Learning from Experience: Integrating Students’ Everyday Lives into the Urban Community College Sociology Classroom

Better, Alison

doi:10.1007/s12108-013-9192-7

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Of course, such a purposefully unrepresentative selection still leaves much room to maneuver in terms of selecting subject matter, and there have been many proposals about how to make such a selection. Better (2013), for example, selected topics that would be amenable to students conducting naturalistic experiments and even micro-level research in their everyday lives, illustrating the sociological eye and search for meliorative implications. Schwartz and Smith (2010) selected “hot” topics in which students had a priori interests.…”

Section: What Should the Core Look Like?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the Center Hold? Reflections on a Sociological Core

et al. 2016

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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.

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Section: What Should the Core Look Like?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the Center Hold? Reflections on a Sociological Core

et al. 2016

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“…These community college professors are describing the tremendous impact of connecting the sociological research and findings they are teaching with the lived experiences of inequality, racism, and exclusion that many of the students who find themselves in a community college experience daily (Better 2013). They describe students not only learning course material but also gaining insights and understandings that they can share with their families and communities about the ways that society is constructed and how power is distributed.…”

Section: Evidence Of a Social Justice Orientationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching for Social Justice

et al. 2016

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This article evaluates the reasons for career choice and job satisfaction among community college faculty who teach sociology, in relation to a social justice motivation for teaching. Using closed- and open-ended response data from a 2014 national survey of community college sociology faculty, this study finds that a preponderance of faculty do not see themselves as pushed into their careers through external factors but, rather, describe being pulled into community college instruction through a set of personally meaningful internal motivations. Those motivations include serving a diverse and underserved student body. Despite difficult working conditions, most faculty indicated that they likely will teach at a community college until retirement and would do so again if they could. Nearly half of sociology faculty discuss their motivations and satisfactions in community college careers in terms that are consistent with a social justice orientation.

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“…In my Introduction to Sociology courses, I center students’ everyday life as a way for them to be engaged with sociological thinking and to have sociological tools useful for them to understand their experiences, life circumstances, and communities (Better 2013). To this end, I also actively and deliberately let my identities fall into the background of our conversations.…”

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confidence: 99%

Queering the Introduction to Sociology Course

Better

2021

Teach Sociol

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Introduction to Sociology is a widely enrolled course that gives students both an overview of the field of sociology and tools to view and analyze the social worlds we live in. This course provides students new ways to see and understand themselves and the world around them. This teaching note describes ways to queer the Introduction to Sociology classroom, pedagogy, and canon by intentionally recasting and reexamining dominant messages on sexuality, sex, and gender. The act of deliberately queering the introductory course reframes and resituates knowledges, making space for and centering minoritized voices in the field of study and the classroom. This moves queer experiences from the margins to the center of the conversation and refocuses the study of sociology to better serve all students while also rethinking gender, sexuality, and power in the discipline itself.

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Learning from Experience: Integrating Students’ Everyday Lives into the Urban Community College Sociology Classroom

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Does the Center Hold? Reflections on a Sociological Core

Does the Center Hold? Reflections on a Sociological Core

Teaching for Social Justice

Queering the Introduction to Sociology Course

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