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A Quarterly Publication of
The American Sociological Association
ABSTRACTS
Volume 35, Number 3, July 2007ARTICLES
- What Should Students Understand After Taking Introduction to Sociology?.....Caroline Hodges Persell, Kathryn M. Pfeiffer, and Ali Syed
- Performing Identities in the Classroom: Teaching Jewish Women's Studies ..... Kathie Friedman and Karen Rosenberg
- Coverage and Representations of Sexuality in Introductory Sociology Textbooks ..... Susanne Bohmer and Kayleen U. Oka
NOTES
- Sociology in Two-Year Institutions ..... Edward L. Kain, Alexandra O. Hendley, Lauren R. Contreras, and Krystal K. Wyatt-Baxter
- "Statistics Anxiety" Among Sociology Majore: A First Diagnosis and Some Treatment Options..... Michael DeCesare
What Should Students Understand After Taking Introduction to Sociology?
Sociologists have long reflected on what should be taught in sociology. In recent years, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has produced several important publications on key principles and learning goals for the introductory course. However, little current work has systematically examined what peer-recognized leaders in the field deem important for introductory sociology. This paper is an effort to fill this research gap. Our research questions include: What do leaders think students should understand after an introduction to sociology course? Do the goals of Teaching Award winners differ from those of other leaders? How do the leaders' goals compare with those expressed in leading SoTL publications? To address these questions, we interviewed a sample of 44 leaders in 2005-2006. Using qualitative content analysis, we systematically coded, analyzed, and compared their goals.
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Performing Identities in the Classroom: Teaching Jewish Women's Studies
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.
Teaching Affirmative Action: An Opportunity to Apply, Integrate, and Reinforce Sociological Concepts
Helping students overcome their "statistics anxiety" has become a primary and explicit objective of social statistics courses, and many sociologists now seem to assume that all-or, at least, an overwhelming majority of-students enter social statistics courses full of anxiety. This assumption, however, is not based on any empirical evidence of which I am aware. I use data collected from 196 sociology majors at a comprehensive state university to offer the first empirical assessment of students' anxiety levels. My results indicate that more than 40 percent of students felt no anxiety whatsoever about taking a statistics course. In addition, two variables were significant predictors of anxiety levels: student gender and expected course grade. Female students and students who expected a lower course grade reported significantly higher levels of statistics anxiety on the first day of class. I conclude by offering recommendations for future research, and by outlining three possible negative, unintended consequences of continuing to assume high levels of statistics anxiety among sociology majors.
Sociology in Two-Year Institutions
This research note examines what types of sociology courses are available in two-year institutions in the United States. Throughout the past century, and particularly in the last four decades of the twentieth century, there was a rapid growth in the number and size of two-year institutions in this country. The proportion of students who are first introduced to sociology in this setting has increased dramatically. As a result, students who major in sociology are more and more likely to have started their training at a different institution (McKinney et al. 2004). Despite these important changes, little attention has been focused upon sociology courses in two-year institutions. This research uses content analysis of college catalogs from a national sample of two-year institutions to explore the availability and types of courses in these settings.
"Statistics Anxiety" Among Sociology Majors: A First Diagnosis and Some Treatment Options
Helping students overcome their "statistics anxiety" has become a primary and explicit objective of social statistics courses, and many sociologists now seem to assume that all-or, at least, an overwhelming majority of-students enter social statistics courses full of anxiety. This assumption, however, is not based on any empirical evidence of which I am aware. I use data collected from 196 sociology majors at a comprehensive state university to offer the first empirical assessment of students' anxiety levels. My results indicate that more than 40 percent of students felt no anxiety whatsoever about taking a statistics course. In addition, two variables were significant predictors of anxiety levels: student gender and expected course grade. Female students and students who expected a lower course grade reported significantly higher levels of statistics anxiety on the first day of class. I conclude by offering recommendations for future research, and by outlining three possible negative, unintended consequences of continuing to assume high levels of statistics anxiety among sociology majors.
The Editor of Teaching Sociology is Liz Grauerholz.
For articles, notes, and conversations, send manuscripts to: Liz Grauerholz, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University Stone Hall, 700 West State Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2059. Phone: 765-494-5874, Fax: 765-496-1476.
For book, video, and software reviews, send manuscripts to: Jay Howard, Department of Sociology, Indiana University Columbus, 4601 Central Avenue, Columbus, IN 47203-1769.
For questions about manuscript processing, contact Monica Mendez, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Howard Phillips Hall 403, Orlando, FL 32816-1360. Phone: 407-823-2227, Fax: 407-823-3026.
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The Teaching Sociology Web Page is located at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Le Moyne College, the Jesuit College of Central New York.
Page last updated: September 21, 2007
