Suchergebnisse

This article is an investigation of attitudes of White Americans towards Black Americans using General Social Survey data collected by the National Opinion Research Center from 1972 through 1980. Two trends emerge from the data. One trend, predicted by the literature, is one of liberal change among items based on the desirability of racially mixed social contact. A second trend suggests that through the seventies, White Americans become increasingly less willing to condone government spending to alleviate conditions of racial inequality. This inconsistency raises the issue of question validity, which is addressed by an analysis of response patterns of three items in full predictive models. The results suggest that in measuring racial prejudice in a society becoming generally more conservative, questions focussing on public policy should be considered in addition to questions of social contact.

This article updates and extends research by Baker and Chin, who tracked changes in studies published in Teaching Sociology from 1973 to 1983 (Baker) and 1984 to 1999 (Chin). The current study traces manuscripts published in Teaching Sociology from 2000 to 2009. We examine both who publishes in the journal and what gets published. In particular, we explore change in the systematic assessment of teaching methods and techniques since Baker's and Chin's studies and the extent to which publications in Teaching Sociology reflect improved assessment. We find that while there has been improvement, not all articles reflect the growing scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) movement. While the mission of Teaching Sociology is to publish materials that would be "helpful to the discipline's teachers" (see the journal's mission statement at http://asanet.org/journals/ts/index.cfm ), the most useful information is arguably that which is supported by the kind of systematic assessment that SoTL requires. We also discuss implications for assessment and sociological SoTL.

The authors provide context for the three articles in the special section of this issue of Teaching Sociology on the topic of assessment. They provide a brief discussion of assessment in higher education today, supported by research conducted by the American Sociological Association from a survey of department chairs. These data indicate that most sociology departments are in fact conducting some form of assessment, although faculty members often are critical of these activities. The authors argue that sociologists are well situated to play a major role in carrying out assessment plans by virtue of their disciplinary training and skills in analyzing data. Further, the authors appeal to readers of Teaching Sociology that assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning are inextricably linked and that it requires only a small step from conducting research on the scholarship of teaching and learning to doing assessment.

This article discusses some of the challenges departments face as they embark on curriculum development. The interpersonal dynamics of a department are often the first and most difficult obstacle to overcome but are often overlooked. The author suggests some strategies for how to address these issues as they arise.