Suchergebnisse

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Introductory sociology casts a wide net with regard to its audience and plays an important role in capturing the public eye as well as helping students to make more informed choices in their lives and communities. I ask six questions that help us as sociologists to think about how introductory sociology can better serve our discipline, our students, and their communities. These questions ask us to consider who our students are, how the course fits with university mission and program goals, what we want students to learn in this course and how we can build consensus about that common core, the extent to which there is alignment between learning objectives and our disciplinary standards in sociology, how assessment can be used to improve course design and curriculum in general, and the role that introductory sociology plays in recruitment and retention of students to the university and to the major. Posing such questions will promote further discussion and consensus building among sociology colleagues with the aim of improving curriculum and student learning.

The Introduction to Sociology course is usually the first contact that students have with the discipline of sociology. This course can determine whether students take other sociology courses or learn to use sociology in their lives as adults and citizens.First Contact identifies important issues facing instructors in introducing students to the sociological imagination. Drawing on the literature of teaching and learning in sociology and higher education more broadly, First Contact providesan overview of the scholarship of teaching and learning, best practices, and other essential information t

Is there a distinct disciplinary core (or foundation of agreed on knowledge) in sociology? Should we define a core in our broad field to build consensus? If so, what should it look like? We address these questions by presenting three viewpoints that lean for and against identifying a core for department curricula, students, and the public face of sociology. First, "There really is not much, if any, core." Second, sociology is "a habit of the mind" (a sociological imagination). Third, key content of a sociological core can be identified using a long or short list. Centripetal forces pressure the discipline to define itself for assessment, transfer articulations, general education, the trend toward interdisciplinary courses, and the public face of sociology. We describe previous efforts for the introductory course and sociology curricula. We conclude with a discussion of everyday practices in sociology that are built on the conception of a core.