Abstract
We describe a semester-long active learning project in which students practice the skills of synthesis and analysis by developing portfolios organized around a topic of their own choosing (relevant to their substantive course). We build on prior contributions in four ways. First, we offer a project that is indicative of basic skills in the sociological toolkit and therefore of potential relevance to students’ lives and future careers. Second, we provide the first systematic assessment of the efficacy of course portfolios by using a controlled, pretest-posttest analysis conducted in seven sections of three separate sociology courses. Third, we illustrate the conceptual connections between active learning pedagogy and identity theory and provide evidence that portfolios influence the development of a sociological identity and thought among students. Fourth, we offer instructors an instructional tool that can be employed in any undergraduate sociology course.
The development of a sociological perspective is the fundamental pedagogical goal of undergraduate sociology (Scheitle 2006). Although course content and instructional activities vary widely, the key litmus of instructional effectiveness in sociology is whether students are able to examine society through a sociological lens. It is thus not surprising that many of the contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning in sociology are organized around this goal.
We describe a semester-long active learning project in which students practice the skills of synthesis and analysis by developing portfolios organized around a topic of their own choosing (relevant to their substantive course). We build on prior contributions in four ways. First, we offer a project that is indicative of basic skills in the sociological toolkit and therefore of potential relevance to students’ lives and future careers. Second, we provide the first systematic assessment of the efficacy of course portfolios by using a controlled, pretest-posttest analysis conducted in seven sections of three separate sociology courses. Third, we suggest a new direction for pedagogical research. Specifically, we illustrate the conceptual connections between active learning pedagogy and identity theory and provide evidence that portfolios influence the development of a sociological identity and thought among students. Fourth, we offer instructors an instructional tool that can be employed in many undergraduate sociology courses.
Setting
This project was undertaken in multiple classes across multiple instructors at the University of Georgia. The students at this university tend to be White and affluent, despite that the university is a public institution. The majority of students come from affluent suburbs of a large metropolitan area, although the university also draws from more southern rural areas as well. Our sociology and criminology classes reflected the same demographics of the university as a whole.
The first three authors collectively taught five groups of students: two sections of Sociology of Education, two sections of Criminology, and one section of Introduction to Sociology (all classes are taught by sociology instructors). The portfolio was administered in one section of each course, collectively representing our project group (N = 102 across three classes). Because we needed to know whether the project itself produced better learning and identity outcomes rather than teaching style, four sections of students were designated as a control group (N = 109). Two sections of students in this group were situated in Introduction to Sociology and Criminology courses taught by two other faculty members in our department, and two were derived from the Education and Criminology sections (taught by the first and third authors). Table 1 describes the classes in detail. Although we included an Introduction to Sociology class, most students in this study were not first-year students and thus had college experience.
Description of Classes.
The number of students reflects the number who completed the pretest.
Measures the number of sociology majors at the beginning of the semester.
These courses also included criminal justice (CJ) majors. We provide these data in parentheses.
All the courses included in this study are discussion-based classes. We were careful to pick courses that were similar in style to ensure that the project and not the discussion-style course contributed to the outcomes about which we were most interested.
Portfolios and Pedagogy
Portfolios generally refer to an organized presentation of an individual’s work samples. They are commonly employed in the arts and among teachers to showcase work on the job market, but they have received only indirect attention by researchers in the pedagogy of sociology (Althanases 1997; Calfee and Freedman 1996; Danielson and Abrutyn 1997). Only one article in Teaching Sociology explicitly focuses on the use of portfolios (Trepagnier 2004). Our approach and that of Trepagnier (2004) are similar insofar as both approaches embrace the portfolio as part of an active learning pedagogical philosophy and entail collections of student work. But the present work departs in an important respect. Trepagnier’s (2004) portfolio is designed for a writing-intensive course and focuses on personal reflection and revision of previous work, whereas our instrument is toolkit focused: we want students to investigate, analyze, and present their results.
Our project is similar in that it still remains a collection of students’ work and thought. The portfolio activity we use may be understood as a thematically integrated collection of written analyses of media, interviews, and other observations performed during the course of a semester. Given the fundamental nature of the tasks, the activity can be employed in many sociology courses. In collaboration with a small group, students are asked to (1) select a topic of relevance to, but not covered in, their course; (2) individually collect and analyze media associated with their topic; (3) summarize and submit their portfolios; and (4) collaboratively present their work to the class.
The portfolio project is indicative of exploratory research employed before launching a systematic study because of the investigative skills students exercise in the process of researching their topic. These include, for example, interviews, collection of field notes, scholarly book reviews, and content analysis of newspaper articles. The project requires that students create portfolios composed of a combination of 10 items. Each item is considered an “artifact” (see guidelines in Appendix A for more details) that is summarized and then analyzed from a sociological perspective drawing on outside research and course materials. Table 2 outlines a typical portfolio collection and the skills that students gain from collecting different artifacts. For example, a student who includes a newspaper article would analyze the article, examining what aspects are left out and considering how sociologists might consider the data used as evidence in the article. The artifacts collected for the portfolio are necessary, but it is the students’ written analysis of each artifact that demonstrates the sociological imagination.
Portfolio, Practice, and Pedagogy.
Although students could use these items, only one or two students in each class included an interview or book review.
Practical aspects of the portfolio are discussed throughout the semester, but during the fourth week, students bring in at least one item they have collected to discuss—as a class and in groups—analytic perspectives on their topic. Each student turns in an individual portfolio that contains an introduction that summarizes his or her findings. Finally, as groups, the students prepare presentations that draw from each student’s findings to teach their peers about a new topic (see Appendix A for details).
The pedagogical goals that inform our use of this activity are derived from sociological perspectives and an active learning pedagogy. The portfolio project circumvents standardized and deindividuated instructional activities often found in standard lectures in two respects (Halasz and Kaufman 2008). First, the project gives students a hands-on opportunity to work with concepts from course materials, discuss their approach in peer groups, and creatively present their work. Second, because students give presentations on topics that are not covered on the syllabus, the portfolio project allows students to customize aspects of the course and learn from others. Having students present their topic is also important because it places students at the center of instruction, which enhances the learning that occurs by the presenters themselves (see, for example, Webb 1989). In short, the portfolio project gives students the opportunity to seek new information, organize it in a way that is meaningful, and have the opportunity to explain it to others (Allen and Tanner 2005).
Another pedagogical rationale that informs our approach is shaped by the intersection of active learning pedagogy and identity theory. Like Schwalbe (2008), we see sociology as both an academic discipline to be taught and a practice used to make sense of the social world. The extension of this point for pedagogy is that active learning varies according to the extent to which it involves practicing the craft of a field. The distinction is important because it suggests that different types of active learning may have unique outcomes. Games (Paino and Chin 2011) or in-class activities may effectively promote enthusiasm and the acquisition of sociological knowledge as a discipline, but they may not engage more fundamental sociological practices, such as synthesis, data analysis, observation, or interviewing. Students may learn sociology but not act like sociologists.
Scholars of teaching and learning point out that the sociological perspective is “a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced” (Kebede 2009:353). Too frequently, the opportunity for students to act like sociologists by practicing the craft is allocated to courses on research methods, which compose a fraction of undergraduate education in sociology. Studies suggest that this restricted form of exposure to the sociological toolkit limits the probability that students will begin to develop identities as sociologists (Merton 1957).
Development of a collective identity, or an “individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” (Poletta and Jasper 2001:285) is important in three respects. First, among sociology majors, it may heighten aspirations for graduate training or facilitate identification with career paths that draw from research skills. Second, among nonsociology majors, it may correspond with greater use of a sociological perspective and move students to major in sociology. Finally, identities are rarely fleeting or ephemeral. A heightened identification as a sociologist could thus be indicative of a sustained impact from learning that lasts beyond the classroom and semester.
Measuring the Impact of Portfolios
Because the impact of portfolios such as ours on student learning has not been systematically assessed, we conducted a study in three different course contexts. The major components of the design include project and control groups, multiple measures of educational outcomes, and pretesting and posttesting.
We first gave anonymous pretests to all the classes within the first two weeks of the semester. Of the 102 students in the portfolio group, 95 completed the pretest and 88 completed the posttest. Of the 109 students in the control group, 106 completed the pretest and 84 completed the posttest.
To assess this instrument’s ability to enhance critical thinking among our students, we used a newspaper op-ed piece about teen pregnancy. We chose an article on teen pregnancy because teen pregnancy was not explicitly taught in any of the courses for this project. We wanted to be sure that the students were not gaining specific substantive sociological and factual information about teen pregnancy in the courses to confound the effects of the course content with the project. This piece would be similar to an article that students might find for their portfolios. After the reading, the students were prompted, “In a sentence or two, please answer the following questions: 1) How could one argue that stigma would reduce teen pregnancy? 2) Might there be another better way to reduce teen pregnancy? How?” We purposely did not prompt students to think sociologically to gauge their internalized thinking rather than prompt them to give a “correct” answer. We coded answers that indicated a sociological imagination as “sociological response” and those that indicated more individualistic answers as “nonsociological.” For example, we defined a sociological answer as one in which the student links biography and history or, in other words, were able to identify and distinguish between a personal trouble (and therefore individualistic solutions) and societal issue (and therefore structural remedies). Nonsociological answers blamed the victim or were unable to see the role of structure in teen pregnancy rates. We also examined the sociological identity of the students by asking students to respond to the statement “I think of myself as a sociologist” with a 5-point Likert-type scale.
Using the same instrument, we gave the students a posttest in the last week of class. The posttest allowed us to examine the degree to which classes gained sociological insight and identity by the end of the semester comparing those who participated in the project with those who did not.
Findings
The portfolio project was associated with an increase in sociological thinking and identity. Table 3 shows a chi-square test comparing the pre- and posttest for the control and portfolio group for each.
T Tests of the Increase in Sociological Responses and Identity.
p < .001.
In Panel A in Table 3, we can see that 46 percent of students in the portfolio group and 53 percent of students in the control answered with sociological responses in the pretest. We should note that these two groups are not significantly different from each other in the pretest. Students who had nonsociological responses wrote answers such as the following:
Constantly teach your children at a young age that pre-marital sex and teen pregnancies are bad.
Other students wrote about individual incentives or individual risk:
By educating teenagers on the negative risks associated w/teen [pregnancy] for both the child and the mother and by providing education on how to avoid pregnancy, more girls would make smarter, more informed choices.
At the end of the semester, across all of the project classes, there was an increase in sociological responses to the teen pregnancy article. However, in the control groups, there was a slight increase in nonsociological responses (although not statistically significant). Among the classes that participated in the project, more than half (54 percent) of students offered sociological answers (an increase from 46 percent). After the portfolio project, responses from those who participated were more likely to reflect structural roots rather than individual ones, for example,
In order to reduce teen pregnancy, a change in education about sexual health would allow people to make informed decisions. Also, by reducing the amount of poverty, many sexually related activities would not be necessary (prostitution for money, etc.).
Some students incorporated both structure and culture:
Educating children and teenagers on the effects of teenage pregnancy and changing the sexuality that is so present in American culture would take away the social norms that make teenage pregnancy “okay.” In a way this would bring back a stigma.
Identity was also of interest to us: we wanted to see whether students who engaged in material outside the classroom and used the tools of a sociologist to collect data and analyze them would feel more like sociologists. In Panel B in Table 3, we see that students in the control groups did not change much from the pretest to the posttest: whereas 49 percent of students in the control groups’ pretest indicated they either “agree” or “strongly agree” that they identified with being a sociologist, the percentage increased to only 52 percent at the posttest and was not statistically significant with a chi-square test. On the other hand, during the pretest, 41 percent of the portfolio students identified with being a sociologist. After the portfolio project, 59 percent of these students identified as a sociologist. This change was statistically significant. The results of the project are even more pronounced when we consider how the portfolio had an impact on identity for nonsociology majors. Before the project, only 32 percent of nonsociology students in the portfolio and control classes identified with being a sociologist. For both groups, identity increased significantly after the course. Among nonsociology majors, 69 percent identified with being a sociologist after they participated in the project, compared to only 43 percent among those who did not participate.
Conclusion
We showed how using a course-long portfolio collection of “data” can inspire students to think sociologically. This project has shown to be useful in a variety of substantive courses and can easily be changed to accommodate the substantive needs of a particular sociology course, such as Medical Sociology or Social Movements. The portfolio is easily manageable in small to midsize classes, but we believe it could also be adapted for use in large lectures. For example, when class size generates too many groups to allow presentations, instructors could eliminate the group presentation component of the project.
Our assessment of the portfolio provides three important pedagogical findings. First, on average, the classes that participated in the project were able to apply what they learned about critical sociological thinking better than those classes that did not. Thus, we feel confident that students, overall, were gaining skills they can retain and use after course completion. Second, students began to identify with being a sociologist. We believe this identity will help them continue to think about the “data” they encounter in the world in a more sustained sociological way. Third, students enjoyed the project. Although just enjoying a project is not enough to make it pedagogically sound, it does help facilitate learning and engagement.