Teaching Sociology on Teaching Sociology.

The article reviews research on teaching sociology, the majority of which falls into two categories: (1) presentations of innovative teaching strategies and evaluations of the effectiveness of the innovations, and (2) presentations of specific techniques to teach ideas or concepts. Second, methods of conducting research on teaching are discussed by considering constraints on research on teaching and the dependent variables used in research on teaching sociology. While considerable work has been done to improve teaching sociology, most endeavors still fail to apply sociological theory to the teaching of sociology. Research methodologies used to evaluate new techniques and innovations are limited by design problems and by an over dependence on "gains in information content" and `teaching evaluations' as dependent variables. Additional theoretical development and improved methodological approaches are needed to further improve the quality of research on teaching sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]