an activity their friends propose. They can retain parts of an identity and revise others. Changing a response does not establish that earlier socialisation had no effect: it may have supplied the language, values or confidence used to challenge a demand.

To explain a socialising influence, connect the agency, the process of learning, and the identity it may help create. For instance, “the workplace affects identity” names only an influence. Explaining that experienced colleagues model careful judgement, recognise a newcomer for using it, and help that person see themselves as a competent worker supplies a mechanism. A qualified conclusion then recognises that the newcomer may reject some expectations or face conflicting messages.

This distinction also matters when considering evidence. Observing a shared taste or behaviour does not by itself prove which agency caused it. Similar friends may influence each other, but people may also choose friends with interests they already share. A plausible explanation therefore identifies the interaction through which learning could occur and remains open to other influences. This makes socialisation an account of a social process, rather than a label attached to any similarity between people.