Hop on the Bus: Driving Stratification Concepts Home

Nichols, Laura; Berry, Joshua; Kalogrides, Demetra

doi:10.1177/0092055x0403200207

Cited by 15 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…Similar techniques are also used in nonmethods classes to encourage a deeper understanding of content. For example, Nichols, Berry, and Kalogrides’s (2004) designed a “hop on the bus” assignment, which asks students to take a bus ride and make observations on places and individuals. Grauerholz and Settembrino (2016) added a visual component, suggesting that “simply talking about inequalities does little to confront students’ deeply held ideas about privilege and (in)equality.…”

Section: Linking Observations To Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching the Veil: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Classical Theory Courses

Reyes

Johnson

2020

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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By documenting the erasure of W.E.B. Du Bois’s scientific contributions to sociology, Aldon Morris’s The Scholar Denied was a catalyst for scholars to rethink how we teach and understand social theory and a call to recognize the racialized origins of our discipline. How can we incorporate these insights into our teaching beyond a token addition of Du Bois to classical theory courses? Drawing on comments from anonymous student evaluations and completed assignments including essay exams, final papers, and end-of-year reflections from one classical theory course, the authors argue that teaching classical theory requires teaching about race, ethnicity, and gender and outline three pedagogical principles. First, we assert that it starts with the syllabus. Second, we demonstrate how incorporating theorists’ biographies situates them in their sociohistorical contexts. Finally, active learning observational assignments reveal how research is a scholarly conversation and demonstrate the enduring importance, and limitations, of classical theories and theorists. Together, these pedagogical tools show how the classical theory canon is racialized. By providing conceptual and logistical tools scholar-teachers can use to incorporate race, ethnicity, and gender in classical theory courses, we highlight how issues of race and gender should not be relegated to substantive courses. Instead, they are central to understanding and teaching the foundations of sociology.

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Section: Linking Observations To Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching the Veil: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Classical Theory Courses

Reyes

Johnson

2020

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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“…Such activities have taken numerous forms, such as role-playing individual interactions across racial, gender, and social class lines (MacNevin 2004; Simpson and Elias 2011); writing autobiographical essays or journaling throughout the semester (Kebede 2009; Picca, Starks, and Gunderson 2013); and writing family histories that account for slavery and familial wealth obtained through legislation, such as the GI Bill (Mueller 2013). An example of using embodiment to teach students about inequality is Grauerholz and Settembrino’s (2016) modified version of the interactive activity “Hop on the Bus” (Nichols, Berry, and Kalogrides 2004). For this activity, they assigned students to use public transportation and take pictures of things that exemplified inequality at the downtown station.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying Inequality: Using Ethnographic Data to Teach Intersectionality

Gardner

McKinzie

2020

Teach Sociol

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This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data is a useful mechanism for helping students connect abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.

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“…"Hop on the Bus: Driving Stratification Concepts Home" (Nichols et al 2004) is a good example of an experiential learning technique or what the authors term "community-based learning" (p. 213). Students first read about the working poor and the link between individual experience and structural inequality.…”

Section: Bringing the Students Outmentioning

confidence: 99%

Budgets, Board Games, and Make Believe: The Challenge of Teaching Social Class Inequality with Non-Traditional Students

Carreiro

Kapitulik

2010

Am Soc

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According to a 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Education, the percentage of "traditional students" on college campuses is declining. Students increasingly are delaying enrollment, attending college part time, working full time, financially independent, and single parents. In this paper, we explore the extent to which sociologists are adapting their teaching to address these shifting demographics. Based on a content analysis of articles published over a 20 year period in Teaching Sociology that suggest strategies for teaching social class inequality we find that most authors assume that their students are "traditional." Most often this means that students are assumed to come from a privileged, middle class background, lack direct and substantial experience in the labor market, and enter college shortly after graduating high school. Accordingly, most articles advocate classroom strategies of "looking down," whereby students pretend to be in the shoes of those less fortunate. Examples include creating household budgets based on poverty wages, playing board games, or assuming the role of the poor for a day. These strategies run the risk of being ineffective, alienating, and potentially ethically suspect when used with non-traditional students, whose real life experiences may resemble these simulations. We conclude with recommendations for pedagogical approaches to teaching social class inequality that are more appropriate for, and inclusive of, students from diverse backgrounds. Our goal in this paper is to start a discussion about pedagogy, social inequality, and the non-traditional student.

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Hop on the Bus: Driving Stratification Concepts Home

Cited by 15 publications

References 21 publications

Teaching the Veil: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Classical Theory Courses

Teaching the Veil: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Classical Theory Courses

Embodying Inequality: Using Ethnographic Data to Teach Intersectionality

Budgets, Board Games, and Make Believe: The Challenge of Teaching Social Class Inequality with Non-Traditional Students

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