Abstract
Given that so many college students take Introduction to Sociology or Social Problems or both, we wondered about the amount of content overlap in these courses. We designed a study that used content analysis of syllabi from these courses in order to measure the amount of convergence between the two classes. In our sample, nearly 70 percent of the content was similar. More worrisome, some significant concepts, such as research methods and symbolic interactionism, were barely mentioned in either course. Given the new political economy of general education and more specifically higher education, we raise questions about the implications of such course content convergence and encourage the discipline to begin to address these issues.
Introduction
Our discipline has spent a significant amount of research time studying the Introduction to Sociology course, in part because it is the most popular course offered by sociology in the general education core in most colleges. Sociologists have debated if there is a core to our discipline that should be shared with students—and if so, what is that core? Our study expands these conversations by asking what concepts are being taught in the Social Problems course—and how much content is shared between these two courses. We begin by briefly summarizing the many conversations about how Introduction to Sociology should be taught as part of the core curriculum, then we explain our research and findings and conclude with possible implications.
The General Education Curriculum and Sociology
In theory, the general education curriculum should be designed to give students a well-balanced, “tasting menu” of the academic disciplines that shape the physical and social world in order to develop “in them the ability and confidence to pursue self-directed learning” (American Sociological Association [ASA] 2007:85). Most curricula are designed to require students to take certain key classes (often English and mathematics) and then offer a distribution list of courses within three broad areas (natural sciences and mathematics, the arts and humanities, and the social sciences), with students required to take a set number of credit hours in each area. The social science area of the core curriculum routinely contains introductory courses in psychology, political science, history, and anthropology as well as sociology courses. Best pedagogical practices urge professors to help students to see connections between classes so that the courses do not become mere “hoops” to complete. “[L]iberal learning transforms frames of reference through the critical reflection of assumptions (one’s own and those of others) and social contexts” (ASA 2007:6). How many general education curricula actually accomplish that goal, however, is an open question.
The American Sociological Association’s task force on Sociology and General Education (ASA 2007:17–18) noted that sociology contributes to the general education curriculum in at least six ways:
Sociology illustrates the interplay between the macro and microstructures of the social world. . . . Sociology demonstrates and explains the structured aspects of inequality. . . . Sociology can describe, explain, and predict the properties of social groups. . . . Sociology demonstrates the important of context in understanding social behavior. . . . Sociology enables students to see how they, as individuals, are connected to society. We talk about the self-concept, how it is different from the notion of personality, and the self emerges in social context. . . . Sociology provides explanations of social change.
In many, if not most, institutions in the United States, the Introduction to Sociology course is a part of the general education core curriculum, which many students take during their first two years at college (Kain et al. 2007; Rowell and This 2013). Introduction of Sociology, of course, is not the only class with a sociological focus in many institutions’ general education core; Social Problems (or closely related titles such as Contemporary Social Issues) is often included in the list of courses, and according to Rowell and This (2013), the number of Social Problems courses in the general education core at two-year institutions is growing. At many schools, a course such as Intimate Relationships/Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, or Sociology of Gender might also be included in the curricular options from which students can select for general education social science credit (Rowell and This 2013).
Can and Should Sociologists Construct a Coherent Learning Experience for Students?
The scholarship of teaching and learning urges teachers to assess not only the pedagogical techniques used to communicate course content and skills to students but also to examine how courses fit together into a—hopefully coherent—whole for learners. The American Sociological Association has utilized findings from the scholarship of teaching and learning to inform conversations about curriculum development at the national and even international levels. A task force currently is focused on creating the third version of documents often known as Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major (Eberts et al. 1990) and Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004). These previous documents, as well as many scholarship of teaching and learning articles, have likely guided many departmental meetings as faculty contemplated how to construct a holistic curriculum that meets institutional and regional accreditation standards, in conversation with these American Sociological Association documents.
A central theme in these ongoing discussions is whether our discipline has a core body of knowledge that “is” sociology and if so, which concepts and theories are included (see e.g., Baber 1931; D’Antonio 1983; Keith and Ender 2004, 2005; Lynch and Bogen 1997; Olzak 1981; Persell 2010; Ruggiero and Weston 1991; Schwartz and Smith 2010; Schweingruber 2004; Wagenaar 2004; Yoder 1933). These discussions have primarily focused on what should be taught in the introductory sociology class and then about the entire curriculum. Baber (1931:327), writing in the 1930s, noted that,
We have a specific problem—that of planning and teaching an introductory course in sociology. If this discussion repeatedly questions the meaning and scope of sociology it is obviously because we cannot arrive at any agreement on what should be taught in an introductory course until we reach some of an agreement on what sociology is.
A quarter decade later, Lee (1958:256) wrote that: “As a typical syllabus of a good introductory sociology course would indicate, its chief foci usually are: culture, personality as a social phenomenon, social structures and processes, interrelations among the social sciences as illustrated by an analysis of social institutions, and social change.” This pedagogical focus on the Introductory Sociology course continues. Over half a century after Baber’s (1931) article, Teaching Sociology published a special issue on the introductory course, and many of these authors were less certain they could identify such a core. Instead, they were asking: “Why should we be concerned about identifying a core of concepts, topics, and skills to include in the introductory course and the sociology curriculum?” (Wagenaar 2004:1). Wagenaar’s (2004) study queried sociologists active in the ASA Teaching and Learning section plus a random sample of the ASA membership and another random sample from a regional sociological association as well as the teaching sociology listserv. Research subjects were asked to rank “how much coverage you think each of the following topics, concepts, and skills
In 2008, the ASA’s Task Force on a College Level Introduction to Sociology Course announced its findings, including a course outline and a set of nine learning goals. Persell (2010) had her research subjects (current and former ASA presidents, presidents of regional sociology associations, and national award winners [ASA Dissertation; Distinguished Contributions to Teaching; Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline as well as NSF research funding winners]) rank agreement with 30 learning goals for the intro course on a 5-point Likert scale.
Wagenaar’s (2004) research subjects selected 11 concepts as one of their top five choices, and the ASA Task Force constructed 9 central topics that the course should include, and in Persell’s (2010) study, 9 learning goals emerged. See Table 1 for a list of all of their results. Of course, Wagenaar’s (2004) data are lists of concepts and theories and thus are phrased differently than Persell’s (2010) data, which were written as goals for students to show their abilities and understanding. (Our data will be phrased more like Wagenaar’s [2004] and the ASA’s [2008] Intro Soc document than Persell’s data [2010] since we are examining concepts listed in the course calendar/topics to be covered from syllabi.)
Selected Rankings of Concepts and Learning Goals for the Introductory Sociology Course.
Note. We constructed the table off of the Ferguson and Carbonaro (2016) article’s findings since it was the most recent publication and referred back to the other articles looking for similarities. All decisions are the authors’ alone about perceived similarities.
A more recent proposal, by a group of sociology faculty working with Arum and Ruska (2010), evaluated all the literature about constructing a sociological curriculum, the “is there a core in sociology” debate, and the larger conversations about the changing nature of higher education and the scholarship of teaching and learning and constructed the Sociological Literacy Framework (SLF) (Ferguson and Carbonaro 2016). The SLF tried to weave essential concepts with student competencies (while not exactly parallel to Persell’s [2010] learning goals, they do focus on what students can do after learning sociology) (see Table 1 for their results).
It is worth noting, however, that almost no article discusses if there is a core that should be taught in the Social Problems course (the exception we found was Shideler [1920], but it concerned a course for high school students).
Moreover, we need to remember that many of these studies asked faculty what they thought should be included in the “ideal” course, not what the faculty member actually included in his or her course. So how can our discipline shift its theoretical focus from “the ideal” Introduction to Sociology course (and also the Social Problems course) to analyzing the concepts being used in actual courses? We argue an examination of syllabi is one important way to get at that level of data—at the is rather than the ought.
Why Study Syllabi?
Relatively few research articles in sociology use the syllabus as their research focus (Albers 2003; Grauerholz and Gibson 2006; Hudd 2003) despite the fact that almost every class taught requires a syllabus to document student learning objectives, readings, assessments, the final grade calculation, and a class calendar. Thus, the syllabus is one of the few educational artifacts that is required no matter the type of institution, structure of the sociology program, or faculty member teaching the course. A well-crafted syllabus is “a contract . . . , a communication device . . . , a plan for the course . . . , and a cognitive map” for the course (Albers 2003:61; Matejka and Kurke 1994).
We have chosen to research Introductory Sociology and Social Problems courses because they are the most likely classes students take in the general education curriculum to learn about our discipline (Kain et al. 2007; Rowell and This 2013). Furthermore, we want to study syllabi (in particular, their list of concepts) as our unit of analysis primarily because our research questions focus on what sociological concepts are stated as being covered—and therefore hopefully learned by students. While we readily admit that the syllabus is an imperfect measure of content coverage (for more on limitations to studying syllabi, see Grauerholz and Gibson 2006:7), it is one of the few means of data collection about what is happening in specific classes that can be made available to researchers who are unable to do participant observation in classrooms.
Methodology
Sample
The data for this study consisted of 85 syllabi for Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems courses taught at institutions throughout the United States during the past three years (2012–2015). Sixty-five of the syllabi were for Introduction to Sociology, and 20 were for Social Problems. Approximately 70 percent of the syllabi were from courses at public universities and 30 percent from private universities (see Table 2 for a breakdown by institutional classification). This is fairly close to the actual distribution of students among public and private universities in the U.S. population; as of 2011, 73 percent of U.S. college students were attending some type of public college or university (O’Shaughnessy 2011). There was diversity within each category. Most of the public universities were large doctoral-granting research institutions or comprehensive regional universities, but there were two syllabi from two-year colleges, two from specialized high schools, and one from a public liberal arts college. One syllabi was from a historically black four-year college. The majority of private universities were baccalaureate liberal arts colleges, but there were also syllabi from large private research universities, one Ivy League college, and one women’s college.
Characteristics of Institutions Represented in Syllabi.
Note. N = 85 institutions.
2015 Carnegie Foundation classifications.
These syllabi were submitted specifically for this project in response to calls distributed through sociological organizations in the summer and fall of 2015. Specifically, calls were sent out via listservs for the American Sociological Association’s Teaching and Learning section, the Society for the Scientific Study of Social Problems, the Southern Sociological Society, and Sociologists for Women in Society in mid-June and again in early October 2015. At our request, calls for syllabi were posted on the websites for the Midwest Sociological Society and the Pacific Sociological Association from June 20 to September 1, 2015, and again from October 5 to November 1, 2015. Individuals were invited to send us one or both syllabi for classes taught in the past three years (2012–2015). In the call, we gave a brief overview of the purpose of the project, and we assured potential submitters of confidentiality and that we would not borrow any ideas from any respondents for our own syllabi. We requested that individuals sending syllabi do more than simply list the chapter or reading but add some clarification (e.g., Chapter 3—research methods). This was intended to assure that we would be able to identify the topics covered in each course.
Types of Syllabi and Number of Syllabi Excluded
We excluded syllabi for courses taught solely online as it was impossible to compute minutes devoted to particular concepts (one of our key variables) for these cases. We also excluded syllabi that did not provide any information on the time devoted to particular concepts (meaning no weeks or dates were provided in the course schedule).
Coding and Variables
We coded each syllabus for both the course structure and the course content. The course structure included variables that we used to calculate the percentage of course time spent on different sociological concepts. Coding the course content involved first making an exhaustive list of all topics covered on each syllabus for each class separately. Then, jointly in a series of meetings, we collapsed these separate topics into sociological concept areas.
Course Structure
We coded the syllabi for variables related to the structure of the course for Introductory Sociology and Social Problems separately. Variables related to structure were the total number of days the class met, the number of minutes met per day, the number of review days, and the number of test days. From these variables, we were able to compute variables for the total meeting time in minutes and the total meeting time in minutes excluding test and review days.
Coding of course structure was completed by all three authors. To enhance intercoder reliability, we jointly created a file with key variables that we could gather from each syllabus, and we coded multiple syllabi together as a group to reach consensus. We sought to not exclude any syllabus for which it was possible to determine the course time in minutes devoted to each course topic. This meant that we discussed and resolved any coding difficulties as a group. In some cases, we acquired texts and readings used in classes for further information on course content.
Course Content
In addition to course structure, we coded the syllabi to create substantive variables (topics covered). The first author completed the initial exhaustive list of all topics covered in the syllabi for each course separately. This initial listing resulted in 50 different concepts covered in the Introduction to Sociology syllabi and 71 different concepts for Social Problems. In a series of meetings, all three authors mutually agreed on categories into which these topics could be collapsed. For example, for Introductory Sociology, we created a category called “Sociological Structural Thinking” to include the separate concepts from the exhaustive list of: (1) What is sociology? (2) sociological imagination, (3) thinking sociologically, (4) social structure, (5) theory, and (6) constructionism. In creating categories, we considered the percentage of all syllabi covering particular concepts and whether this percentage was substantial enough to stand on its own. For example, we initially considered not combining organizations (which 12 syllabi included as a topic) and groups (which 15 syllabi included as a topic). However, we also considered American Sociological Association section areas and whether topics logically aligned. We discussed and resolved any disagreement regarding the categories we created and classifications of specific topics. Our final categories can be seen in Table 3.
Percentage of Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems Course Devoted to Particular Concepts.
Analysis
Our analysis focuses on examining the range of topics covered in both Introductory Sociology and Social Problems syllabi, the consistency of topics covered across the syllabi for each course, and the approximate average course time devoted to particular concepts. To examine these topics, our analysis proceeded in two stages. First, we examined the percentage of syllabi covering the topics at all (meaning the topic was included on the syllabi). Second, we calculated the total course time devoted to each topic.
Percentage Covering Topics
To calculate the percentage of syllabi covering specific topics, we created a dichotomous variable coded one if the syllabus touched on the topic at all (any mention of it) and zero if it did not. This measure does not give us the percentage of course time devoted to a topic. However, it does allow us to see how consistently specific topics or content areas are included in each course. For example, we could determine that only 14 of the 65 Introductory Sociology syllabi (22 percent) covered any of the topics included in the category of demography at all.
Percentage of the Course Devoted to Particular Concepts
To calculate the approximate percentage of the total course meeting time devoted to particular concepts, we used the variables we created for course structure: total number of days the class met, number of minutes met per day, number of review days, and number of test days. We also created a new variable for the number of days on the syllabi devoted to each topic. To compute how many minutes are spent on a specific topic, we multiplied the minutes per class by the number of days spent on a specific topic for each syllabus. We divided this by the total class meeting time (total days met multiplied by meeting time in minutes) to get the fraction of the course spent on the topic for each syllabi. We created two separate measures of total class meeting time: One was the approximate class time devoted to the topic excluding exam and review days, and the second was the approximate percentage of class time devoted to the topic excluding exam and review days. We use the measure including exam and review days in the final calculations. Finally, we converted the fraction of the course spent on each topic to a percentage and averaged this across all syllabi. This allows us to say that for the 65 syllabi representing Introductory Sociology courses, on average, 1 percent of total course time was devoted to demography. (This average reflects the fact that close to four-fifths of the syllabi did not address demography at all.)
Limitations
These syllabi are not necessarily representative of Introductory and Social Problems courses taught at universities in the United States in the past three years. The self-selection method of submission may mean that individuals who are more engaged in the profession and/or in the scholarship of teaching and learning were more likely to submit. However, these syllabi provide detailed information on current sociology courses being taught in the United States, including textbook used, topics covered, and methods of assessment.
We recognize that trying to measure time devoted to a concept from course outlines alone creates a rather imprecise statistic. Most faculty listed only one or two concepts per day, which may or may not reflect the actual sociological concept coverage for the day. In addition, good pedagogical techniques encourage faculty to weave “older” concepts with newer ones, so these concepts might have been covered more than the syllabi recorded; for example, many faculty likely connected the new concepts to ones previously covered, such as “the sociological imagination,” but did not list that on the course outline. Not all faculty specified if a review session occurred during class time and so on. So for these reasons, we urge readers to see these data about time as approximations of classroom activity.
Findings
Our analysis focuses on examining the range of topics covered in both Introductory Sociology and Social Problems syllabi, the consistency of topics covered across the syllabi for each course, and the average course time devoted to particular concepts. To examine these topics, our analysis proceeded in two stages. First, we examined the percentage of syllabi covering the topics at all (meaning the topic was included on the syllabi). Second, we calculated the total course time devoted to each topic.
Introduction to Sociology
Prevalence of topics
Prior studies have ascertained which basic concepts should be commonly covered in introductory sociology courses. Wagenaar (2004) and the ASA Task Force (2008) (see Table 1) both suggested several topics that topped a common list of concepts that both studies agreed should be included in introductory sociology courses. These included: sociological imagination, culture, stratification, research methods, social institutions, social organizations, socialization, and theory. Among this sample of syllabi, these concepts are included in introductory sociology courses, though not consistently.
The sociological imagination was listed as the top concept that should be covered in introductory sociology courses by participants in both Wagenaar (2004) and the ASA Task Force (2008). As a standalone concept, the sociological imagination was only represented in one-third of the syllabi in our sample. This means that only one-third of our participants dedicated at least one class period to this concept by itself. One-third does not seem very high, considering the consensus of this as a pivotal concept for this course and the discipline as a whole. However, we recognize that this is a concept that may easily be woven into many modules rather than be discussed as a one-time concept.
Percentage of Course Content for Introductory Sociology
While there are a variety of concepts covered in introductory courses, these concepts are not covered equally. In our sample, we found that gender (94 percent), race (89 percent), culture (80 percent), and deviance/social control (75 percent) were the top-four standalone topics covered in the introductory course. The rest of the concepts were only covered as standalone concepts in 65 percent or less of the syllabi. (See Table 3 for a full list of concepts.) The ASA Task Force (2008) listed “social change” as one of the critical concepts to be included in introductory courses, yet it was only covered as a standalone concept in 39 percent of the syllabi in this sample.
For the purposes of analysis, we combined similar categories such as theoretical concepts that yielded categories such as “what is sociology?,” which then were found in 96 percent of the courses in this sample. Combined categories related to general social class stratification were covered by 88 percent of the syllabi. Social institutions accounted for 13 percent of all course content. This means that an average of 13 percent of the total course class/lecture time was spent discussing a social institution. Family was the most common social institution discussed in introductory courses, followed by education and religion.
The “sociological structural thinking” category accounted for an average of 12 percent of class time. This category included all sociological theories/perspectives along with “what is sociology” and the sociological imagination. Despite the high coverage of sociological structural thinking coverage in introductory courses, only an average of 3 percent of course time was dedicated to micro-theories such as the presentation of self and intersectionality. There was a significant difference in the coverage of micro-theories as opposed to macro-theories. While no particular sociological theories were listed by Wagenaar (2004) or the ASA Task Force (2008), “thinking like a sociologist” is a common goal for these introductory courses. The syllabi from this sample suggest that a substantial percentage of class time is spent on getting students to understand what sociology is and how to think like a sociologist from a macro-level perspective.
In addition to the sociological thinking category, there were three standalone (not combined) concepts that accounted for the next three most covered concepts. Social class (7 percent), gender (6 percent), and race (6 percent) were substantially covered in the introductory sociology courses. These three social inequalities took up more course time than micro-theory concepts such as socialization (3 percent), self/interaction (2 percent), groups and organizations (2 percent), and social change (2 percent). This is something worth discussing specifically to determine the need and/or desire to cover these topics in more detail in these types of courses. The Introduction to Sociology course is perhaps the one course where discussions about the self and interaction and early socialization theories are standalone topics in the textbooks marketed for these courses.
Social Problems
Social Problems courses can be a substitute for introductory sociology courses in some institutions, or it can be a sequential course following an Introduction to Sociology course. Thus, it is important to review the content of Social Problems courses to determine whether students are exposed to enough sociological content in the cases where they will only take one sociology course and also determine whether these courses are sufficiently building on each other in the case where they are both required.
Social Problems syllabi were not as consistent as Introductory Sociology courses, which made it harder to determine any common curriculum. Theoretical concepts such as constructionism, critical theory, and structural theories accounted for almost 13 percent of the course content. Besides the theoretical perspectives, problems of social institutions accounted for the next most common topics in this course, with 12 percent of the course content.
Outside of theoretical perspectives and social institutions, there were three other concepts that accounted for the next most common course content. These included social class (6 percent), race (6 percent), and crime (6 percent); gender (4 percent), sexuality (3 percent), drugs (2 percent), and social inequality (2 percent) made up the next most covered concepts. Beyond these eight topics, the rest of the concepts were a hodge-podge of concepts that seem to be based on individual faculty members’ areas of expertise or interests.
Some institutions might have additional learning outcomes for the Social Problems class, such as it being designated a writing intensive class or a library skill-building class, which might have influenced our data.
Discussion and Implications
Implications: Introduction to Sociology
While the consensus about what should be taught to sociology students includes an emerging view of what our discipline is, what seems to be happening in classrooms across the United States, as evidenced in our data set, is a bit different. Our data set shows that 60 percent of the concepts taught in Introduction to Sociology course focus on only six concepts: race/class/gender and their intersectionality, social institutions, sociological ways of thinking, deviance, culture, and research methods. The last three each average less than 5 percent of course content. Other concepts labeled as essential by Ferguson and Carbonaro (2016) are rarely taught: Socialization was not quite 3 percent of course content, and social change was less than 2 percent.
Thus, there is a disconnect between the pedagogical literature about what the course should entail and what faculty are actually teaching students. Our research does not allow us to speculate on why the particular faculty who contributed their syllabi to our study chose to cover certain concepts and not others, but there is one possible explanation that we feel we can likely rule out. Most “big book” texts cover all these major concepts—indeed the textbook formula is that each conceptual chapter should be the same approximate length—so it is unlikely that faculty feel they do not have access to resources to assign to students to begin to learn the concepts. They are there in many texts in the same amount as other concepts that faculty have decided to cover in their class. Faculty choice, therefore, is likely driven by other reasons.
We hope that future research will drill down to level of individual faculty and ask why they choose to cover certain concepts and not others. Is it personal preference? Is it a matter of comfort, say for example, that they cover concepts they learned in graduate school? Is it that they are teaching at several institutions and choose a set of concepts that will meet all the institutions’ learning goals for the course and leave off nearly every other concept? To what extent are programs requiring a unified syllabus and student learning objectives in the Intro to Sociology course, perhaps in order to meet general education assessments? This could mean that faculty are not really choosing what to cover in their sections of the course.
But if we switch our frame of reference from the faculty teaching the course to that of the student who is taking the course—a student not likely to be a major and who is enrolled in the course to meet a social science general education requirement—these students are receiving a somewhat skewed view of our discipline. The “heavy” focus on social class, gender, and race compared to other single concepts could lead students to believe that sociologists only focus on those three dimensions. This is not necessarily a critique of these Introduction to Sociology courses but a point of concern. The focus on class, gender, and race can be beneficial to non-Sociology majors who are most likely to take one sociology class and move along to their majors, given all that is happening in our culture at the moment. Indeed, knowledge about inequalities based on class, gender, and race are applicable to any student regardless of major, and this is a key selling point of sociology to students, be they non-majors or majors.
On the other hand, focusing heavily on class, gender, and race in an introductory course can send an incomplete message to students that sociology focuses only on those three dimensions of social interaction. Introductory courses serve as a sampling of the entire discipline with upper-level courses building on these individual concepts, theories, and sociological skills. The question then becomes: What are the implications for students not receiving as much detail about these other concepts that are rarely taught or are missing entirely? Is it okay for students to not have as much exposure to micro-level interactions/theories, or groups/organizations, and social change in the introductory sociology course given that few students take more sociology courses? Does focusing on race, class, and gender negatively impact learning in other upper division major courses given that students have had little or no introduction to concepts these courses might address? We need data that explore these questions about student learning.
Implications: Social Problems
Given that this course is rarely discussed in the sociological literature, it is not surprising to find that there is little consensus about what sociological concepts should be taught in the course. Why the literature is silent on this course is puzzling given the prevalence of conversation about what should be in the Introduction to Sociology course.
While there was less conformity in topics covered in the Social Problems courses, again, similar concepts dominate course content. Sociological thinking—especially social constructionism—was the set of concepts that predominated in our sample but again was only at 13 percent. Closely behind at almost 12 percent was social institutions. After that, topics became quite diffuse, with crime and then race, class, and gender being next but at half the percentage of the other topics (6 percent).
Again, if we think this course could be the sole sociology course that a student might take—especially at a two-year institution (Rowell and This 2013), research methods was just 1 percent of the course content. It appears that students are learning about social problems in a non–methodologically based way. Moreover, social change and solutions to social problems were each just barely over 1 percent of the course content. So these courses likely gave students the sense that there is little that can be done to solve social problems. Such a “depression perspective” does not always empower students to seek change but could encourage them to withdraw, give up, and step away from all means of social change, whether that is from voting, to joining social movements, and so on.
Implications for the Discipline of Sociology
For the admittedly small number of non-majors who take both classes, they are often receiving a double dose of sociological content that focuses on thinking sociologically, social institutions, and race, class, and gender, but they are missing out on much of our discipline. Is that what we want non-majors to know about our discipline? With little grounding in research methods and statistics, even in introductory courses, will they be able to understand research they read after the class and discuss it? Or will sociology be (or become) for them “just the personal opinion” of liberals? Without an overview of sociological methods in our core classes, even majors might not be prepared for upper division methods and statistics classes. They may move on from these classes without understanding that data drive our conclusions, not our personal opinions.
We see our work as a preliminary study of what sociological concepts are actually covered in sociological general education courses, compared to the more theoretical debates the scholarship of teaching and learning literature has had about what should be covered in Introduction to Sociology courses and to a lesser extent, in the major. Perhaps it is time that we turn our attention to the Social Problems class and begin to have conversations about what concepts we believe students need to know after enrolling in that course. It could be possible to construct a set a common learning objectives for a course such as Social Problems with a common theoretical framework, based primarily on the constructionist view of social problems.
We have another concern as we look at our results. In this age of the corporate university (Tuchman 2011), it might not make sense to decision makers outside of the classroom to keep two classes in the general education curriculum that overlap so much. In our study, nearly 70 percent of the two classes were overlapping content. Even if the context in which the concepts were discussed might be different in each class, the overlapping content is still present. Many deans already have a mixed to negative view of sociology (Holm 2008); add to that the movement to streamline students’ paths to degrees, even to make the bachelor’s degree attainable in three years (Trachtenberg and Kauvar 2010), and to make it cheaper for students and their families (e.g., the U.S. government’s Making College Affordable initiative), and such duplication of course content might become problematic in the eyes of administrators. We need to consider how to differentiate more between these classes—otherwise bureaucrats might decide to keep only one of our courses.
As faculty, we need to throw open the doors of our classes to colleagues—in person and virtually—in order to begin such discussions. This article and others (Grauerholz and Gibson 2006) offer a roadmap for beginning to examine one aspect of what students learn using a well-known tool—course syllabi. We hope that the American Sociological Association and others continue the conversation.
We believe that the scholarly work on what should be the core content in Introduction to Sociology has been an important—albeit controversial—contribution to our discipline. That work is not yet finished. But based on our results, there is a lacuna between what the pedagogical literature has concluded are essential concepts and skills that should be taught in Introductory Sociology and what faculty as represented in our sample are actually teaching. Moreover, the conversation about what should be the core content in the Social Problems class is almost nonexistent even though this course is increasingly included as part of the core curriculum at many colleges and universities. Our results show that much of the content of Social Problems courses mirrors that of Introduction to Sociology and the remaining content seems idiosyncratic to the faculty member teaching it. We believe that scholarly work is needed to examine the function of the Social Problems course (1) as it contributes to the core curriculum and (2) how it fits into the sociological education our majors are receiving. Once we determine the role of the Social Problems course, we can move on to describing the ideal content of the course and then determining how much the ideal matches with the reality in the classroom. Then our discipline will have a shared understanding for the two main courses it offers in the general education curriculum.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and all the faculty who submitted their syllabi for us to analyze.
Editor’s Note
Past Hans O. Mauksch Award recipients Betsy Lucal and the editor provided reviews of this manuscript.