Participants in the 2007 American Sociological Association teaching workshop, "Innovative Teaching Practices for Difficult Subjects," shared concerns about teaching statistics, research methods, and theory. Strategies for addressing these concerns center on building a community of learners by creating three processes throughout the course: 1) an ongoing active role for students; 2) mechanisms to establish a common language of discourse; and 3) a means of monitoring students' feelings. Examples are provided which introduce readers to ideas which can help in the creation and maintenance of a successful community of learners when teaching these difficult subjects. These processes can build student engagement and help to reduce student anxieties. More detailed information about specific exercises, examples, and bibliographic resources which were distributed at the workshop, can be found on the Teaching Sociology website.

Overcoming Student Disengagement and Anxiety in Theory, Methods, and Statistics Courses by Building a Community of Learners:

In this paper, we maintain that sociologists should deliberately teach social responsibility as a means of fulfilling the promise that C. Wright Mills envisioned. A key aspect of the sociological imagination includes a sense of social responsibility, but that aspect is best learned through a combination of experience and academic knowledge. Students gain the fullest sense of the sociological imagination, one that includes social responsibility, when they are able to have encounters and experiences that challenge their pre-existing world-views and allow them to see first-hand the sociological concepts they learn in the classroom. Further, we argue that teaching social responsibility is appropriate because it has deep roots in the discipline. We identify the origins of the active learning model in sociological theory and provide examples of the ways in which social responsibility is realized through service learning experiences of our students.

The Sociological Imagination and Social Responsibility

In this exploratory scholarship of teaching and learning study, we describe the development, over time, of engagement in the discipline, the ability to use the sociological imagination and other learning, an identity as a sociologist, and a sense of being an autonomous learner in a group of sociology majors. We followed 18 students who completed questionnaires, learning reflection essays, and face-to-face interviews over a period of about two years in their careers as sociology majors. We found that students showed few, small, and mixed changes over time in the major dependent variables as well as small increases in involvement in useful academic and study behaviors.

A Longitudinal, Descriptive Study of Sociology Majors: The Development of Engagement, the Sociological Imagination, Identity, and Autonomy.

overconsumption in the United States and allow them to see how their own consumption which involved refraining from purchasing all but essentials for a set number of daysas part of a broader lesson on consumerism. Qualitative and quantitative data, gathered from students enrolled in three sections of Introductory Sociology, suggest that the exercise was effective in consumption habits are shaped by larger social forces and how they, along with most Americans, tend toward overconsumption. To a more limited extent, it may help enhance cognitive understanding of consumption. Teaching about consumption in general, and the Not Buying It project in particular, offers instructors an excellent pedagogical means by which students can acquire a sociological imagination, reinforces key sociological principles, and links to broader goals within the discipline.

Teaching about Consumption The “Not Buying It” Project

50 Years of C. Wright Mills and The Sociological Imagination

Sociologists agree that the sociological imagination fosters students' critical thinking skills. The challenge lies in motivating students to develop their sociological imaginations. Convincing them of its importance and practical value takes creativity beyond requiring readings, class discussions, and papers describing its theoretical importance. Students need to see the relevancy of C. Wright Mills's work applied to everyday living. In this paper I outline an interactive technique using garbage to teach the relevancy of Mills's sociological imagination.

William Dowell

Papers

Throwing the sociological imagination into the garbage: using students' waste disposal habits to illustrate c. wright mills's concept*