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A Quarterly Publication of
The American Sociological Association
ABSTRACTS--Volume 33, Number 1, January 2005
ARTICLES
- Searching for Structure: Sequencing, Integration, and Coherence in the Undergraduate Sociology Curriculum ..... Catherine White Berheide
- Taking Sex Seriously: Challenges in Teaching about Sexuality ..... Nancy J. Davis
- Illustrating the Nature of Social Inequality with the Simulation Star Power ..... Kathleen McKinney and Roxanna Harlow
- Overcoming "Doom and Gloom": Empowering Students in Courses on Social Problems, Injustice, and Inequality ..... Brett Johnson
NOTES
- Prioritizing Social Problems: An Exercise for Exploring Students' Attitudes about Social Problems ..... Scott A. Desmond
- Working with Stories: An Active Learning Approach to Theories of Deviance ..... Donald P. Levy and Beth Merenstein
- Using a Hypothetical Distribution of Grades to Introduce Social Stratification ..... William Brislen and Clayton D. Peoples
Searching for Structure: Creating Coherence in the Sociology Curriculum
For over 30 years, sociologists have expressed concern that the undergraduate curriculum in sociology lacks coherence. The sociology major continues to be loosely structured with few opportunities for sequential learning. To achieve greater coherence in the major, I recommend that departments sequence more courses or infuse both empirical and theoretical skills as well as key sociological concepts throughout their course offerings. Both approaches lead to a more sophisticated understanding of a complex discipline.
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Taking Sex Seriously: Challenges in Teaching about Sexuality
Teaching a course that is about sexuality but also about larger cultural themes, social processes, and political struggles poses many challenges. These include: 1) choosing readings from a sexuality literature that is ever-expanding; 2) negotiating student expectations that the course will focus on the sexual behavior of individuals when much of it is on sexual ideologies and sexual regimes; 3) allowing multiple voices to be heard in class, not just those of sexual libertines, sexual extraverts, and those with nonstigmatized sexual identities; 4) creating a safe classroom climate that allows personal disclosures about sexuality; 5) navigating the emotional intensity of discussing sexual violence and other issues cloaked in normativity, anxiety, and pain; 6) balancing student interest in the local with attention to the historical, comparative, and global; and 7) underscoring the potential for change in sexual scripts, sexual violence, and sexual regimes. This article explores these challenges and some strategies to address them.
Illustrating the Nature of Social Inequality with the Simulation Star Power
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 their advantage; 2) they learn how the structure of this system makes advancement for others difficult; 3) privileged students begin to recognize the impact of their own family's social position that they tend to overlook in favor of their 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 their own interests, usually at someone else's expense.
Overcoming "Doom and Gloom": Empowering Students in Courses on Social Problems, Injustice, and Inequality
In this paper, I use principles of civic education and social psychology to identify four main classroom contributors to students' pessimistic appraisals of their ability to improve social problems: authoritarian teaching methods, a culture of "doom and gloom," little attention to solutions to social problems, and no linkage of social problems to individual behavior. I then propose a five-step process to effectively teach about social problems while empowering students to help solve these problems: (1) identify the process through which social problems are constructed, (2) identify existence of the social problem, (3) identify core causes of the social problem, (4) identify structural solutions to the social problem, and (5) identify individual actions that contribute to structural solutions.
Prioritizing Social Problems: An Exercise for Exploring Students' Attitudes about Social Problems
Students do not share the same attitudes and opinions about social problems. When disagreements arise, students are usually respectful of their classmates, but sometimes disagreements can become emotional and heated. I have developed an exercise to address differences in attitudes and opinions early in the course, which helps to set the stage for smoother discussions later. I present students with a list of social problems and ask them to rank-order the five most important problems. When I collect the responses from my students and share them with the class, students can easily see that there is not a lot of agreement among them. Discussion of the results focuses on how attitudes and opinions towards social problems are shaped by our knowledge, familiarity, and personal experience with these problems, as well as by current events and our membership in social groups.
Working with Stories: An Active Learning Approach to Theories of Deviance
Oftentimes students memorize theories as if they were historical facts rather than helpful frameworks that promote insight into social relationships. This teaching note demonstrates the usefulness, applicability and success of teaching often difficult to understand theoretical approaches. Using both an active learning process and peer learning/teaching, students are quickly able to understand, and apply theories of deviance to substantive questions. After a brief introductory lecture on deviance theories, we provide the students with a hypothetical story designed to accommodate and elucidate theories drawn from both positivist and social constructionist schools of thought. Students find the exercise enjoyable and effective in not only comprehending theory but also in being able to verbalize that understanding.
Using a Hypothetical Distribution of Grades to Introduce Social Stratification
Teaching undergraduates about social stratification can be a difficult endeavor. Undergraduates are sometimes resistant to learning about social stratification, which may be due, in part, to the fact that many undergraduates are from privileged backgrounds and are individualistic in their ideologies. Further, having very little personal experience in the wage-earning economy, undergraduates may have difficulty relating to discussions revolving around income inequality and other inequalities involving money. We present in this paper an exercise we developed to help circumvent this difficulty by introducing social stratification in the context of undergraduates' reward system-their grades. Using a hypothetical distribution of grades that mirrors the skewed distribution of income in the United States, we make stratification real for the students and compel them to (1) question the fairness of inequality and (2) grasp the role of social structures in creating and maintaining social strata.
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