The glass ceiling is a popular metaphor for explaining the inability of many women to advance past a certain point in their occupations and professions, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. In this article, we review sociological research on glass ceiling effects at work. We discuss the current state of the glass ceiling, methodological and theoretical concerns with research in this area, and a number of the key factors that contribute to the creation and maintenance of glass ceiling effects, including selection effects, cultural capital, homophily, networking, gender stereotypes, gender discrimination and occupational segregation, and characteristics of organizations. We conclude with a discussion of research that is aimed at lessening gendered glass ceiling disparities in the workplace.

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The scholarly literature on teaching sociology contains relatively little about improving courses from one semester to the next. In this article, I describe a method for continual teaching improvement that is based on writing, the well-established practice of teacher reflection, and classical sociological principles. This method was developed through the analysis of nine semesters of autoethnographic data that I collected in the form of daily reflective notes. The benefits of this sociologically informed reflective practice include grounding evaluations of individual class periods and entire courses in empirical data, becoming more efficient with course preparation, providing one with a stronger sense of mastery as a teacher, and developing as a sociologist by using the classroom as a key site for engaging in praxis. This practice can help teachers refine individual courses, improve as an instructor in an overall sense and more deeply connect sociology to the scholarship of teaching and learning.Keywords reflection, scholarship of teaching and learning, sociology of the classroom, course assessment

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