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A Quarterly Publication of
The American Sociological Association

ABSTRACTS--Volume 27, Number 4, October 1999

ARTICLES

NOTES

Creating and Teaching Writing-Intensive Courses
(Liz Grauerholz)

Writing is one of the most important and useful pedagogical tools available to instructors to help students achieve a variety of goals central to sociological instruction, including critical thinking and the development of students’ sociological imaginations. This article provides specific guidelines for creating writing-intensive courses and writing assignments that are integral to achieving pedagogical goals. It also includes some strategies for managing and teaching such courses.

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Waiting for Louis Prima:
On the Possibility of a Sociology of Film
(James J. Dowd)

This article discusses the difficulties inherent in teaching a sociology course through use of feature-length film. Despite these difficulties, I argue that contemporary Hollywood movies are useful tools to illustrate some of our discipline’s central concepts and to serve as an exercise in the application of the sociological imagination. Films, however, come prepackaged with a particular worldview or theoretical perspective. Thus, they require the sociologist to consider the theory-laden nature of movies as part of the analysis of social life that they depict. In order to do this, I analyze three groups of movies through the use of sociological concepts such as Griswold’s "cultural diamond" and Jameson’s ideology/utopia distinction.

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"Train the Whole Scholar":
A Developmentally Based Program
for Teaching Assistant Training in Sociology
(Kim Korinek, Judith A. Howard, and George S. Bridges)

The literature on teacher education stresses that learning to teach is a developmental process, and therefore, teacher training programs should incorporate a developmental model. We review existing theory and research on the development and training of graduate teaching assistants and apply this perspective to an individual teaching assistant training program at the University of Washington, a large research university. This training program was designed, and has been modified over the past 20 years, to draw on current lines of thinking regarding teaching assistant training practices. Hence, it is organized around the developmental and cognitive issues facing new, and advanced, graduate assistants. Using evaluative program data and feedback from those who have completed this training program, we elaborate upon the usefulness of a developmental approach for the preparation and training of graduate assistants in sociology.

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Grounding Service Learning in Social Theory
(Robert J. Hironiums-Wendt and Larry Lovell-Troy

This paper grounds the practice of service learning in a sociological understanding so that we may more fruitfully tie this pedagogy to our field. A base for such grounding can be found in the work of C. Wright Mills, who built on the work of John Dewey. We argue that incorporating sociologically informed service learning into the curriculum is necessary for completing the progressive educational and social reforms sought by both, thus enabling us to fulfill Mills’ "promise" for our discipline (Mills 1959). On the other hand, a sociologically uninformed service-learning experience may hinder, rather than help, the movement toward a just society because students may objectify community residents and blame them for their problems. Thus, we present potential problems associated with service- learning and argue for the concept of addressing key sociological insights prior to immersing students into a program of service-learning.

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Toward a Multicultural Imagination: Infusing Ethnicity into the Teaching of Social Psychology
(E. Joel Heikes)


This paper focuses on the infusion of multicultural materials into an undergraduate social psychology course at Southwestern University. Changes made to infuse the course with multicultural content are outlined. In particular, this paper discusses the ways in which key concepts in social psychology can be applied using a cross-cultural autobiography, and it examines the utility of using such a text. A survey evaluation of this approach reveals that students generally accept a multicultural approach to social psychology and feel that it aids in their understanding of key concepts. In addition, a comparison of exam means and performance on selected test items indicate no negative consequences of implementing such an approach. This paper also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of such a transformation and approach.

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What About the White Women? Racial Politics in a Women's Studies Classroom
(Margaret L. Hunter and Kimberly D. Nettles)

This paper is an analysis of racial politics in a women’s studies course. As instructors of a course entitled "Women of Color," we experienced much resistance from students about the de-centering of whiteness in the curriculum. In this article, we use Frankenberg’s (1993) concepts of whiteness, power evasiveness, and race consciousness to theorize the origins of and solutions to this resistance. Further, we describe how ideologies of colorblindness frame the discourse on race for most students, and how this limits their ability to move from a racial discourse of "diversity" to one of "difference." We also offer suggestions about addressing this type of student resistance in the future.

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What's My Orientation? Using the Teacher-as-Text Strategy as Feminist Pedagogical Practice
(Heather Hartley)

This paper describes and assesses the outcome of a teaching "experiment" conducted in an introductory-level sociology of human sexuality class. The exercise was used as part of the unite on stereotypes surrounding sexual orientation. For the "sexual orientation guessing game" described here, I attempted to disguise my sexual orientation until the last week of class, at which time, I asked students to use me as a "common data source" (i.e., text), to write down their (anonymous) guesses as to my sexual orientation (i.e., bisexual, lesbian, or heterosexual), and to provide three reasons for their answers. The students' assessments became the basis for discussion of stereotypes and assumptions. The technique I employed seeks to activate principles of feminist pedagogy and a teacher-as-text strategy described in a recent issue of Teaching Sociology (Jacobs 1998).

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A True Specialist: Teaching Sociology Through a Service-Learning Project Involving the Construction of a Pit Latrine
(Robin W. Roberts, J. Walter Mason, and Penny L. Marler)

This note demonstrates to students a method of teaching what sociology is and what sociologists do by requiring students to work together in a group project to produce something that is beneficial to society. Students involved in such "service-learning" projects learn that sociology does have practical applications in social problem solving. In our sociology classes, the most meaningful of these service-learning projects has been the construction of a pit latrine or "privy" to serve rural residents lacking adequate sanitary conveniences. In designing, constructing, and site-locating a pit latrine, students learn how to assess, intervene, and impact societal conditions that need to be addressed on a larger scale in their community.

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