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

Assignments

“Stats through Superheroes: Teaching Basic Statistical Tests Using Data from the Marvel Universe.” Zach Rubin. AREA: Quantitative Methodology/Other. This is a brief lesson on how to run basic statistical tests using data originally gathered from the Marvel Comics Wikia page. Students are introduced to three important tools in statistics: a descriptive table, a contingency table, and a regression. It is designed to be a simple introduction to how social scientists use statistics to better understand the world, complete with observations about long-standing gender inequalities in superhero comic books and movies.

“Teaching the Hidden Curriculum.” Kea Saper. AREA: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems. This activity is designed to help students analyze how the hidden curriculum functions in their own educational experiences and the experiences of others. Through this activity, students will be able to define the hidden curriculum, assess their own educational environment, and ultimately, explain how the hidden curriculum contributes to educational inequalities. American universities typically operate on white, middle-class norms, disadvantaging low-income and traditionally underrepresented students who may not be familiar with these. While minoritized students will be more implicitly aware of the hidden curriculum, learning about this concept in an academic context will enable these students to concretely understand the educational inequalities in their own experience and develop approaches and strategies to overcome such inequalities. Undergraduate students rely on the cultural capital they have entering college to navigate this environment. Upon entering college, low-income students must quickly become familiar with the hidden curriculum—a “curriculum” that the dominant student population will already be aware of. In this activity, students will engage in an active learning exercise to define the hidden curriculum, answer questions about their own educational experiences, respond to short-essay questions, and facilitate a broader class discussion. This activity, including strategized learning goals and assessments, explores the hidden curriculum and resulting educational inequalities, helping students analyze how this concept functions in their own lives.

Class Activities

“Flying Solidarity.” Debra Wetcher-Hendricks. AREA: Theory. Although students rely upon social solidarity in their everyday lives, they generally fail to acknowledge its existence. An active learning class exercise introduces sociology students to Emile Durhkeim’s concept of solidarity and distinction between its mechanical and organic forms. Some groups of students perform the task of creating and successfully flying paper airplanes under the pretense of organic solidarity, and other groups perform the same task under the pretense of mechanical solidarity. Through reflection upon their experiences and discussion with members of other groups, students begin to realize nuances of each type of solidarity.

“Preparing Students for Difficult Conversations in the Classroom with Contemplative Visualization Exercises.” Courtney Ross. AREA: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems. Teaching sociology often involves difficult, painful conversations about injustice and collective trauma. These conversations can be emotionally demanding, which may influence a student’s capacity to learn and to remain in sociological studies. Perpetual ideas that the academy embodies a culture of negativity risks the manifestation of apathy and civic disengagement from students. Approaching difficult, grim topics with a student-centered, experiential, and novel learning approach assists to balance this complicated teaching and learning process. Utilizing contemplative pedagogical exercises in the classroom helps students to both get ready for and decompress from challenging conversations. Visualization exercises are particularly intended to generate feelings and thoughts that promote compassion and well-being for optimal states of mind and body. Students’ inward and external reactions are upheld as shaping both the process and the content of learning. This pedagogical bridge aids the students remaining in the discipline and in building the capacity to delve into challenging topics that sociology confronts. Students are supported on paths for empathetic growth, embodied agency, and emancipatory citizenship.

“Pick Your Path: Teaching Sociology with a Creative Writing Assignment.” Adelle Monteblanco. AREA: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems. Fostering students’ creative thinking is a frequent goal of higher education instructors. When instructors aim to develop this skill in their students’ sociological writing, it encourages instructors to create alternatives to the commonly used research paper. This assignment requires students to write a pick-your-path (PYP) story. A PYP story, also commonly referred to as “choose your own adventure,” uses a format in which the author writes a story from a second-person point of view. This helps the reader adopt the role of the central character and make choices that affect the plot. Different from a traditional PYP story, this exercise requires sociological critical thinking, specifically, practicing the skill of using alternative points of view with attention to the ways that the social environment and macro social factors enable or constrain the character’s path. This assignment was designed to complement student reading of the book Evicted (Desmond 2016); however, it is adaptable to a variety of readings and course topics. The PYP assignment helps students develop a diversity of learning goals central to sociology, including but not limited to the relevance of structural factors, the intersection of biography and history, and the contextualization of personal choices within a broader social world. Additionally, students have the chance to practice their writing and creative thinking.

“Discussion Forum: Gender (In)visibility in U.S. Legislation.” Anne Barrett and Cherish Michael. AREA: Political Sociology, Sex and Gender. This class activity uses legislation recently considered by the U.S. Congress to develop students’ ability to conduct gender analyses of social phenomena. Used in a large, online undergraduate course providing an introduction to the sociology of sex and gender, the activity links with the content in a one-week module on gender, power, and politics. Conducted toward the end of the course, the activity not only encourages student engagement with concepts presented in this module, such as the gendered state and power elite, but also reinforces key concepts learned in earlier weeks, such as patriarchy, power, social structure, and feminism. To sharpen students’ gender analytic skills, the activity invites them to explore a bill of their choice by identifying explicit and implicit gender issues relevant to the proposed law or policy. Students examine whether it is likely to differentially affect women, men, or persons of other genders and assess whether it will challenge or reinforce gender inequality. The activity encourages students to reflect on how issues are framed by policy makers and to question who is making these decisions and who is often left out of the process. The assignment also introduces students, often for the first time, to the U.S. Congress website, which may promote more politically active citizenship.

“Mapping the Organizational Field of Social Welfare.” Jennifer L. Garfield-Abrams. AREA: Social Welfare/Social Work. This activity introduces students to an organizational theory frame for thinking about social welfare. The activity and associated readings uncover the ways that social welfare provision depends on the organizational field—what kinds of organizations are part of the field and which ones have power over the direction of the field. After a brief lecture on the increased privatization of the welfare state; the context for the chapter of Down, Out, and Under Arrest assigned; and the theory of organizational fields, the instructor breaks students into small groups to work on the activity, which asks them to identify social actors in the field and their roles, map them on a chart, and discuss how they relate. The second component is a large-group discussion to give students the opportunity to talk about what they found. Discussion is guided by a set of broad discussion questions that ask students to reflect on their process and their own roles in the social welfare field. Last, students will reflect on the activity and discussion through a short reflection paper that asks them to think about how they may redesign social welfare’s organizational field.

Lectures

“Hoberman’s Sphere as a Visual of Social Structure.” Andrea Krieg. AREA: Criminology/Delinquency. Instructors, the ASA, and other sociological leaders agree that social structure is an essential concept in a sociology curriculum. I offer an innovative pedagogical tool that can be used to help students visualize what we mean by “social structure.” Students will be introduced to the concept of social structure, practice connecting the concepts of social institutions with social structure, and explore the consequences of a malfunctioning social structure within the context of delinquency. Also includes a three-minute writing exercise with the following prompt: Define social structure in your own words.

Syllabi

“Mass Shootings Syllabus.” Karen Gordon. AREA: Criminology/Delinquency. While the public is captivated and horrified by mass shootings, there is disagreement among academics and criminal justice practitioners about how best to define mass shootings. This course begins by examining definitional issues and why these issues matter to our overall understanding of mass violence in the United States and abroad. During the course, we will examine how news media have influenced the public’s understanding of mass shootings and their causes in the United States, contributed to many widespread myths about mass shootings, and possibly contributed to the phenomenon of “fame-seeking” mass shooters. In this class, we will also focus on typologies of mass murderers, work toward an understanding of correlates of mass shootings, and take a special look at the topic of school shootings. As we conclude the semester, we will look at evidence and debates about prevention strategies, including threat assessments, firearms legislation, and zero-tolerance policies. Students will be assessed on their ability to compare and contrast research-based realities with common misconceptions through discussion and reflection assignments

“Globalizing Japanese Pop Culture.” Aiko Kojima Hibino. AREA: Art/Music; Asians/Asian Americans; Cultural Sociology; Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems; Race, Class and Gender; Racial and Ethnic Relations. In this course, we will use various Japanese pop culture genres, including comics, anime, food, and music, and examine the interplay between local and global culturescapes. Students are expected to critically inquire into the reality and complexity of people’s lives in Japan as reflected in cultural products and to explore cultural transformation in Japan as a part of the dynamics of globalization. “Common” values and knowledge at the local level are challenged as culture traverses borders. From the expansion of Japanese fan communities to feminist criticism of gender representation, we will employ case studies to overcome our conscious and unconscious exoticism and to deepen our understanding of Japanese culture in the global context. Key questions will include the following: What racial and ethnic relationships/tensions underlie global popular culture? What economic and political factors drive trends? How are gender and sexuality represented?

“Sociology of Education Syllabus.” Alanna Gillis. AREA: Education; Race, Class, and Gender. This Sociology of Education syllabus is based on the following three learning objectives: (1) Analyze the education system’s role in reproducing and mitigating inequality. (2) Apply sociological theory and research to solving education problems. (3) Reflect on your own experiences in the education system in a sociological way. Students achieve these goals through six units that move chronologically through the education system, moving from early childhood to elementary to secondary education to the transition to higher education to attending higher education and concluding with beyond higher education. The course uses the books Negotiating Opportunities and Paying for the Party as case studies and additionally uses journal articles, book chapters, newspaper articles, and videos. Students are required to take daily reading quizzes to ensure they come to class ready to engage with the material. Additionally, they write five-unit reflection papers and then a final assessment that tackles the major question of the course: Does the U.S. education system increase, decrease, or maintain existing inequality?