New Resources in TRAILS: The Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology

Assignments

“The Sociology Majors Project.” Jacqueline M. Zalewski, Miguel Ceballos, and Susan Brudvig. AREA: Work and Labor Markets. Sociology programs, like at West Chester University (WCU), are concerned by progressively lower student enrollment in the major. This is partly because a sociology degree is not analogous to a specific profession or job industry, like professional degrees in business management or education. The first goal of the Sociology Majors Project (SMP), a classwide research project, is giving current and prospective student majors a concrete idea of the work, careers, and ongoing education of WCU alumni with a sociology degree. Faculty have completed six “runs” of SMP—that is, it was instituted in six classes between 2015 and 2020. Students share findings on alumni outcomes not only in the class but also through publishing alumni features and data on a Wix webpage, a Facebook Group, and a department alumni page. A second SMP goal requires students to learn about human subjects’ research by completing a CITI sequence of modules before commencing work on the SMP. Third, students complete the task(s) directly related to one of the following student groups or roles that, over the six SMP runs, have included data collection, data analysis, presentation of data, the dissemination of data in print and media, and alumni development. It is faculty’s hope that the SMP facilitates continued social interaction between alumni and current students. This has occurred directly with current students contacting alumni and conducting telephone surveys. And this occurs indirectly through posting about sociology alumni on social media and department webpages and through flyers available in the department office and student areas.

“Find the Funnels: Deconstructing Literature Reviews.” Kyla Walters. AREA: Research Methods. Literature reviews often resemble funnels. They begin with a broad theoretical frame and gradually narrow toward specific concepts about which the authors systematically inquire. Students need to understand the composition of a literature review before they tackle crafting one. Annotating scholarly works and then deconstructing the literature reviews, using peer-reviewed journal articles, facilitates this learning process. This assignment has two parts. First, students annotate at least two scholarly articles within one subfield. Second, students reread the literature-review sections of these articles. They reverse outline each paragraph, sketch a concept map illustrating the funnel in each piece, and produce written descriptions and comparisons of the funnels they found.

“Developing a Photographic Essay: Making a Public Statement about a Social Problem or Issue.” Carol A. Jenkins. AREA: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems. Each student will develop a photographic essay of a social problem important to the student (a personal, reflective, integrative public statement about a social problem). Essay development enables students to demonstrate the intersection of personal problems and public structural contexts (C. W. Mills’s [1959] The Sociological Imagination), then propose resolutions to those problems. Using five to eight photographs, the essay will reflect the social problem under consideration (first image), demonstrate the extent of the problem/issue (intermediary images), and provide a statement of individual and societal resolution (last two images). Photos must be presented and framed in such a way that they “read” like an essay. Sample distinguished projects are attached for viewing.

“Teaching Criminology during a Pandemic.” Reginald A. Byron. AREA: Criminology/Delinquency. During the spring of 2020 as news of COVID-19 spread across the United States, most university professors were faced with the daunting task of abruptly halting in-person pedagogies and shifting to various online instruction platforms. Rather than moving forward as if it were a normal semester, some instructors revised their syllabi, set up course management systems, and altered their assignments as a part of broader pandemic pedagogies. This alternate assignment was created to allow students in an introductory-level criminology class the opportunity to make critical connections between what they were learning throughout the semester and the emerging pandemic. Students were part of two small (25-person) Introduction to Criminology course sections at a liberal arts university. After administering an electronic class survey, the author decided to offer students an opportunity to write this paper in lieu of taking an online multiple-choice exam. Over half of the students (28/49) chose this option. The paper assessed three learning outcomes: (1) students’ ability to articulate how criminological phenomena can change during a global health crisis, (2) students’ capacity to apply relevant theoretical frameworks to noted criminological changes during COVID-19, and (3) students’ ability to critically reflect on how one concept in the course helped them to better understand their lived experiences during the pandemic. Outcomes were assessed via the completed paper. Almost three-quarters of students successfully met the learning goals and scored at least 80 percent on the assignment. The author concludes by offering ideas about how this assignment can be adapted.

“Corrections Close Up: Podcast.” Daniela F. Jauk. AREA: Criminal Justice. This activity incorporates a podcast featuring a series of mini-interviews with corrections professionals taped for use in classrooms for Sociology of Corrections, Criminology, and Criminal Justice. The podcast can be accessed freely online or downloaded into podcast apps, like iTunes, Stitcher, or similar. The interviews are intended to give students a realistic perspective and accessible account of professional roles and evidence-based practices in institutional and community corrections. The goal is to give vocational guidance for sociology and/or criminal justice majors and to bring the abstract concept of corrections theory to life. The interviews are intentionally short (approximately 20 minutes), and students critically reflect in discussion posts their prior knowledge about the area, their learning experience, and connections to the literature.

“Teaching Race with Novels.” Debjani Chakravarty. AREA: Racial and Ethnic Relations. Teaching Sociology of Race can be particularly tricky in these contentious political times. We need to pay close attention to our teaching materials and pedagogy to get through to students, to generate important discussions and responses in the classroom, and to create teachable moments. Using fiction to teach about identity/institutions is a common practice in literature and humanities courses, and I am advocating for a similar approach in sociology classrooms. Using literary text toward the end of the semester, when students have ideally created a foundation of sociology of race/ethnicity and critical race theory, can be beneficial for a number of reasons. I have noticed that students are more eager and less defensive to discuss race-centered experiences of characters that they identify with closely or characters that are very unfamiliar to them. Either way, they are able to connect theoretical and critical thinking about race to a work of fiction, and this encourages application, analysis, and empathy. In this resource, I am sharing assignments based on the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Class Activities

“Revealing the Link between G. H. Mead’s Social Construction of the Self and Society.” Candace K. May. AREA: Theory. Students greatly enjoy symbolic interactionist theories, approaches, and scholarship, which often become a source of recruitment to the sociology major. However, students also struggle with visualizing George Herbert Mead’s “I,” “me,” and “self” in action or how the reflexive process of self-construction links to macro societal processes and structures. This simple assignment assists students with understanding and applying Mead’s theory while attending to an often-noted critique of the theory’s lack of attention to diversity, power, and conflict. Students will gain a basic understanding of how processes of self-construction produce, reproduce, but also challenge societal structures while practicing observation, empathetic understanding, and reflexivity.

“The Demographic Transition Graph.” Lissette Aliaga-Linares. AREA: Demography. The demographic transition theory remains one of the pivot conceptual tools in population research. This theory started with a description of demographic changes in eighteenth-century Europe and onward, which are still present in many developing countries. Since then, demographers and social scientists have revisited early assumptions, given the different timing of fertility declines, continuously rising life expectancies, and the prospects of population decline instead of stabilization. In this lab exercise, students will visualize population changes in a specific country by graphing the crude death rates, crude birth rates, and midyear populations from 1950 to 2100. Then, students will compare this graph to the textbook theoretical model and draw conclusions on the timing of the demographic transition and its implications for understanding population change for the country context.

“Using Google Maps to Study Health Disparities in United States.” Zachary R. Simoni. AREA: Medical Sociology. Health disparities continue to be a pressing problem in American society. Although this topic is often a fundamental concept for an Introduction to Sociology course or upper-level Medical Sociology course, there are few exercises available to show students real-world explanations of health disparities using an active learning framework. With this gap in mind, this in-class activity uses Google Maps to introduce students to health disparities, critically analyze the ways in which geography exacerbates health disparities, and creatively develop policy solutions.

“Exploring Food Deserts in the United States.” Kathryn Reynolds. AREA: Stratification/Mobility. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has joined forces with the Departments of Treasury and Health and Human Services to bring resources and expertise to support strategies that eliminate food deserts. The USDA’s Economic Research Service developed the food desert locator, which is an interactive map that provides the spatial locations and population demographics of food deserts (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas/). Using the recommended readings and the USDA’s food desert mapping tool, students will explore what a food desert is and how it is related to income inequality. In addition, students will learn about the criteria of food deserts and where they are located in the United States. Using the provided worksheet, which outlines the criteria used to define food deserts, students are encouraged to challenge their preconceptions of how food deserts are defined and where they are located. After students complete the worksheet, instructors are encouraged to facilitate a discussion that allows students to converse about their chosen census tracts and the social problems that are associated with food deserts.

“Merit Goes to College: Teaching Inequality with an Admissions Game.” Robert Biggert. AREA: Stratification/Mobility. Inequality is perhaps the most pressing social problem facing the United States. The severity of the problem is not in doubt. Despite its centrality to our discipline, it is challenging to teach inequality. One way to do so as professors is to look more carefully at our own institutional backyard in two ways. Higher education is an important site for the production of inequality. The mechanism through which inequality is generated is an educational market. This exercise uses college admissions as a tool to explore income inequality in one class. Students may be knowledgeable about inequality from previous class coverage, or the topic can be introduced in the class prior to the exercise. The students are asked to play the role of admissions decision makers using the American Dream and meritocracy as conceptual starting points. As individuals and in groups, they decide to accept and reject applicants under zero-sum conditions, providing explanations for their decisions. Through class discussions, their selections are identified and assessed. The admissions criteria are linked to a broader discussion of achievement and ascription. Time permitting or in a subsequent class, solutions to the admissions process can be considered.