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A variety of assessment tools have been proposed to evaluate the sociology curriculum. This article analyses the validity of assessment tools and their impact on the quality of assessment. An alternative to formal tests is the use of a bachelor's paper as the assessment tool. Here the author proposes that such a paper is an appropriate means of assessment for the individual sociology student and for the program as a whole. The bachelor's paper is simply the student's attempt to use the theoretical and methodological tools of his or her discipline to address a substantively important topic. This can help in realizing the areas of the curriculum that need reforms. The bachelor's paper has several advantages as an assessment tool. First, if critical thinking and the ability to conduct and combine library and empirical research are goals of the program, a cumulative research experience is sensible. The second advantage of the bachelor's paper as assessment is that greater depth of theoretical knowledge can be encouraged in a paper than in most test formats.

This article provides sociology instructors with some useful tips for constructing an activity log, which directs students from point to point in the process of writing a sociologically oriented term paper. According to the author, papers written for sociology courses must incorporate principles of sociological theory, concepts and methodology. Therefore, in guiding students through a step-by-step developmental process for writing a sociological term paper, various objectives should be taken into consideration. The paper should engage students in exploring ideas and materials taught throughout the term. It should expose students to social reality and enhance their familiarity with the application of sociological concepts. It should teach students how to apply principles of sociological theory and methods to the social phenomena being explored and encourage students to formulate propositions that make sense of facts and that can be applied to their own experiences. The paper should also expand the knowledge of students beyond the frame of the assigned readings and enhance their writing creativity.

The article comments on film-making process. The film-making process requires that a person reduce an abstract idea to a visual form. One must be able to visualize people doing something and then capture that on film. In one sense, film-making is a test of the hypothesis that sociology is a behavioral science. Students should learn how to make theoretically based films for these and the additional reason that thus they can better learn their discipline. By writing a paper, the good student learns his subject. He learns the ideas and that he can control them. But, in writing, he often learns to become a manipulator of words and loses any concern about the behavioral reference they may or may not have. In making a film, however, the student does come face to face with connecting his ideas to human behavior. In film-making, one can delineate a set of roles which, taken together, result in the finished product. There is the producer, the person who has the ultimate responsibility for the film, the one who, nominally at least, has the concept of the entire production.

The article focuses on students as theorists in a criminology course. Teachers of sociology should help their students to understand the sociological perspective and the concepts, theories and research findings of the field. Teachers also should ask students to inquire, to think critically and to endeavor to explain social phenomena systematically. In the introductory criminology course, students learn some of what sociologists know and think about crime and criminal behavior, but generally they experience the study of criminology as spectators rather than as participants. This paper describes an assignment with which teachers encourage students to take an active role in understanding and explaining the causes of crime. The assignment has three main pedagogical objectives. One is to motivate students through active involvement. The second is to encourage a deeper understanding of criminological theories and their implications. The third is to promote critical thinking and higher order cognitive skills such as application, analysis and synthesis.

This article presents the history, organization and benefits of The Nebraska Undergraduate Sociological Symposium (NUSS). Colleges, faculty and students can gain many advantages from participation in a symposium. However, the biggest gain is to the discipline of sociology. Forums where sociological issues are discussed increase public knowledge about sociology. As the results of events such as the symposium, colleges are likely to take a greater interest in sociology because they see the program as able to interest a large number of students. Sociology faculty are likely to feel energized by the symposium and to go into the classroom with a greater desire to get students involved. Students' interest can be heightened by an event like the symposium. Through it they can come to understand that sociology is a broad enterprise that extends beyond the walls of their own institution. In some cases, participation in the symposium has been a critical experience in solidifying a student's decision to enter sociology professionally.

A call for papers on sociology to be published in forthcoming issues is presented.

Instructors of introductory sociology may have difficulty in developing a project for students that is both beneficial and easy to administer and grade. Such a project should be designed to help students develop the functional and transferable skills, which are so important in a workplace. Traditional term papers can help a student to sharpen his or her thinking and writing skills, but these papers may not work in all settings. For instructors with small classes or for graduate teaching assistants, a traditional term paper or other lengthy written assignment is feasible. For instructors with large classes, multiple sections and no assistants, however, grading these written assignments becomes a nightmare. In addition, students may be required to write so many term papers during their college careers that the process becomes mechanical and boring and they may overlook the professor's carefully worded comments of constructive criticism. As a result, students may not develop the very skills that the term paper is intended to develop.

Poetry may be used effectively with other methods of teaching sociology. Poetry offers new insights, stimulates thinking, and contributes to a holistic education when used both in lectures and with paper assignments. Examples are presented of poems used in lectures and of poems integrated into students' papers. The paper examples include both poems written by the students and those selected by the students from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students uncover evidence of the importance of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, in recent sociology by counting citations to these authors in the Social Sciences Citation Index. They evaluate the substantive impact of one of these early giants through content analysis of a sample of articles referencing his work, drawn from the Social Sciences Citation Index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on teaching writing for publication. Most graduate students who seek academic careers know that their future success depends upon their ability to publish. Yet although all successful graduate students learn how to conduct a research study, far fewer leave graduate school with the practical skills needed to turn their research into publishable articles or books. This article describes a course the author taught on writing for scholarly publication. The course had two focuses, teaching how to write clearly and teaching about the business of scholarly publication. The course was open to both graduate students and undergraduate honors students. The latter are required to write theses similar to master's theses, although generally shorter, so all of these students face similar writing tasks and problems. Most of the students, both graduate and undergraduate, desired academic careers. The course was given at Arizona State University, a large commuter school, approximately 30 honors students complete a thesis each semester and approximately 25 graduate students are active in sociology.

This paper argues for an intensive use of microcomputers across an applied research curriculum. This use is justified and guided by five objectives that should be central to such curricula. It is suggested that the necessary resources are within reach of many departments. Finally, the paper reviews several problems and rewards that may result from the implementation of such a program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a joint project of the American Library Association and the American Sociological Association. The goal of this collaboration is to guarantee that students of sociology, particularly sociology majors, develop strong information literacy skills during their undergraduate experience. The article talks about national standards for information literacy and how they relate to the sociology major. It presents examples for applying the sociology information literacy standards to course assignments and the sociology curriculum. We also provide suggestions for building linkages between sociology faculty members and social science librarians, as well as ways in which information literacy outcomes might be assessed in the sociology curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several years, scholars of teaching and learning have demonstrated the potential of collaborative learning strategies for improving student learning. This paper examines the use of computer-mediated communication to promote collaborative student learning in large introductory sociology courses. Specifically, we summarize a project we conducted during the 2000- 2001 academic year in which we added online collaborative learning activities to the curriculum of two large sections of introductory sociology. Drawing on Novak et at `s (1999) Just-In-Time Teaching methods, we developed online activities to he/p prepare students for subsequent in-class work and to cultivate a sense of group solidarity among smaller teams within the larger class. The results suggest that student engagement in the online group learning activities was strongly predictive of better student academic achievement on the biweekly quizzes, cumulative final exam, and course paper. These findings highlight the potential value of online group work for fostering collaborative learning environments in large lecture courses as well as for enhancing student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popular writing-across-the-curriculum approach to teaching better writing skills is examined in this paper. This approach, which encourages professors to require frequent writing while supporting less rigorous grading of the writing, has been promoted as a method of teaching writing without significantly increasing the workload. Pretest and posttest writing assignments were made in 10 sociology classes and in three other classes; these were the only writing assignments made in the three control classes. One to seven additional assignments were made in the other 10 classes. Assignments were graded thoroughly in some classes; in others, only the first page of the writing assignment was graded rigorously. The findings suggest that numerous writing assignments are not sufficient in themselves to produce better writing, but that rigorous grading of the entire writing assignment is the variable which produces writing improvement. Thus the writing-across-the-curriculum approach can be described as an approach which promises more than it can deliver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade and a half well over 100 teaching techniques have appeared in the literature on teaching sociology. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that most instructors still rely predominantly on the standard lecture-discussion format, with minimal opportunity for active involvement by the students in the classroom. Two possible reasons for this discrepancy may be 1) that teachers lack an easily remembered model for making instructional decisions, and 2) that little order has been created out of the plethora of existing teaching techniques. This paper addresses both reasons through a partial review of the literature on sociology teaching techniques within the context of Bloom's taxonomy. Using this well-known model of instructional objectives and the organization of teaching techniques provided in this paper, sociology teachers should be more able to choose active-learning teaching styles to meet specifically determined objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe two teaching techniques that can be used to supplement the standard lecture format in large sections of Sociology of Human Sexuality. The first is the traditional teaching practice of "homework assignments." Five types of assignments that have been used by the first author are described and their benefits to the students and the instructor are outlined. The second technique described is a procedure for having discussion sections when funds and/or graduate students are not available for this purpose. The second author of this paper has developed a system that involves having juniors, seniors, and graduate students who completed the introductory sexuality class take an upper-level sociology class, Sexuality Education. As part of the requirements for this advanced course, each student leads one discussion group that meets weekly throughout the semester. Both techniques are designed to make the course material more meaningful and personalized for the students in introductory sexuality courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology teachers should take a larger role in he/ping students write better. Better student writing improves both the teaching and the learning processes. A program for teaching writing as an integral part of sociology classes is presented. The program has been tested in a variety of courses (from introductory to advanced) with encouraging results. Suggestions for implementation are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One useful, but underutilized, strategy to increase quantitative literacy and promote critical sociological thinking is to have students investigate demographic trends in their local community. In this article, the authors describe a project in which students compare and contrast the demographic characteristics of two counties in their state using the 2000 Census Bureau data, formulate specific research questions using the data they have collected, and draw conclusions about the social influences on local demographic patterns using local media sources and sociological thinking. The authors present results from a quasi-experiment assessing the assignment’s effectiveness in improving quantitative literacy. They also present findings from a general evaluation survey administered to students. Despite the limitations of this study, results suggest that the described assignment increased quantitative literacy as well as encouraged critical sociological thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper arose from a larger study designed to explore what leaders in the field of sociology think are the most important goals and principles for students to understand after taking a college-level introductory course and how they teach those principles. A population of scholarly leaders in sociology was defined by various forms of peer recognition and included elected presidents of national and regional professional associations, recipients of national awards, and recipients of competitive research funding. In 2005 and 2006 we interviewed a sample of 44 leaders to gain an understanding of key principles and how they are taught. We report their teaching strategies and compare their strategies to those of other teachers and the recommendations in McKinney et al. (2004). Although similar in many respects, leaders are considerably more likely than other sociologists to engage students in research and somewhat more likely to use simulations or games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on applying sociology through social marketing. The study aims to recognize and apply sociological concepts and theories, and understand the practical uses of sociology. Social marketing concept utilizes a blend of marketing and social science research strategies to approach contemporary social issues. Social marketing aims to institute social change. In order for social marketing campaigns to be effective, they must focus both on a product and on a specific target audience.

In this article I report on the common themes derived from three small-scale qualitative studies that focused on how sociology majors believe they learn our discipline. These studies include a group interview, analysis of content in learning logs, and individual face-to-face interviews. Based on the results of these studies, five types of connections appear critical to student learning in sociology: to others, those among related ideas or skills, to students' lives, across courses, and to the discipline. In addition, students were at different points on three overlapping pathways of learning: level of success in the major, use of surface-deep approaches, and degree of novice-expert learning. I also offer implications and suggestions for teaching, sociology programs, and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has documented that collaborative learning groups improve student learning and increase the likelihood that students will have positive attitudes about both the subject matter and their peers. However, researchers know much less about how collaborative learning groups may influence student behavior and the extent to which their utility extends to testing as well as projects and papers. In an effort to address these gaps, we used quasi-experimental and survey data to examine the effects of collaborative testing on Introduction to Sociology students' learning, behavior, and attitudes. Findings indicate that collaborative testing improved students' behavior and attitudes. In comparison to a control group, students who participated in collaborative testing reported completing more of their assigned readings and had improved attitudes toward their learning, the testing process, and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its Spring 1987 issue, "The American Sociologist" has reappeared. Intended to examine the "vital process by which the discipline and profession replenishes itself," this issue approaches its topic from three perspectives: 1) faculty comments on the discipline and graduate training, 2) student comments on their graduate school experiences and 3) profiles of six graduate programs written by department chairpersons and directors of graduate studies. All papers are brief -- about four pages. A common theme runs through these eight papers: the discipline lacks theoretical unity and is badly in need of theoretical synthesis. Sociologists have been chastised for setting expectations that are too low, resulting in a discipline that is "fragmented...(lacking) an intellectual core...(and missing) really tough intellectual challenges." Other researchers are equally critical as they begin their paper with the charge that "contemporary sociology is mired in an intellectual malaise and suffers from a paralysis of theoretical imagination." Others are less harsh in their language but echo a disappointment with the theoretical development of the discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the general study of sociologists as teachers. A sample of sociologists from graduate departments was asked to rank the professional activities of "research" and "teaching" in terms of the amount of time they typically commit to them. The findings are as follows: Most sociologists devote most of their time to teaching. Second, there is an inverse relationship between departmental prestige and the percentage of department members who commit most of their time to teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how the senior author introduced the constant comparative method as a teaching and research tool to a class on the sociology of deviance. The students selected the topic of shopping as a social problem for a class project. The project not only held the interest of students but also generated information relevant to understanding the transformation of the former Soviet Union. Consumers were found to be developing their own procedures for responding to the difficult conditions created by the dual market economy. This paper presents a four step procedure for using the constant comparative method. The procedure may be especially applicable for teaching sociology to small numbers of committed students in the foreign classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate programs in sociology are noted for the excellent training they provide in quantitative data analysis and the use of large datasets. With a few notable exceptions, however, PhD programs in sociology in the United States generally fail to provide an equivalent emphasis in social theory or interpretive sociology. Mainstream American sociology has long been dominated by adherents of the positivistic tradition. The result has been an increased isolation of sociology within academe, a diminishing American contribution to the development of social theory, and a growing irrelevance of sociology to the larger intellectual trends within the humanities and social sciences. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of these trends upon graduate education in sociology. I argue that our graduate training programs are deficient in several ways, most especially in their narrow commitment to the positivist view of social science. The failure to develop sociology's interpretive tradition has allowed the style and intellectual creativity of sociological work to suffer as well as allowing an unproductive attitude of sociological "imperialism" to take root, thereby insuring the increased irrelevance of sociology to wider circles of intellectual discourse.! conclude with an argument for a greater balance in graduate training programs between sociology's two great traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers suggestions about using the concept of oppression to teach about gender, race, and class in an introductory social psychology course. We argue that a comprehensive discussion of oppression, in social psychology or other courses, needs to address both its institutional and individual aspects. We summarize how we present these aspects of oppression to students; discuss the intersections between gender, class, and race; and end with suggestions about how issues surrounding oppression can be integrated throughout an introductory social psychology course. Our approach is geared primarily towards teaching white, middle-class students who often have difficulties accepting or comprehending the existence of oppression in our society. We consider this paper a step towards a more inclusive sociology curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major objective of this paper is to outline the goals and the use of speculative (or free) writing and to demonstrate its usefulness in sociology classrooms. This form of writing is compared to other conventional written sociology assignments; the relative benefits are enumerated, particularly in the context of a lecture-discussion course format. On the basis of experiences with free writing in two different universities, some illustrations and suggestions are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author presents a classroom technique for demonstrating the post-factum interpretation problem. In sociology implications of this adage can be found in discussions of pitfalls of post-factum sociological interpretation. The essence of such discussions is that theories always can be molded to fit the patterns we find in the data. My intent in this paper is to present a classroom technique for demonstrating the post-factum interpretation problem. In introductory sociology classes I let the issue rest. In my research courses, however, I use this exercise as one of my starting points to introduce the concept of spuriousness and the problem of establishing causality in nonexperimental studies. That is, I teach advanced students how to test for spuriousness. Post-factum interpretations of those data patterns which maintain themselves after the introduction of control variables will gain in credibility. In addition, post-factum interpretations always will have implications for other relationships in one's data set. If further analysis should realize these relationships, one's post-factum interpretation will gain further credibility. Of course, the end result of such a process can lead sometimes to the reformulation and clarification of our interpretations of social reality and of existing social theories.

This paper describes ERVING, a computer program that uses artificial intelligence techniques to teach students to reason sociologically from Goffman's dramaturgical perspective. The ERVING program is one of the first applications of artificial intelligence in sociology and perhaps the first designed to teach sociological reasoning. This paper describes how artificial intelligence techniques are used in ERVING to teach sociological reasoning and how they might be used in other applications as well. Important features and capabilities of the ERVING program are discussed, and results of classroom tests to assess the program are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an extensive review of the literature on simulation games for teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on sociology. The key features of simulation gaming are discussed by addressing the following questions: What are simulation games? What are they designed to teach? On what learning theory are they based ? How effective have they been? What are the problems involved in using them? How should they be used properly? What are some popular simulation games relevant to instruction in sociology? This paper is addressed to teachers of sociology who are using simulation games currently, those who wish to return to using them, and those who are interested in using them for the first time. The paper argues that even though simulation games long ago passed their peak of popularity, they are still alive and well and offer instructors of sociology one more tool on the pedagogical shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to writing, the sociological imagination generally fails. In response to this deficiency, researcher Kai Erikson introduced "The Sociologist's Craft: A Workshop on the Organization and Presentation of Sociological Materials" in the graduate program at Yale University in 1978. Now in its tenth year, this hopeful undertaking was based upon the premise that writing skills could be learned. Initially structured only by an assigned time and place, the class quickly developed a formal and informal organization peculiar to its mission. This ethnography, drawn from my own participation from 1979 to 1982, describes how the writing seminar became organized to teach sociologists to write. Regardless of the mysteries of self-selection processes and their effect on the culture, the awareness that differences may have existed between members and nonmembers is important in itself. Though enrollment was open, potential participants may have perceived that the class was open to certain kinds of people, not to everyone, as intended. Some, sensing or suspecting differences, may have stayed away. Others, attuned somehow to a subtle correspondence between themselves and seminar members, joined the class. Unwittingly, by virtue of the intangible similarities that drew them, the newcomers reinforced and perpetuated the collective solutions that were evolving.

The article presents information on the relevance of poetry for sociology. The author was inspired to write this paper by the appearance of in a recent issue of the periodical Teaching Sociology, of an article on using poetry in the classroom. Most of the authors fellow sociologists regard his interest in poetry as an illness from which they hope he would soon recover. So it was a source of comfort to the author to find that there is at least one other sociologist with a similar interest. This is not a research paper, many problems and issues are discussed in an impressionistic and evocative rather than in a scholarly way. The purpose of the author is not to convince any reader of the truth of his impressionistic arguments and assertions; what he does hope to convey is the great benefits to be gained from integrating poetry into the teaching of sociology. For this paper the author has added another section which discusses the uses of poetry in teaching sociology in more general terms. The potential value of poetry in teaching sociology has not been recognized by either sociologists or poets.

Sociology as a discipline has much to offer and much to gain from participation in the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement. Student writing is a concrete event that can be analyzed sociologically. Attention to writing as a social event and to writing as discovery can increase the relevance of sociology as perceived by students. In this paper I suggest a modified version of the sociological journal, in which students write in every class as well as outside class. Following WAC principles, this modification minimizes the amount of grading required and allows students to discover the sociological perspective as they apply it to many of their own experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lives and ideas of early female sociologists are rarely documented in textbooks, classrooms, or historical accounts of the profession. This patriarchal legacy is rejected by an increasing number of contemporary sociologists. These more egalitarian professionals soon discover, however, that they have few resources in their sociological stock of knowledge to guide them in this new enterprise. This paper is a guide for teachers in a variety of courses who want to start filling these deep gaps in knowledge. Specific guidance is provided on reference works, autobiographies, and biographies that provide information on 10 early female founders of American sociology. Given these references and our capacity to innovate and recreate our social world, we have a sufficient stock of knowledge to change our sociological practice in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This two-part research project was developed as a term assignment for students taking an undergraduate course in family sociology. Each student was asked to respond thoughtfully in writing to 18 open-ended questions which focus on what and how he or she has learned about his/her family's past. Using the same questions as an interview schedule, the student interviewed two additional people. After organizing and transcribing this information, the student chose from a suggested list of topics relevant to the subject and wrote a paper. The project accomplishes several objectives. It helps to bridge the distance between each student's own family experiences and sociological insights covered in a family sociology course. Students are challenged to search out, discover, and, in a limited way, analyze how information about three different family histories (including their own) is transmitted across and between generations. The assignment gives students an opportunity to learn and practice interviewing skills as well as to acquire some practical experience and appreciation of the difficulties involved in organizing, controlling and analyzing qualitative data. And, it demands that students communicate their results and insights in written form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the training needs of applied demography and suggest how demography courses and programs can better meet the needs of applied demography students. After defining applied demography, I discuss the topics that applied demography courses might cover, how to structure a program in applied demography, and available and needed teaching resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effectively presenting sociology to students in introductory sociology is a challenge under the best conditions. Steadily increasing class sizes have added to the difficulties. This article reports on an alternative to lecturing in the large introductory class. Students are assigned an active part in the class through discussing the readings, carrying-out "lab" exercises, and writing research reports on their "lab" assignments. Student reactions were collected form 405 students over a two-year period. Students with a stronger academic background earned higher grades in the course and were more satisfied with it. These students also tended to become leaders in their groups, helping others with the course material. They seemed to be effective tutors, since the students with weaker academic backgrounds expressed the most satisfaction with their discussion groups. These results are encouraging and suggest that the "active course structure" is a viable alternative to lecturing in large introductory sociology classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers details concerning the submission of academic papers to "Teaching Sociology."

The table of contents and editorial policy of the January 2007 issue of "Teaching Sociology" is presented.

The article presents an introduction to the special 2013 issue of the journal "Teaching Sociology" on writing.

Teaching about intersecting, fluid and historically contingent identities has been taken up extensively within the sociology of race, class and gender and women's studies. Oddly, the case of Jewish women has been virtually left out of this robust literature. This article explores the challenges raised through teaching the course "Jewish Women in Contemporary America," and links these challenges to the pedagogy of race, class and gender more broadly. Using the classroom as a research site, the authors conducted post-course interviews with students and kept detailed field notes on class sessions. The authors use Judith Butler's theorization of performativity to analyze classroom dynamics. After redesigning and teaching the course a second time, the authors conclude that the relationship between "experience" and "theory" must be constantly interrogated by both instructor and students; that personal narratives merit space within the classroom, but must be problematized; and a critical Jewish Women's Studies, based on illuminating the socially constructed and hybrid character of contemporary Jewish American women's identities, can help to expose the tendency to methodological essentialism still prevalent in much of the feminist race, class, and gender literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a service-learning project designed for an upper-level sociology course in Policy and Social Change. The project, Breaking Ground, had two main goals: to change students' perceptions about persons who are homeless and to increase students' sense of efficacy for engaging in social advocacy. Through Breaking Ground, students formed a partnership with advocates and homeless clients to raise public awareness about homelessness and to organize advocacy and fund-raising events for the agency partner. The research element of the project used pre-tests and post-tests to assess changes in students' beliefs about social justice, self-efficacy, and perceptions of homelessness. When compared to students who took the class, but did not participate in the described service-learning project, Breaking Ground students experienced significant changes in a positive direction in their perceptions of individuals who are homeless. There were also some small changes in student feelings of self-efficacy and opinions on social justice. I explain these results and provide suggestions for implementation of similar projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a pedagogical method called Writing Answers to Learn (WAL) which combines Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Exploratory Writing to address the interrelated pedagogical problems of misconceptions, resistance, retention, and transfer. I analyze the use of this combined method in a course on racial and ethnic relations and provide examples to suggest that students commonly use four ideologies to understand racial and ethnic inequality: blaming the victim, justification, naturalization, and colorblind racism. I describe how I helped students identify and unlearn these ideological misconceptions and replace them with a sociological conceptual framework. I analyze the results of a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test showing that students' use of ideology declined on each subsequent exam while their use of sociology increased during the semester and was partially retained months later. Finally I discuss the study's limitations and the utility of students learning the falseness of ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is sociological research practice learned? Because much of the tacit knowledge required to succeed in professions such as academia cannot be obtained formally, informal channels of learning—such as interaction with advisors—may be crucial. In this paper I test the extent to which graduate school advisors influence the development of their advisees' research habits, practices, and beliefs. I find that advisors' attitudes and intra-professional standing affect how their advisees view various research practices—both those that are less codified (such as how to deal with anomalous data) and those that are quite standardized (such as statistical significance testing). For the least standardized and most qualitative research practices, such as interpreting qualitative text, I find that students' experiences are more relevant that advisors' attitudes. I discuss these findings by referencing literature in the sociology of science and knowledge and relate my findings to broader knowledge about teaching sociology at the graduate level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A neglected part of the history of teaching sociology is the history of teaching high school sociology. The American Sociological Association's centennial in 2005 affords sociologists an opportunity to reflect on the teaching of sociology-anywhere and everywhere that it happens. In the spirit of contributing to the history of teaching sociology in the United States, this paper outlines the roughly 95-year history of the teaching of high school sociology. I rely upon published course descriptions written by high school sociology teachers and empirical studies conducted by academic sociologists. They demonstrate that past high school sociology courses have focused primarily on examining social problems and current events, and on promoting citizenship education. This remains the case today. I offer several reasons why the courses have looked as they have over the past 95 years, and conclude with four predictions about the future of teaching high school sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simulation called Star Power provides an invaluable means to help students understand structural social inequality. This paper explains how Star Power achieves this goal and provides suggestions on how to inculcate the following points that are both central to sociology and difficult to adequately convey to students: 1) Students see how those in power maintain their position by structuring the system to theft advantage; 2) they learn how the structure of this system makes advancement for others difficult 31 privileged students begin to recognize the impact of their own family's social position that they tend to overlook in favor of theft personal effort and merit. By becoming more aware of structural inequalities, students realize that for the lower classes to join the most powerful in society, they must triumph over a system in which those in power make rules that protect theft own interests, usually at some- one else's expense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of subculture has long been used routinely in sociology despite many criticisms about the contradictory manner in which it has been defined and applied. One particular problem concerns the untenable distinction often made by sociologists between subcultures and countercultures; another is the implicit characterization of subcultures as either deviant, marginalized groups or heroic resisters against the hegemonic culture of global capitalism. In this paper, we attempt to demonstrate a method of teaching the concept of subculture to undergraduate sociology students that would remedy these two difficulties. We do this by offering working definitions of several terms, including common culture, subculture, idioculture, and social world. We conclude the paper by developing a classroom exercise to help students grasp the main differences between these various terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]