Abstract
Discussions of the core in sociology have focused on faculty members’ perspectives regarding what should be taught in introductory sociology courses. Because the development of curricula is and should be a social process, we argue that students’ perceptions of learning outcomes also should be considered when curricula are developed. This study utilizes a content analysis of 461 student-authored, end-of-semester reflective essays concerning the most memorable learning that occurred in an introductory sociology course. Collected between 2006 and 2015, the assignment was utilized in each of 12 introductory sociology course sections taught by the same instructor at two universities. We then map student essay topics onto the Sociological Literacy Framework (SLF) to identify the themes most memorable to students, comparing responses of online, regional campus students with residential campus students. Results suggest the instructor placed the greatest emphasis on the SLF Sociological Eye theme and the least emphasis on the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme. Students found topics within the SLF Socialization theme most memorable and rarely cited the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme.
Sociologists have long struggled to identify the central topics, concepts, and perspectives that should be taught within the sociology curriculum as a whole and in the introductory sociology course in particular (see Howard 2010). Recently, defining a core in sociology has received renewed attention through a variety of publications, including the Social Science Research Council’s sociology initiative (Ferguson and Carbonaro 2016), the National Standards for High School Sociology (American Sociological Association 2015), and The Sociology Major in the Changing Landscape of Higher Education: Curriculum, Careers, and Online Learning (Pike et al. 2017).
In this study, we utilize the Sociological Literacy Framework (SLF), developed by Ferguson and Carbonaro (2016) and recommended by the American Sociological Association (see Pike et al. 2017) as a valuable tool for designing the sociology curriculum, to analyze students’ perceptions of learning outcomes in 12 sections of one instructor’s introductory sociology course. Eight sections were taught on a small, regional, commuter campus of a state university. Four sections were taught on a midsized, residential, private university campus. Because the two campuses enroll distinct student populations in terms of social class, comparing campuses enables to us to consider whether students’ social context influences the most salient learning they take away from the introductory sociology course.
Greenwood (2013) notes that curriculum development is and should be a social process. The implication is that faculty, collectively, need to establish the curricular goals and content for both the introductory course and the major. We argue that this social process of curricular development needs to be informed by students’ perceptions of learning outcomes as well as the desired learning outcomes articulated in the SLF. While students lack both the subject matter expertise of faculty and a well-rounded understanding of the discipline as a whole, their perspective about what topics they remember as salient in the introductory sociology course may aid faculty members as they develop curricular goals and determine how to allocate time to content coverage. Of course, instructor decisions regarding pedagogical strategies, the amount of time dedicated to particular topics, choice of reading assignments and activities, and the relevance of examples and illustrations to students’ lived experience may influence the salience of topics for students. Nonetheless, it is worth asking which concepts, ideas, perspectives, and theories do introductory students find most memorable. Can faculty use this information to design introductory courses that are relevant to students’ experiences in society and thereby encourage further study in sociology?
Most of the discussion around the issue of a core in sociology has been from the perspective of faculty members regarding what is taught, what should be taught, and what learning should be assessed in the introductory course and the sociology major. While these debates remain at least partially unsettled and ongoing, we have ample evidence about what faculty members think the core of sociology is or should be (see Ballantine et al. 2016). We know little, however, about whether or not these commonly cited concepts, topics, and perspectives align with students’ own learning experiences in the introductory course or the major more broadly. Which concepts, perspectives, and insights are most memorable for students in the introductory sociology course? How do the themes students remember as most important or interesting from the introductory course align with the themes in the SLF? While the debate regarding the core continues, the SLF offers a way to assess student learning and provides guidance for continuity in introductory courses. It is not clear, however, how much weight should be given to each SLF theme in the introductory course. In reviewing our own syllabi, we find a slight and intentional overrepresentation of one theme—the Sociological Eye—and an unintentional, but significant, underrepresentation of another theme—Social Change and Reproduction. That imbalance is partially reflected in our students’ essays but not completely. In other words, because students approach course content from their own perspectives, what we emphasize is not always what they remember. Our findings suggest that by paying particular attention to the distribution of SLF themes in our syllabi and class sessions, being intentional about labeling each theme when we are engaging with it, and considering how the contextually specific experiences of our students may influence the salience of themes, instructors can achieve greater alignment between what faculty think students should learn in introductory sociology, what students think they are learning, and potentially, what students are actually learning.
Literature Review
As Ballantine et al. (2016) and Ferguson (2016) have argued, defining a sociological “core” has several benefits, including helping departments design majors and locating the discipline as a valuable and necessary part of a general education curriculum. Defining a core in sociology also provides parameters for measuring student learning (Ballantine et al. 2016), improves pedagogical practices (Ferguson 2016), and provides instructors—particularly in introductory sociology—with a guide for course design and content.
One way of considering what topics are most important to faculty teaching sociology courses is to investigate the topics covered in Teaching Sociology. Sweet and Cardwell (2016) conducted an analysis of the topic areas emphasized in articles and notes published in Teaching Sociology from 2009 to 2015. Issues related to inequality and stratification were the focus in nearly half of the studies published. The next most frequently addressed topics included theory (13 percent); culture (11 percent); family, life course, and society (11 percent); and politics and social change (8 percent) (Sweet and Cardwell 2016:69). Analysis can be interpreted as an overview of the topics prioritized by sociology faculty who are concerned with teaching and learning. Publication topics generally correspond to the rank ordering of American Sociological Association section memberships, with the topic of stratification and inequality being overrepresented compared to section membership. This finding suggests that perhaps faculty emphasize topics related to stratification and inequality more so than other topics in the sociology curriculum. Indeed, findings align closely with the SLF themes.
Wagenaar (2004) found little agreement among sociologists on the most important concepts, topics, and skills to be covered in introductory sociology. Keith and Ender (2004), in their analysis of introductory sociology textbooks, found an incredible range of concepts covered, with a majority of concepts covered only in a single textbook. D’Antonio (1983) and Howard et al. (2014) struggled to identify key concepts in introductory sociology courses, even when taught by faculty in the same department. In response to the ongoing debate, Ferguson (2016) argued for the importance of social inequality and social structure, the relationship between self and society, and the fact that sociology is a science as central to defining the discipline. See Ballantine et al. (2016) for a full review of the literature related to identifying a core in sociology.
Responding to the question, “Is there a core in sociology?”, Ferguson and Carbonaro (2016) conclude that there are, indeed, essential representative learning outcomes for both the introductory sociology course and the sociology major. They developed the SLF based on an extensive review of the literature on student learning outcomes in the discipline. The SLF identifies five “organizing themes” that collectively define the “sociological perspective” and that, they argue, are essential for both the course and the major. In addition, Ferguson and Carbonaro suggest there are six essential competencies or disciplinary skills that sociology majors should obtain in the course of their education. For the purposes of this study, we focus solely on the salience of the five organizing themes of the sociological perspective for introductory students, setting aside the issue of skills or competencies to be introduced in introductory sociology and developed within the major.
The five themes of the SLF’s sociological perspective are (1) the Sociological Eye, (2) Social Structure, (3) Socialization, (4) Stratification, and (5) Social Change and Reproduction (Ferguson 2016). The Sociological Eye theme encompasses the sociological imagination, major theoretical perspectives, founding theorists, the social construction of everyday life, and an understanding of how social forces affect individuals. The theme of Social Structure addresses the structural forces that affect human action at the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of society, including institutions, groups, and networks as well as an understanding of hierarchy, power, and authority. The Socialization theme refers to the relationship between the self and society, the social construction of the self, agents of socialization, culture, norms, and deviance. The core of the Stratification theme includes the different forms of inequality and the processes by which they are established and operate. Finally, the Social Change and Reproduction theme refers to the social processes that underlie social change and persistence (Ferguson 2016:170–71).
The SLF sets forth in broad strokes what sociology faculty members would largely agree should be learning outcomes of the introductory course and the major. But what do students in the discipline perceive they are learning? While the SLF provides a guide to what faculty should teach, the question remains, Are students learning what faculty members believe they should be learning? Thus, it is important to investigate student reports of learning in introductory sociology and in the sociology major. In one of the few studies to address students’ perceptions of learning in sociology, Spalter-Roth et al. (2010:316) found that nearly 90 percent of student survey respondents agreed that, as a result of their sociology major, they understood “basic sociological concepts.” Without identifying which specific concepts students consider “basic,” however, it is difficult to ascertain just what students perceive they learned in the introductory course. More instructively, Spalter-Roth et al. (2010:316) found that almost 70 percent of respondents agreed that they learned “about differences between theoretical paradigms, the effects of status differences on daily life, critical views of society, social issues, and the relation between individuals and institutions.”
Howard et al. (2014), using a pretest-posttest methodology, found that introductory sociology students showed statistically significant increases in learning in each of four topic areas assessed: the sociological perspective, theoretical perspectives, research methods, and sociological concepts. In the Howard et al. study, however, students were asked about particular subject matter, which was identified by the faculty researchers, rather than allowing students themselves to identify the topics they perceived to be the most salient. Thus, there remains a gap in the literature with regard to students’ views of learning in sociology.
The SLF implicitly presents the five themes as more or less equal in importance and does not provide guidance in terms of the desired relative emphasis each theme should or could receive, leaving that determination in the hands of the individual instructor. In the analysis that follows, we address the issue of the salience of each of these five themes for students in one faculty member’s (Howard) introductory sociology course. First, we briefly identify the amount of coverage, in terms of class sessions, allocated to each theme in the instructor’s course. We proceed to ask, if the five themes contained in the SLF are the core of sociology, are students recognizing and appreciating their importance as they are introduced to the discipline?
Through the analysis of an end-of-semester reflective essay, the current study provides insight into what students in one faculty member’s introductory sociology course found most noteworthy, giving us a more student-centered understanding of knowledge production in the introductory course. Previous research suggests utilization of a reflective writing assignment is an appropriate strategy for this purpose. Roberts (1993) argued that writing is fundamentally sociological—the act of writing is a movement from a personal, private perspective to the larger social context of considering one’s audience and other structural issues, thus reflecting and developing a sociological imagination. Grauerholz, Eisele, and Stark (2013) found that in courses where the stated goal is to develop the sociological imagination or sociological thinking, faculty are more likely to require transactional writing—writing designed to inform, instruct, or persuade an audience. By reflecting on their academic experience utilizing a sociological framework, students both learn to write and develop critical reasoning skills. Unlike measures that rely on pretest-posttest methodologies with preselected variables, using an open-ended reflective writing assignment as the object of analysis allows us to examine what students themselves identify as the concepts they recognized, remembered, or found most important in the introductory course.
Methods
The data analyzed in this study consist of 461 student-authored, end-of-semester reflective essays collected between 2006 and 2015. The assignment was utilized in each of 12 introductory sociology course sections taught by the same instructor (Howard) at two universities. In all sections, only a few, if any, of the students had declared a sociology major. Eight sections of the course were taught at a small (approximately 1,500-student enrollment), regional, commuter campus of a state university (hereafter referred to as the regional campus). These eight sections were taught in an online format. The campus was only minimally selective, with the majority of students coming from the middle 50 percent of their high school class. All students commuted to campus, and roughly two thirds were enrolled full-time. Approximately one third of students at this institution were nontraditional (age 25 or older), and often students were employed off campus and/or had family-care responsibilities. Individual-level data concerning student age was not available to the authors. This study includes 359 essays from regional campus students.
The other four sections of the course were taught at a midsized (approximately 4,500-student enrollment), private, master’s comprehensive, residential institution (hereafter referred to as the residential campus) that places strong emphasis on a liberal arts foundation for all students, regardless of major. This institution is considerably more selective, as each year, nearly half of incoming students ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Sixty-eight percent of undergraduate students lived on campus, and 98 percent were enrolled full-time. Students were traditional in age (18–24), were unlikely to work off campus, and were likely to be highly engaged in extracurricular and cocurricular activities on campus. This study includes 102 essays completed by residential campus students taught in a face-to-face course setting.
All 12 sections of the course were taught prior to the publication of the SLF. Therefore, this is a retrospective study, looking backward in time to see the frequency with which students in one faculty member’s courses cited concepts, theories, and ideas associated with the five themes of the SLF. This allows us to address the question, Are students learning what sociologists (Pike et al. 2017) believe faculty should be teaching?
The assignment required students to reflect upon their experience in the introductory sociology course and to identify, explain, and illustrate three concepts, ideas, or insights learned in the course that students believed they would remember long after the course concluded. It is, therefore, an appropriate indicator of the salience of topics for students in introductory sociology. The assignment provided to students read, Select (a) three sociological concepts, ideas, or insights you have learned this semester which you believe you will remember long after the course has ended. Write a letter to a friend or family member (b) explaining each concept, idea or insight, (c) provide an example or illustration, (d) explain why it is important/relevant to everyday life, and (e) how it has affected the way you see society.
The essay was to be written in the form of a letter to a friend or family member who had never taken a sociology course in order to avoid students’ overreliance on sociological jargon or definitions quoted from a text. The vast majority of essays submitted contained three concepts as required; however, a few included only two concepts, while others included more than three concepts. In each case, we included all of the concepts cited in the essay in our analysis.
The authors separately coded the topics identified by students in the essays. In the process, we first identified 58 variables (concepts, perspectives, theories, insights) cited by students. The authors then compared codes and, where they disagreed, reread the essays and together determined which codes to include in the final analysis. We then mapped these variables onto the five organizing concepts/themes of the sociological perspective included in the SLF: the Sociological Eye, Social Stratification, Social Structure, Socialization, and Social Change and Reproduction. Again, we note that the SLF was published after the last of the 12 sections of the introductory sociology course had been taught. Therefore, the course was not designed with the explicit intention of covering the five themes in the SLF.
Results
As Table 1 shows, following the precedent of Lowney, Price, and Guittar (2017), we analyzed the most recent syllabus utilized at each university to obtain an estimate of the amount of time dedicated to each of the SLF themes in the introductory course on each campus. The 461 students whose essays were included in the analysis cited 1,388 topics, an average of 3 per student.
Sociological Literary Framework (SLF) Theme Citation Frequencies by Campus (Kendall’s tau-b).
p < .01. **p < .05.
In the syllabus used at the regional campus, 37.5 percent of assigned course content, or 6 of 16 weekly online modules, was devoted to the SLF Sociological Eye theme, including modules on the sociological imagination, the origins of sociology, theoretical perspectives in sociology, the dramaturgical perspective, and research methods in sociology. Three of the 16 weeks, or 18.8 percent of assigned course content, were devoted to the SLF Social Structure theme, including modules on social structure and social interaction, social groups, and marriage and family. The SLF Socialization theme was the primary topic of 18.8 percent of assigned course content, including coverage of culture, socialization, and deviance and social control. Another 18.8 percent of assigned course content was devoted to the SLF Stratification theme, including social stratification in the United States, social class in global perspective, and inequalities of race, class, and gender. One of 16 weeks, or 6.3 percent of assigned course content, was devoted to the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme.
In the syllabus utilized at the residential campus, 36 percent of assigned course content, or 9 out of 25 class sessions, was devoted the SLF Sociological Eye theme. Five sessions, or 20 percent of assigned course content, were devoted to the SLF Social Structure theme. The SLF Socialization and Stratification themes each also received 20 percent of assigned course content. One out of 25 class sessions, or 4 percent of course content, was devoted to the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme. Given the relative emphasis on the Sociological Eye, it is reasonable to assume this SLF theme would be more frequently cited than the other four themes. Likewise, given the relatively brief attention given to the Social Change and Reproduction theme, it makes sense that students were less likely to cite concepts and insights related to this theme in their essays. Our results provide preliminary evidence that the amount of class time dedicated to SLF themes may correlate with the salience of these themes for students.
As demonstrated in the following, the topics cited by students in their essays were influenced not only by the instructor’s presentation of materials but also by the readings from the two assigned texts. Second Thoughts: Sociology Challenges Conventional Wisdom, by Ruane and Cerulo (2015), was required in all 12 semesters. New editions were used as they were published. In a majority of the semesters, this text was paired with Henslin’s (2007) Down to Earth Sociology: Introductory Readings. As the Henslin text aged without a new edition, the instructor experimented with two other texts in its place, using each for one semester: Massey’s (2015) Readings for Sociology and Ferguson’s (2010) Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology. Certain topics in the assigned readings clearly resonated with students and were mentioned in essays with some frequency. This points to the important role of texts, in addition to instructors, in defining the core of sociology for introductory students. We suspect that the use of edited collections with selections that, in the view of the course instructor, students find more compelling and interesting than the standard introductory survey textbook likely impacted the salience of topics within various themes, as noted in the analysis below.
Table 1 presents the frequency with which topics in each of the five SLF themes were cited by students in their essays. Because some students cited multiple topics within the same theme, we present both the percentage of students who cite topics within a theme and the percentage of all citations within a theme. For example, one student may cite structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism, each of which is counted as a citation of the Sociological Eye theme. Therefore, this student’s response would count as one in the percentage of students citing the Sociological Eye theme but count three times toward the percentage of all citations within the Sociological Eye theme. A second student may cite the sociological imagination (Sociological Eye theme), the gender wage gap (Stratification theme), and the looking-glass self (Socialization theme). This second student’s topics would be categorized under three different SLF themes for both percentage of students citing and percentage of citations within each theme.
In Table 1, it is the Socialization theme that stands out, not the instructor’s more heavily emphasized Sociological Eye theme, being cited by nearly four out of five students (79.4 percent) and accounting for over 40 percent of all topics cited. This may be due to the microsociological nature of most topics within the SLF Socialization theme. We hypothesize that undergraduates, particularly those in an introductory course and experiencing their first encounter with sociology as a discipline, may more readily relate to ways in which they are influenced by society at the face-to-face level, as they are still developing the ability to understand and “see” the impact of macrosociological forces on their lives. In essence, the insights from the Socialization theme provide tools and language for interpreting experiences students already recognize but may lack the terminology to express. Three other themes were cited by similar percentages of students: Stratification (48.6 percent), the Sociological Eye (45.6 percent), and Social Structure (44.3 percent). The SLF Sociological Eye theme was cited a total of 304 times by 210 students, suggesting that nearly half of students who cited this theme cited more than one topic within the theme. The SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme stands out for the lack of citation by students (2.4 percent).
Because we are interested in how the demographic contexts in which the introductory course is taught may influence the salience of SLF themes for students, we also compare the citations of regional-campus students with residential-campus students. While individual-level data are not available, regional-campus students tended to come from less privileged backgrounds, were older on average, were likely to be employed off campus while commuting to class, and were more likely than residential-campus students to be attending part-time. Residential-campus students were younger, unlikely to be working off campus, more likely to have been in the upper tier of their high school class, and more likely than regional-campus students to be attending full-time. Tuition and fees for the residential campus were significantly greater than those at the regional campus. These differences, we argue, serve as a proxy for students’ social class and may impact which SLF topics are most salient. Because they were from more privileged backgrounds and likely held a more “rugged individualist” view of success, we posited that students at the private regional university would be less likely to find discussions of the various forms of structural inequality to resonate. The older regional-campus students, entering college or returning to college later in life, may continue to subscribe to a “rugged individualist” ideology despite coming from less advantaged backgrounds. This view has often been tempered, however, by occupational and income frustrations that resulted in their desire to complete a college degree in order to be able to “climb the career ladder.” While social class is not a concept Americans readily utilize, Gamson (1992:91) found when participants in a focus group on deindustrialization spontaneously mentioned social class, they tended to use populist frameworks, such as “people with money” and “little people.” As a result of their frustrated attempts to “get ahead,” we suggest, regional-campus students would more readily identify themselves as “little people” struggling to succeed in a system that favors “people with money” and therefore would find social-conflict theory and class-based stratification to resonate with their understanding of society more so than would residential-campus students.
Table 1 provides a comparison of SLF themes cited by students on the two campuses. We found statistically significant differences in the percentage of students citing concepts related to the SLF Socialization, Social Structure, and Social Change and Reproduction themes. Students enrolled at the regional campus were more likely to cite topics within the SLF Socialization and Social Change and Reproduction themes. The SLF Social Structure theme was cited more frequently by students at the traditional, residential campus. We did not find a statistically significant difference in the citation of the SLF Stratification theme as anticipated. One factor accounting for the fewer mentions of the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme on the residential campus is that the number of class meetings per semester was one fewer than on the regional campus. Having to eliminate a topic, the instructor chose not to include a class session dedicated to the topic of social change and instead relied on occasional coverage of social change when addressing other topics throughout the course. In regard to students’ selection of essay topics, this decision likely made the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme less salient for the residential-campus students, as no cited topics related to it, although even on the regional campus only a small fraction of students cited this theme. Thus, while topics related to each of the four other SLF themes were salient to considerable numbers of students, the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme was rarely cited by students in this instructor’s introductory sociology course.
Discussion
In our analysis of students’ citations of topics related to the SLF themes in end-of-semester essays in one instructor’s introductory sociology course, we found four of the five themes cited with some frequency. The lack of citation of topics related to the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme may simply be an artifact of this instructor’s idiosyncratic approach to the course. As reflected in this instructor’s syllabi for the regional and residential campuses, the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme comprised 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively, of assigned course content. Another possible explanation is that, in the introductory course in general, there is a tendency to leave the topic of Social Change and Reproduction to the end of the semester, causing students to perceive it as just one more topic covered hurriedly, if at all, as the semester winds down. As Yogan (2015) has argued, we have a tendency in introductory sociology, social problems, and stratification courses, in particular, to point out injustices and structural inequalities in our society without offering much in the way of hope for positive social change. As sociologists, we tend to work with intentionality to convince students of the power and influence of social structures, which may cause us to underemphasize the social construction of these structures and the possibility of positive social change. Our results suggest that, with regard to this one instructor’s course at least, Yogan’s critique was on target.
Of the other four SLF themes, Socialization stands out, with nearly four out of five students citing topics with this theme. The essays suggest that in introductory sociology, students find a toolbox of concepts that provide labels for and understanding of their face-to-face experiences in society as they come to recognize they are not merely “rugged individualists” bravely charting their own way in society but are readily shaped by social forces and groups. Three other SLF themes—the Sociological Eye, Stratification, and Social Structure—were cited by more than 4 out of 10 students, suggesting topics within these themes also hold considerable salience for introductory students. It is worth noting that while the SLF Sociological Eye theme comprised the most assigned content in this instructor’s introductory course (37.5 percent on the regional campus syllabus and 36 percent on the residential campus syllabus), it was not the SLF theme cited most by students, suggesting that the theme with the greatest instructor emphasis in an introductory sociology course may not align with the SLF theme that is most salient to students.
Compared to the percentage of students who cited general stratification (48.6 percent), class-based stratification (24.7 percent), and gender-based stratification (21.3 percent), citations for racial stratification (7.4 percent) and global stratification (3.3) were quite low. Both the regional and residential campus had a small number of nonwhite and international students. Accordingly, this finding may reflect the common (mis)understanding that issues pertaining to race or globalization are less relevant for white people or for those born in the United States. It may also or alternatively reflect internalized assumptions about which groups are expected to speak or write about racial or global inequality. Because we did not collect data on students’ race or nationality, we cannot make claims about which of these topics were more salient for which groups. Nonetheless, the relatively small number of citations for racial and global stratification demonstrate that there is more work to be done in this area.
Regional-campus students, being on average older, more likely to work while commuting to campus, and from less privileged backgrounds, generally have in some ways already graduated from “the school of hard knocks.” In addition to course loads, many are also juggling paid labor and family-care obligations and have learned through experience that hard work frequently is no guarantee of success. The introductory sociology course provides them with tools for “making sense” of their experience in society. In contrast, residential-campus students, who were on average younger, better prepared for the academic workload expected in a university, less likely to work or live off campus, and from more privileged backgrounds, may be more likely to still adhere to the American ideologies of individualism and meritocracy. Contrary to our initial hypothesis that the life stage and social position of residential students would make them less likely than regional-campus students to cite social structural concepts, in our study, residential students found the SLF Social Structure theme topics to be, in fact, more salient than did regional-campus students. These outcomes may reflect regional-campus students’ awareness of the importance of macrolevel structural forces prior to entering the introductory course, whereas residential-campus students were learning about the significance of these concepts for the first time.
While it is notable that only 10.6 percent of students explicitly cited the sociological imagination or perspective in their essays, it is clear that the introductory course can be a means to seeing society differently for both groups. It may be the case that while students were developing a new tool (the sociological imagination/sociological eye) to help them see society in new ways, they were more interested in writing about what they can now see more clearly with the aid of this new tool, rather than writing about the tool itself. Thus we think the percentage of students citing the sociological imagination likely underrepresents the impact of the development of a sociological eye on students. Students’ tendency to write about “concrete” ideas may also inform instructional approaches when covering more “abstract” concepts included in the SLF Sociological Eye theme, such as theory or the sociological imagination.
Overall, the concepts, ideas, and perspectives students recalled as most memorable from the introductory course align with those outlined in the SLF. Four of the five SLF themes (Socialization, the Sociological Eye, Stratification, and Social Structure) were cited with some frequency, with Socialization being the most common theme.
Conclusion
How can an introductory sociology course best serve different groups of students? How do students’ accounts of their learning align with the SLF? In their essays, regional-campus students often expressed that sociology gave them labels and tools for interpreting and understanding their experiences in society. It helped them see that often the cause of a difficulty in their biography is not a personal shortcoming but a result of social structure. In contrast, residential-campus students arriving at university from more privileged backgrounds often have yet to discover that “life is not fair” or to recognize that social structures “stack the deck” in favor of some and at the expense of others. Sociology in this case may help students to “think past themselves” and consider more carefully the ideologies of meritocracy and individualism.
This study of one instructor’s introductory sociology courses adds the student’s voice to the ongoing discussion of core in sociology, offering a needed perspective to the social process of curricular development. By reviewing our own syllabi and comparing SLF coverage in class to SLF themes in students’ essays, we find both overrepresentation and underrepresentation of SLF themes in our syllabi that partially, but not fully, correlate with students’ accounts of what they remember from the introductory course. By comparing two campuses over a period of nine years, we are also able to observe significant differences between students’ accounts; indeed, our analysis suggests that students at a private, residential campus and students at a regional, public campus may experience the introductory sociology course in somewhat distinct ways. This study’s focus on a single instructor’s introductory course is a limitation, and it is our hope that this study will prompt other instructors to assess and contribute their own findings regarding students’ perspectives of what they are learning in relation to the SLF. The authors also made no attempt to tease out whether the differences between regional-campus and residential-campus students were in some way due to the online (regional) versus face-to-face (residential) formats of the course. Nonetheless, we argue that utilizing a reflective, end-of-semester essay provides a means of assessing the salience of five SLF themes that could be adopted by departments collectively or by individual instructors.
Finally, we suggest a few implications for introductory sociology instructors based on our findings. First, it is possible that in the introductory course, we are placing too little stress on the fifth SLF theme, Social Change and Reproduction. Given that most introductory sociology textbooks tend to situate social change in the final chapter(s), the topic may receive too little attention as faculty members fall into the trap of dropping coverage of later chapters in order to fit into the class sessions available. Ferguson and Carbonaro (2016) and Pike et al. (2017) seem to imply that all five SLF themes should receive roughly equal coverage. If this is the goal, one possible solution is that, rather than waiting until the end of the introductory course to cover Social Change and Reproduction, instructors may opt to integrate this SLF theme throughout the course. We suggest, however, that all five SLF themes do not need to be emphasized equally in the introductory course. Indeed, we believe that developing students’ sociological imagination should be the primary goal and is the most significant pedagogical challenge (Howard 2015) for instructors teaching introductory sociology. In this case, instructors and departments may have conversations about how to distribute SLF themes evenly across the curriculum rather than within each course.
A second, and related, implication is the importance of not only covering the SLF themes in the introductory course but naming them as such. The relatively small percentage of students explicitly citing the Sociological Eye theme, for instance, does not necessarily mean that students in this study did not develop a new way of thinking sociologically about the world around them; on the basis of their essays, they clearly did. If we want students to fully appreciate the fact that they are developing a skill—in this case, a sociological imagination—instructors may want to emphasize it and label it as such when students use their sociological imagination to address another topic in the course. Students may simply perceive that they are “getting smarter” or learning to think critically rather than that they are developing a foundational sociological skill. In other words, if the sociological perspective is a new pair of glasses that we are asking students to “try on,” our findings suggest that students may be more likely to describe what they see rather than the glasses. In order to encourage both an appreciation for the new way of seeing as well as the new view, instructors may need to make special effort to remind students throughout the introductory course when they are utilizing the sociological eye.
A final implication is that, unsurprisingly to sociologists, different students find different topics salient based on their social context. For example, we found that while all students were likely to learn to see and understand sociology at the microlevel than they do at the macrolevel, residential-campus students may be more likely to remember sociostructural themes as salient. Instructors working with college students on regional campuses may therefore need to place greater emphasis on assisting students in developing an understanding of macrosociological insights throughout the course. In sum, we argue that instructors should design and develop their introductory sociology courses with both the SLF themes and the demographic contexts in which they are taught in mind. When instructors do so, students will be more likely to find these core themes in sociology to be salient, and the result will be greater alignment between what instructors think students should learn and what students think they are learning.
Footnotes
Editor’s Note
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Jeanne Ballantine, Susan Ferguson, and Renee Monson.
Authors’ Note
The essay assignment that we analyze here was adapted from an assignment developed by Patrick Ashton, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, and shared with the lead author.