Active learning is a growing trend in higher education for enhancing student engagement, but activities can take a lot of time to incorporate into your classes. If you are new to teaching, I have good news: you don’t have to create your own activities from scratch; many already exist and are available for your use. I’ve used activities from many sources: mentors and peers, online archives (like ASA’s TRAILS, or First Publics), open-source web pages, and textbooks. Since using others’ activities almost always requires modification, my goal with this note is to provide practical advice for incorporating borrowed activities into your classes.

In my experience, time is the most important factor to consider when planning any activity: time to prep for the activity, time in class to do the activity, and time to review the activity. Most activities aren’t “one size fits all,” and when planning, you should make modifications and update materials as you see fit. I’ve found incredible activities that were outdated or used information that isn’t relatable for my current students, so I’ve spent extra time bridging that gap. I’ve also had to create handouts (including activity instructions and possible discussion questions), print handouts and activity materials, or make presentations to accompany activities. 

You also have to think about your class size: Do you want students to work alone or in groups? Many smaller groups, or a couple of bigger groups? Do you want them to do part of the assignment outside of class, or all of it in class?  Doing an activity in a 50-minute class with 80 students is different from doing the same activity in a 75-minute class with 30 students. You’ll have more time for setup and discussion in the latter, but those parts may also take less time because there are fewer participants. When planning the activity, account for some students needing additional explanation, and for students potentially being quiet during the review of the assignment. 

Reviewing the activity and the important takeaway(s) is also important. If you do a fun activity but your students don’t know why they’re doing it, then it isn’t beneficial. Having a conversation afterwards and relating it back to your other class material is necessary for the activity to be worthwhile. In the early days of my teaching, I didn’t prioritize this phase enough. I wouldn’t leave enough time for discussion at the end, or I wouldn’t prepare the students for the discussion in advance. A way that I’ve tried to remedy this is by giving them discussion questions in advance, on handouts or in the presentation, and by taking my own notes throughout the activity. 

I also ask my students how activities could be improved, especially if it’s my first time facilitating it. If it didn’t go to plan, can it be salvaged and used again or is it a waste of time? Sometimes, it takes a couple of tries to figure out what works best for you, and other times, you may not find value in trying it again. I often confess to students if it’s the first time I have tried an activity and let them know that it’s an experiment that we are conducting together to see if it works—and sometimes it doesn’t. In those cases, I tell them how I hoped it would have gone and what I wanted them to get from it so that the time was not entirely wasted. 

I recognize that some instructors may not have much time or resources for planning activities, but the good news is that you can increase student engagement by seeking out existing activities and creatively adapting them to your circumstances! Students will appreciate your efforts to break away from traditional lecture-style teaching and those moments will stick with them.

Megan Y. Phillips is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University. She received her MA of Social Science from Georgia Southern University. In addition to working on her dissertation, Megan is committed to engaging students in critical thought through feminist pedagogy. 

Many sociological topics provoke heated political debates that can affect classroom dynamics. A common narrative in the current political discourse centers on perceptions that sociology instructors lack “political neutrality,” framing sociology classrooms as spaces where sociologists impose their own personal political beliefs and opinions on students’ learning. In this environment, what is the “political responsibility” of sociology instructors? How should we engage in conversations with students about sociological research that inevitably invites normative and political engagement? During our Engaging Elections: The Politics of Teaching as Public Sociology webinar, this theme emerged in our conversation with panelists.

Edwin Ackerman, for one, argued that the role of a professor in the classroom is different from that of writing an op-ed. Instead, he stressed the importance of giving students the tools they need for analysis. One key piece of this is to teach students how to make arguments using falsifiable statements.

“I don’t think it’s possible, and I don’t think it’s desirable to be nonpartisan in the classroom. But in a deeper sense, of course, there’s no point in asking the questions that sociology poses if it isn’t in the service of justice in some sort of broad sense. Right? I think that the [responsibility of the professor] could be something like moving away from…statements that are opinions to statements that are, for lack of a better term, falsifiable in the sense that there’s evidence that can be brought for or against them.” (Ackerman, 46:57).

This is not to say that we should approach political topics as if we hold an objective standpoint, but rather that we should rely on our own expertise to help students arrive at conclusions that are rooted in sociological research. Indeed, Ackerman reminds us that our positions in the classroom come from research, and teaching what sociologists know is a political intervention in itself. 

Much of the time, however, students may be looking for the instructor to take a position. Students may enter the classroom primed with their own worldview and opinions that they hope the instructor will validate. Bradlow grapples with this: 

“[This can involve sitting] down with a young scholar and asking them: What do they think? What’s their vision? What do they want to do with their profession, with their life? How do they see the world? Even though that might not be overtly political… I think hopefully, I modeled a form of engagement with one’s students… that may have political consequences that we never see.” (de Leon, 50:49). 

Powerfully, de Leon inspired us to think about how to bring a politics of care into  teaching and mentorship and to consider the effects we may have on students in the years beyond when they are in our classrooms.

We want to hear from you! How have you come to understand your political responsibility as an instructor? What strategies have you implemented to approach inherently political topics in the classroom? Share your ideas and experiences with the First Publics’ community in a Reflection and Class Note!

“Well, you might say, this is all very well in ‘theory’ but what about ‘in practice’?”
(Burawoy, p. 219) 

This year at First Publics, we’ve given ourselves, our contributors, and our readers the task of thinking about the challenges and opportunities of teaching theory as public sociology. This task may sound odd, even to committed public sociologists and to instructors who have taken to heart Michael Burawoy’s assertion that students are our first and most captive public. 

Despite the fact that sociological theory anchors the research and practice of professional and public sociologists and theory courses are the cornerstone of sociology undergraduate and graduate curricula, discussions about public sociology have largely left theory out. The calls to do more and better public sociology that have swept through various corners of our discipline have, by and large, ignored theory as a target. Sociology instructors committed to service-learning and community-engaged courses do not often think of theory classes as appropriate or amenable to these public-oriented pedagogies. 

But why should this be so? As our readers may know, Michael Burawoy, whose invitation to public sociology encouraged an embrace of public-facing scholarship across the discipline and inspired so many of us, was also a masterful teacher of theory who, for decades, saw his theory students as an important public. For Burawoy, teaching theory was a form of public sociology. In what follows, we draw lessons from Burawoy’s reflexive writings on teaching we find useful for thinking through the mechanics, meaning, practice, and politics of teaching theory as public sociology. We share these lessons as an invitation to our readers to share their own ideas and experiences of teaching as public sociology. 

Lesson 1: Students are theorists in their own right

While formal sociological theory may be new to students, theorizing is not. As Burawoy reminds us, students engage in theorizing all the time by making sense of their realities. 

 “To treat teaching as public sociology is to think of students as a public, carrying a vision of who they are and how the world works. They are not empty vessels into which we pour pearls of wisdom, but living, sentient beings who are always thinking about the world around them and how they fit into it. Even if they don’t see it in sociological terms, they are always thinking about their place in the division of labor. I try to bring that thinking to the surface.” (Burawoy, p. 204-205)

To think of students as theorists in their own right is to think of theorizing as an everyday activity. Rather than a specialized, precious activity available only to professional experts, Burawoy invites us to think of theorizing as an activity available to all members of society: a kind of “common sense.” 

“As members of society, we share a common lens that we call “common sense.” Without that shared lens, that shared theory – of which language is its most basic form – we could not live together. In other words, we are all carriers of social theory. To be a social theorist is to reflect on that common sense, elaborate it, transform it.” (Burawoy, p. 198). 

Lesson 2: Theory instructors can and should challenge common sense (and doing so can be emancipatory!)

Taking students as theorists in their own right and thinking of theory as a daily activity akin to common sense thinking does not mean that students must remain unchallenged. Instructors can and should engage with students’ ability to theorize while challenging their common sense. 

Indeed, for Burawoy, teaching theory can mean helping students cultivate a new “common sense” language, one that helps them better understand and make sense of their own experiences and realities. 

“Sociological theory questions what we take for granted. It challenges common sense, showing the partiality of its truth, how in our daily lives we misrecognize what we are up to. Under the spell of sociological theory, “common sense” is transformed from something natural and inevitable into something socially constructed (and durably so), and thus artificial and arbitrary. Understood in this way, sociological theory is always public sociology, challenging the common sense we take for granted.” (Burawoy, p. 198)

When approached this way, learning theory can be emancipatory. It connects students’ ability to theorize their own experiences and realities with the language and tools to question and inquire further, looking for the public impact that different perspectives and explanations can have on how they perceive, experience, and act upon events within their lives. This is because sociological theory “is a special type of social theory. It sees the world as a problem, a world that is less than perfect, a world that could be different.” (Burawoy, p. 198). 

Lesson 3: Learning to theorize is like learning a new language 

But how should instructors teach? How can we challenge common sense and share sociological theory’s emancipatory potential with students? Here, Burawoy is again instructive. Sociology is unique in its particular attachment to the sociological canon, those 19th century “dead white men” that represent “the classics,” (Burawoy, p. 218). This makes teaching theory hard, but it need not be so:

 “Social theory is difficult. It’s not an assemblage of facts. Each theory is a language unto itself that can be learned only with discipline and practice. One learns by speaking, by applying theory to the everyday.” (Burawoy, p. 224) 

This suggests that we must focus not only on having students learn theory but also learn to use it, to talk in theory, to conjugate, and to dialogue. Our task is to teach theory like a language. We know that learning a new language is slow and can be tedious. We do it bit by bit, and by practicing with each other, through dialogue, and by relying on constant translation. Burawoy insists that Instructors can and should help students translate their own perceptions into the sociological and theoretical language, while encouraging them to build-up to a new way of thinking and talking. 

Buraowy’s classes “build theory” by working with “extracts from the original texts of each theorist, extracts that students can manageably study in the allotted time, forming “pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that are slowly assembled in the course of a dialogue between teacher and taught” (Burawoy, p. 222). These “extracts are read and reread as they are put in relation to previous extracts” while confronting them with data that comes from the “lived experiences of the students themselves.” (Burawoy, p. 222) 

Lesson 4: Engage in Dialogue (and the “Dialectics” of Public Sociology)

If theory is a language, then the goal should be dialogue. But with whom? For Burawoy, dialogue takes a number of forms between theorists, students, and instructors. 

The goal is to look for “crises,” internal and external contradictions that can showcase theories, their limitations, and allow for their reconstruction “on the basis of its core assumptions” (Burawoy, p. 223). This approach represents a pedagogy “organized on the basis of student participation, which follows its own rules, especially important when student enrolment gets into the hundreds.” “This is education for all, not just those well-endowed with cultural capital.” (Burawoy, p. 223). 

Moreover, Burawoy stresses putting theorists in conversation with each other and evaluating what each theorist offers and encouraging students to evaluate the instructor’s interpretations. 

This can infuse theory courses with a productive uncertainty, that encourages critical thinking, and gives students a space to take control over their own learning. 

“Indeed, they [students] discover flaws in my arguments, give alternative interpretations of the texts… [T]hey often have me on the ropes as I vainly try to defend each theorist in turn. The presumptively known endpoint is never reached; having learned how to think theoretically, students have collectively taken the course in new directions. Uncertainty of outcome draws students into creative engagement.” (Burawoy, p. 224)

From dialogue in theory and about theory, instructors and students can then circle back to political practice, problematizing the many and imperfect ways sociological thought can lead to social and political action. In this dialectical movement, theory emerges alive, porous to change and new ideas, and, therefore, capable of inciting transformation.  

“Here we confront the “dialectics” of public sociology: how theoretically informed political practice contributes to changes in the world that feedback into sociological theory, requiring further theoretical revision. The life of theory reflects its engagement with the changing world it describes.” (Burawoy, p. 202) 

This is a remarkable year for elections and democracy globally with about half the population of the world having the opportunity to vote in consequential national or local elections. But those of us that teach in the US might encounter students that are only thinking about the upcoming election here in November. During our recent webinar,  Engaging Elections: The Politics of Teaching as Public Sociology, we asked our panelist to address the question of how to teach about the US election and engage in what is most relevant and present for our students, while transmitting  a comparative and historical sensibility. That is, how we might bridge the pedagogical imperative to provide a comparative and historical perspective with the teaching as public sociology imperative to make content relevant and relatable in the lives of students. 

Benjamin Bradlow pointed out that our students are living in a time where “the mainstream press reports on American politics…basically as a series of unpredictable events that are just kind of playing out as a reality show” (Bradlow, 31:43). Cedric de Leon also noted the polarization between the two political parties. Together, both Bradlow and de Leon highlighted how these experiences with media and party politics often alienate students. When asked how to re-engage students in the conversation, our panelists focused on how the sociological classroom can help contextualize this seemingly unpredictable political climate by using a case study approach. 

Edwin Ackerman encouraged comparing the US to other countries as a way to help students answer questions like, 

“why is it that this happened here, and not somewhere else versus, when you’re just looking at something within one particular country [it may feel] like it just happens right? It’s just some sort of chronological sequence of history that produces it. And there’s no sense of social determinant. But comparison also allows us to pinpoint what is specific about the US” (Ackerman, 24:12). 

While using the US as a case study may make some theories more tangible to students, Bradlow noted that certain topics might provoke a sense of “alienation” for students from some backgrounds. In this case, de Leon suggested situating current events at an even more local scale – the campus.  

We want to hear from you! How have you brought students’ lived experiences into your classroom discussions about elections and current events? What are other strategies for contextualizing today’s politics? Are there other approaches that you’ve found fruitful for engaging comparative and historical perspectives with your students? Share your ideas and experiences with the First Publics’ community in a Reflection and Class Note!

From protesting against genocide in Palestine to demanding political responses on climate change, we are witnessing a surge of student activism across campuses. Yet at the same time, many students feel disengaged from politics and apathetic toward the political processes and institutions in the United States. During our Engaging Elections: The Politics of Teaching as Public Sociology webinar, we asked panelists how to make sense of “this combination of fatigue and anger,” and the tension between apathy and political outrage on their campuses. 

Johnnie Lotesta kicked off the conversation by reminding us that apathy is not universal among students. She discussed how a subset of the students at Appalachian State tend to be very politically engaged and organized around issues specific to the campus.

“One thing that I’ve noticed among my students is this sense of sort of a feeling of political efficacy around issues on campus or closer to home. But that doesn’t always translate into local, state or national politics. (…) Young people have their own ideas, and issues that they’re interested in. Sometimes they just don’t always make that immediate connection to how those local issues translate into broader political institutions.” (Lotesta, 10:15)

For Edwin Ackerman, engagement and disengagement are a result of the political moment. Students may exude more political interest and energy in moments that feel particularly precarious. For instance, during the Trump presidency, Ackerman’s students were more interested in contextualizing course content and present-day politics–something that has not been carried through to the Biden administration. He began to see complacency alongside political exhaustion as engagement decreased and students went “back to brunch.”

“I started teaching Fall of 2016, and I also noticed from the get-go … the interest that students had in the text that I was assigning, in the questions that were being posed, that lasted basically through the Trump years. In a sense, the sort of discussions of texts that can be a hundred years old but are talking about fascism or authoritarianism, or threats. It just seemed to be much more readily obvious why we were reading them. And then all of that…ended swiftly in 2020.” (Ackerman, 22:46)

For Cedric de Leon, if part of the tension can be tied to students’ perceptions of their political landscape, another part can only be seen as a result of current party politics and an overall disengagement from what the two national parties offer. Current institutional politics seems to provide no concrete response to the aspirations of students, especially working-class students. They find, however, solidarity, energy, and political efficacy in grassroots movements, even when engaging in national and global political debates. 

“A number of my students are labor studies students. They’re primarily rank-and-file Union members, right? Union staff. They’re working people, you know. And you ask them about the Democratic party and the Republican party, and you know, and for them, you know, they haven’t really attended to, you know, the needs, desires, and aspirations of working-class people for generations.” (De Leon, 12:52)

Benjamin Bradlow reminded us that students feel it is easier to organize and become politically engaged if they are aware of the many political organizations and initiatives that can catalyze their interests and ideas. When teaching about climate change and the coalitions at play who are needed to address the problem, Bradlow mentioned that labor unions and workers’ organizations, for instance, are often out of students’ purview but, through class discussions and assignments, become a central actor in understanding the political conflict, and ones that students really coalesce around by the end of the semester.

“This issue of ‘is climate change the issue to be organizing about?’ And something we talk about a lot in the class is the different kinds of social groupings that are involved in this issue, and the kinds of coalitions that are relevant for making change on this issue. And what comes out is the key actor that very few students, if any, bring up at the beginning of the class, but becomes quite central by the end is worker organizations and unions.” (Bradlow, 18:26)

How have you and your students experienced this tension between political apathy and increasing engagement in your school or campus? What other reasons do you see for this phenomenon? Are there ways to improve political engagement among the youth? 

We invite reflections and class notes from our larger community of instructors, teachers, and students to reflect upon these questions and our speakers’ ideas. 

It’s no secret that community-engaged learning boosts students awareness and sociological imagination. See Christensen’s piece for examples of how to implement CEL in your own classroom, as well as strategies for assessment.

Looking for more ways to center your students? Check out this piece from Schall on letting go of power and making students co-contributers in the classroom.

Struggling to engage Gen Z students? This paper discusses using “Renewable Assignments” to meet the needs of younger students through active learning, collaboration, and fostering independence.

Are you looking for a new classroom activity to engage students? Angela Adkins (2023) suggests using open-ended, non-directive vignettes to promote the discussion of sociological theory and address systemic issues and social justice.

Blog post assignments can help students experiment with writing sociologically. Find out how Ruth M. Hernández-Ríos has used blogs to teach students to analyze complex theories about gender and sex while also improving their writing in this The Society Pages post from 2019.