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A Quarterly Publication of
The American Sociological Association
ABSTRACTS
Volume 36, Number 3, July 2008ARTICLES
- The Ethics of Observing: Confronting the Harm of Experiential Learning . . . . . Joshua S. Meisel
- Teaching Reflexivity . . . . . Ping-Chung Hsiung
- The Face of Society: Gender and Race in Introductory Sociology Books Revisited . . . . . Roger Clark and Alex Nunes
- Cultivating a Sociological Perspective Using Nontraditional Texts . . . . . Ursula Castellano, Joseph DeAngelis, and Marisol Clark-Ibáñez
NOTES
- Sociology in U.S. High Schools . . . . . Michael DeCesare
- The Evidence Matrix: A Simple Heuristic for Analyzing and Integrating Evidence . . . . . Maxine P. Atkinson, Jeremiah B. Wills, and Amy I. McClure
- USA Stratified Monopoly: A Simulation Game about Social Class Stratification . . . . .Edith M. Fisher
The Ethics of Observing: Confronting the Harm of Experiential Learning
In this article I explore the ethical terrain of experiential learning activities drawing on my experiences leading college students on field trips into criminal justice settings. Though there are numerous educational benefits to adopting experiential learning activities, the rewards must be evaluated in light of the potential harms to nonstudent participants. Student observations of criminal justice settings can reinforce common stereotypes of prisoners as scary and dangerous while reifying the legitimacy of state power exercised through agents of social control. More broadly, experiential learning activities can also highlight the shame and embarrassment of subordinate groups when such activities devolve into voyeuristic spectacles of human misery. In light of these potential harms to nonstudent groups, this article proposes guiding questions for educators to address in designing experiential activities. These questions draw attention to the following issues: the vulnerability of participants, the relative social power of nonstudent participants, whether participation is truly voluntary, the accessibility of the setting to outside observers, group size, benefits to nonstudent participants, duration of activity, protection of confidentiality, the role of students in the activity, and the curricular focus of the experience.
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Teaching Reflexivity in Qualitative Interviewing
Reflexivity has gained paramount status in qualitative inquiry. It is central to debates on subjectivity, objectivity, and, ultimately, the scientific foundation of social science knowledge and research. Although much work on doing reflexivity by researchers and practitioners has been published, scholars have only recently begun to explore how one goes about teaching reflexivity in qualitative research. This paper contributes to the endeavour by first identifying challenges of teaching reflexivity. It then describes how I use an existing data set and hands-on learning as complementary strategies to teach reflexivity in a course on qualitative interviewing. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of teaching reflexivity in sociology in general and in qualitative research methods in particular.
The Face of Society: Gender and Race in Introductory Sociology Books Revisited
We have updated Ferree and Hall’s (1990) study of the way gender and race are constructed through pictures in introductory sociology textbooks. Ferree and Hall looked at 33 textbooks published between 1982 and 1988. We replicated their study by examining 3,085 illustrations in a sample of 27 textbooks, most of which were published between 2002 and 2006. We found important areas of progress in the presentation of both gender and race as well as significant areas of stasis. The face of society we found depicted in contemporary textbooks was distinctly less likely to be that of a white man, very prominent in the 1980s texts, and much more likely to be that of a minority woman. Thus, while only 34 percent of the pictures of identifiable individuals in the textbooks examined by Ferree and Hall were of women, almost 50 percent of such pictures were of women in the recent texts. Moreover, while the percentage of white men portrayed dropped from about 45 percent to 30 percent, the percentage of portrayals of minority women rose from about 11 percent to 22 percent. Another sign of progress has been the decreasing likelihood of textbooks to depict race and gender as being nonoverlapping categories: while women of color apparently “had” only race in the sample examined by Ferree and Hall, they “had” both gender and race in the sample we studied. Still, our examination of pictures as a whole as a unit of analysis found that blacks continue to be more likely than any other racial group to be depicted in the presence of other racial groups and, thus, to idealize the degree of social integration in American society. We also still see nonwhite women enjoying very little (in fact, no) visibility in sections devoted to theory, despite developments in feminist theory, generally, and multicultural feminist, specifically. In general, though, our analysis suggests that the various criticisms of introductory texts that have appeared in this forum and others can have an impact on the content of those texts and, by extension, the sociology we teach.
Cultivating a Sociological Perspective Using Nontradtional Texts
In this paper, we argue that novels, mysteries and nonfiction books can provide undergraduate students with an accessible and exciting place to explore sociological concepts. Using storytelling as a pedagogical tool, we teach students key theoretical ideas by analyzing the books in their specific socio-cultural contexts. First, we put forward three different strategies for using nontraditional readings in the classroom. We then present standardized assessment data to measure how well these strategies helped to meet our student learning goals: increasing engagement, enhancing conceptual understanding and improving analytic ability. We also discuss what we consider to be the pedagogical costs and benefits of using these approaches in the classroom.
The condition of sociology in high school seems to be of growing interest to a core group of sociologists and to the American Sociological Association. All of the recent research on the topic, however, has focused on the status of high school sociology in one particular state. The present study contributes to this small body of literature by examining a nationally representative sample of high schools. It represents the first nationwide survey of high school sociology to be conducted in 25 years-and only the second to ever be carried out. The most important result was that sociology was offered in just over one-third (38.5 percent) of U.S. high schools during the 2005-06 school year. Two variables were found to be significantly related to the presence of a sociology course: geographic area of the country and school size. Sociology was significantly more likely to be taught in the northern part of the country-from the Dakotas to New England-and in larger schools. I conclude by discussing the implications of the results and offering recommendations for future research.
The Evidence Matrix: A Simple Heuristic for Analyzing and Integrating Evidence
This note presents a simple tool-the evidence matrix-designed to help students analyze sociological literature, recognize commonalities between sources, and integrate evidence, including quantitative data. We find that students who use the evidence matrix perform better on essays asking them to synthesize evidence to construct an argument than those who do not use the tool. Critical sociological thinking (Grauerholz and Bouma-Holtrop 2003) is a skill that must be taught, and the evidence matrix is one means to help students more easily recognize the relationships between multiple sources of evidence.
USA Stratified Monopoly: A Simulation Game about Social Class Stratification
Teaching social class stratification is challenging. Diverse student populations react to the subject in a variety of ways and often with intense emotion. Some students get very angry, while others feel overwhelmed and hopeless. Students have difficulty seeing structural limitations and cling to their beliefs in individualism. I designed the simulation game USA STRATIFIED MONOPOLY to teach about social class stratification while still addressing individualism and social change. In this paper, I offer detailed instructions and rules for the facilitation of the game, the post-game discussion, and writing assignment. The game can be played by as many as 60 students in less than one hour. I have used this game with phenomenal success and have shared it with many colleagues. Students find it enjoyable and educational; they learn to empathize with people of different social classes and can easily generalize from the game to their everyday lives.
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