Recursive Exercises to Help Students Engage and Recognize Sociological Shifts

Introductory sociology courses encourage students to shift from understanding social relations and inequalities through an individualistic lens toward a more sociological one. It is difficult for students to know how far they have advanced toward a sociological perspective if they do not have a good sense of where they began. This paper describes an approach intended to assess a sociological shift over the course of a semester by combining various recursive techniques that take place at the beginning and end of the semester: letters to oneself, social opinion surveys, and recorded small discussion groups. Although the shift was often not dramatic, the approach proved to be useful not only to help students keep track of their own developing sociological perspective but also as a way to improve teaching and assess student learning outcomes. Although ideal for small classes or discussion sections, I discuss ways to also adapt it for larger classes.