Lessons from the pandemic: when students feel supported and connected, learning happens. See Senter’s Teaching Sociology article for convincing evidence.

See this Teaching TSP post on podcasting as an alternative to in-class lectures!

Sociological theory often feels disconnected from nearly everything else we teach in undergraduate courses. This is not totally an accident, but it is unfortunate. Why? Because sociological theory is the backbone of the discipline, and of the sociological imagination you hear so much about. As a scholar who studies adolescent suicide and youth suicide clusters in high schools, theory has been indispensable to all phases of the research process, especially translating findings into easily readable and actionable deliverables. Before I say a bit more about how we might rethink teaching theory,it’s worth reflecting on why sociological theory should be taught differently.

I would start with a simple qualifying statement. A lot of classical theory may not feel connected to the reader’s lived reality because, well, it doesn’t. When I was an undergrad and then a grad student and now a professor teaching that course, I struggled and still struggle with making some of it relevant. In some cases, it is very macro, or the theory covers a large amount of time and geographic space. Marx’s theories, for instance, are broad-stroke theories of human societies that stretch back quite far, but our brains are designed to make sense of time spans that fit lived experiences more readily. Often, what is theory and what is philosophy, ideology, or pseudoscience is not distinguishable because classical theory emerged without peer-reviewed publishing standards. This makes wading through dense texts challenging and, admittedly, boring.

That said, when my professors extracted the basic theoretical ideas and helped explain them with contemporary examples, I saw what theory could do. Theory provides us with the language for situating the self, or in C. Wright Mills’ terms, our biography within the historical, political, economic, and cultural context that enables and constrains how we feel, think, and act every day. It pushes us to not take for granted that what we know or how we interpret an event or issue or person’s behavior is “right.” Like all sciences, a good theory course should teach us that the more we learn, the less we actually know. It should motivate us to want to understand more, and to develop better tools for studying the things that interest us to create better explanations; explanations that can be used to shape policies, influence political or economic actors, or simply improve discussions we have with strangers, friends, and family.

We should cultivate more empathy because of theory. Indeed, the most public form of public sociology is simply acting towards others around us in ways that recognize the systemic sources of difference, the need for sympathy and empathy, and the effort to not create more conflict but find ways to help others recognize these differences are normal, healthy, and do not have to stymie civility and kindness.

So, what would a more practical, fresh approach to teaching classical sociological theory look like? I offer two related possibilities.

1. The biggest dilemma, in my opinion, with classical theory stems from the vagueness surrounding the term “classical.” In the most literal sense, we are talking about the earliest sociological thinkers compared to contemporary theorists. But, what makes someone contemporary? Should they be alive? Should they have been publishing in my lifetime? My students’ lifetime? What should we do with the thinkers theorizing from 1930-1970? Should we simply abandon them because they do not fit the heuristic?
   
   An alternative way to think of classical theory is the emergence of certain enduring kernels of sociological inquiry. For instance, Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life can be taught many different ways, but its most enduring insight is that emotions are the cement with which relationships, groups, and communities form and are sustained. The mechanism is repeated, stereotyped gatherings that, in turn, draw participants’ attention and emotional arousal to a central focus—an activity, a conversation, or a social object (e.g., bands or political speakers). Because this feeling is felt to be outside of our body and mind, we ascribe the source to a “third-party”: the group. Every time we gather, we feel the group.
   
   It would be easy to draw a few pages here and there from this text that highlight the imagery Durkheim employs, but couple it with more accessible, theoretically developed, and empirically grounded texts. Goffman’s Interaction Rituals, Collins’ Interaction Ritual Chains, and Lawler’s Affect Theory of Social Exchange all are indebted to this insight and all show the evolution of theoretical ideas from rough, informal premises to solid propositions. Simmel’s relational work can be brought into conversation with network theory; Weber’s work on authority and power with the myriad theories of power today; the notion of status groups found in Veblen and Weber paired with reference group theory, status expectations state theory, small groups research, and so on.
   
   In my experience, students enjoy this far more than being mired in Marx’s German Ideology or the linguistic twists and turns of Durkheim’s Division of Labor. They lose nothing, as they are still confronted by some of the original material. The distracting misogyny and ethnocentrism one would expect from 19^th century white, male writers are tossed in the trash bin for good, while central animating ideas are recovered. It has further consequences, for students, of (a) connecting 200-year-old ideas with contemporary sociological research and (b) embedding theory, as a subfield and cornerstone of a discipline, into the rest of the courses they will take for the major. That Durkheim or Weber or Du Bois’ ideas remain salient to people doing actual research and extending theories in legible ways makes the discipline feel fresh, forward-thinking, and growing rather than stale, mired in the past, and hermetically sealed.

2. Leaning into contemporary readings has a sort of meta-effect on course design: it forces the instructor to think hard about what ideas endure and which are artifacts of the antiquated milieus in which they were written. For instance, Durkheim’s thesis in the Elementary Forms has found strong empirical support in sociology, anthropology, the ethnographic record, cognitive science, and neuroscience. This signals “sociological principle.” That Durkheim hedged on his thesis in the Division of Labor and, eventually, disputed it in the final section of the book suggests shaky ground for inclusion in a course.
   
   Imagine, for a second, that a course was built up from basic problems or questions that are partially answered through principles that continue to inform how we think, study, and write about them. Durkheim’s central problem was integration, or how do diverse groups or communities form and sustain a sense of we-ness? This question is no less important today than in 1897 or 1532 or at the rise of the earliest states some 5,000 years ago. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim—among others, also felt that the problem of regulation was essential to understanding social organization and change.  Communities face pressures to coordinate and control members, especially as they get larger, denser, and more heterogeneous. How do they do this, what are the consequences, and how do solutions often lead to change? The strength of this approach is that these questions work at most scales. I can explain integration and regulation by talking about the growth of a family. Two people fall in love and get married. What happens when they have a child? A second child? A third child? A parent comes to live with them? What are the challenges they face with growth in “population” and diversity? Where do the necessary resources come from? Who decides who gets what and how much? These are fundamental sociological questions that classical theorists and contemporary theorists continue to ask and answer, even if they often focus on “societies” or “organizations” and not the immediate social worlds we all are familiar with.

Dr. Seth Abrutyn is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Abrutyn specializes in youth suicide and is also a general sociologist whose research rests at the intersection of mental health, emotions, social psychology, and culture, and which has won several national awards. His overarching goals as a social scientist are to merge sociological theory with the public imagination in hopes of making accessible sociological tools in the service of solving social problems.

Having seen how many students are unaware of how to register to vote, the mechanics of voting, and why voting matters, coupled with my own naturalization as a U.S. citizen, has compelled me to make voter engagement and registration an integral part in my classes and spearhead a college-wide effort in the same realm.

There is so much potential in incorporating voter education in college classes. In addition to demonstrating to students that what they are learning in class is related to real world issues, it gives students the opportunity to practice skills they acquire in their classes. This is what employers (and grad schools) are looking for (see for example, National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Career Readiness). 

Here, I will discuss one in-class lecture and activity that bridges the study of intersectionality and voting education that I conceptualized for a Sociology of Gender class. This, along with additional assignments and activities, was developed while I was an inaugural fellow of the Civic Engagement & Voting Rights Teacher Scholars Program funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

There are many ways to introduce and explain the concept of intersectionality to students. To do so, I assign a variety of readings including, but not limited to, an article by Jan Ellen Lewis that discusses that certain women had the right to vote in New Jersey for a short time period after the American Revolution. This and other academic references are used as a launching pad for students to comprehend why universal statements such as “when women got the right to vote” (referring to the ratification of the 19^th Amendment in 1920) are not only inaccurate but fail to consider that different women have had different experiences. I provide various examples to students: Single and propertied women in New Jersey during a particular time period could vote, but lost the right to do so. The majority of Black people, regardless of gender, were prevented from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Similarly, until U.S. citizenship was imposed on Native Americans through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, they were also disenfranchised, often until 1957, since voting rights were governed by state laws. I use these examples of exclusion to explain to students what intersectionality is and why intersectionality must be part of social science and humanities research as well as policy analysis. At times, at the end of the lecture, I have asked students to create social media posts directed to a fictitious high school class in which they explain in their own words what intersectionality is and problematize why it is not helpful to speak of the “experiences of women” without applying an intersectional lens.   

In addition, I assist students to register to vote, check their voter registration status, and/or request a mail-in ballot (Centers for Civic Engagement, the League of Women Voters, or other local organizations  are usually able to assist with this.) Importantly, I also have resources available for students who are citizens of other countries. For example, Stony Brook University’s Center for Civic Justice has a country-by-country guide.

There are a number of resources and grants that aim to assist faculty interested in incorporating voter education into their classes. Among them are the aforementioned peer-reviewed Civic Engagement and Voting Rights Teacher Scholars assignments and syllabi, Periclean Voting Modules, Faculty Network for Student Voting Rights, The Center for Artistic Activism, AASCU’s Resources on Voting Education and Engagement, and Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice.

Bernadette Ludwig is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of Civic Engagement at Wagner College. Professor Ludwig’s research focuses on how racism affects African refugees in their ability to find refuge and in the resettlement process. Her other work investigates how community engagement can nurture students’ sense of social justice and belonging.

See Odum and Kordsmeier’s discussion about the impact teaching sociology in “unprecedented times” can have on students. While various difficulties may arise while teaching during crises, this article gives teachers ideas to craft their pedagogy for an engaged future.

For tenure track faculty with research intensive roles, balancing research and teaching can be difficult. Meanwhile, students are eager to obtain transferable skills to enhance their career prospects at the same time as community and government organizations benefit from research projects that provide useful data for their work. With these realities in mind, I set out to incorporate a community-engaged research project into my undergraduate Environmental Sociology course at Utah State University. 

I knew I wanted the project to focus on water conservation (a salient topic in Utah), particularly on the state’s rollout of the Landscape Conversion Incentive Program (LCIP)—a program that incentivizes the replacement of residential lawns with more water-efficient landscaping. To prepare for the course, I coordinated with two community partners to refine the project’s research objectives and develop interview instruments that would generate useful data for each agency: the Utah Division of Water Resources (the agency that rolled out LCIP) and the City of North Logan (the municipality closest to our campus that is eligible for the program). In addition to building this collaboration, I applied to have the course designated as community-engaged learning (CEL)  and submitted an IRB protocol with each student listed as a research assistant. 

Once the course began, students obtained their CITI certification as required by IRB. Early in the course, they read empirical and theoretical works highlighting water conservation, landscape conversion, and the cultural significance of lawns in the United States. They also learned about interview-based data collection to prepare them for the task at hand. In the meantime, I was hard at work with participant recruitment, a task I didn’t want to burden the students with. I distributed flyers at key public locations across North Logan, and set up a participant recruitment booth at North Logan City Library. Participants were offered $20 gift cards for participating in our study.  It took a couple of weeks to get participants enrolled in the project, but once we had willing participants trickling in, I paired each student with an interviewee. Students reached out to participants to schedule their interviews, carried out and audio-recorded the semi-structured interview, and then transcribed and proofed the transcriptions in Otter.ai (a transcription software). 

All proofread and de-identified transcripts were then brought into Dedoose, a cloud-based software for qualitative coding. We then held a three-day “Coding Jamboree,” in which students worked together to code all of the interviews for emerging themes, patterns and outliers. Students then individually used the coded dataset to write up individual papers connecting their findings to the literature read earlier in the term. Finally, the whole class collaborated to produce a presentation of preliminary research findings that they presented over Zoom to our collaborating agencies. 

By the end of the semester, students were CITI certified and had experience with 1) carrying out a semi-structured interview, 2) transcribing and editing, 3) coding qualitative data, 4) writing a qualitative research paper, and 5) presenting findings to state and local agencies. Meanwhile, with the assistance of my students, I collected data that I will use in subsequent reports and publications. Finally, our partnering agencies received data that will help them refine their water conservation and LCIP rollout efforts. This is why I like to think of community-engaged learning as a triple win: a win for students, for faculty, and for the community.

Kirsten Vinyeta is an assistant professor and environmental sociologist at Utah State University. Her research employs qualitative methods to study the socio-political dimensions of land and fire management, federal-tribal relations, climate vulnerability and resilience, and multispecies dimensions of human social systems. She teaches courses on environmental sociology, the sociology of climate change, multispecies justice, and social science methods. 

Looking to summarize to students recent discussions on eviction and gentrification? Hepburn, Louis & Desmond (2024) look at six million court cases filed in 72 cities in the US and find that eviction is a durable component of neighborhood disadvantage.

When I first started teaching, in the Fall of 2022, I was surprised by how often things that seemed obvious to me eluded the grasp of my students. This wasn’t about course material: that, I expected to have to teach them. But I was surprised by how often students didn’t seem to know things that are basic to higher education: How should you read a research article? What counts as plagiarism? When should you ask for help? 

Once I learned about the hidden curriculum, or “the set of tacit norms, policies, and expectations in an educational context that insiders expect all students to follow but are often not taught explicitly”, this lack of knowledge made sense. Students dealing with the hidden curriculum at the college level are often dealing with it alone: they may not have family to ask about norms, or may feel embarrassed about not knowing what to do. This hidden curriculum is important because we often use its standards to judge students, and it is unfair to judge students based on expectations they were not aware of.

In order to help students become aware of the expectations and standards on which they may be judged, I’ve started using the first week of class to introduce students to the idea of the hidden curriculum, explicitly addressing its specific norms, policies, and assumptions. I start by telling students the story of how I learned to read,  not  as a child, but how I learned to read again when I first entered college. I tell them how I was first taught to read linearly when I was young: to start with the first sentence of the picture book and end with the last one, reading every single word in a row. But when I entered college, I realized that this way of reading was not always so helpful. In college we’re often reading something for a particular purpose and, depending on that purpose, we should change our reading strategies. I explain to students that learning to read differently was difficult for me and that it was made even more difficult by never being explicitly told that my linear reading strategy wouldn’t always work. With that story, I explain to students that we’re going to spend some time discussing some parts of the hidden curriculum. I let students know that, while some of this information might not be new to them, it will be new to others, and I want all my students to start off on equal footing in my classroom.

Then, I get into the aspects of the hidden curriculum that I think are especially important to success in sociology classrooms. I discuss what a journal article is and how to read them, how to communicate effectively with professors through email, the difference between “doctors” and “professors”, what plagiarism is, and the plagiarism review process, to name just a few. This past semester, I also explicitly talked about ChatGPT and AI. In addition to these topics, I also introduce students to various offices and resources around campus that could be useful for students going through a difficult time. While perhaps not technically under the umbrella of the hidden curriculum, I think that ensuring that students are aware of where to seek help strengthens my main goal, which is to ensure that all of my students have the knowledge they need to thrive in college. 

Students appreciate going over the hidden curriculum. Even though I go over this the first week of school, students often come up to me after class enthusiastic about this new knowledge. One example from this past semester is that a student who was going through a bit of a financial dilemma told me that they were not aware of the offices on campus that might help them, and told me they were going to get in contact to hopefully help with their problem.

Discussing the hidden curriculum does not, of course, mitigate the effects of the social inequalities that make its discussion important in the first place. Students come into the classroom with different levels of cultural capital, and this exercise does not and could not make everything equal between all students. However, I think that it is an important first step in helping students who don’t already have this particular knowledge by giving them new tools to succeed in my class and throughout the rest of their time in college. It is an easy way to demonstrate to students that you care about creating a more equitable classroom and sets you up for continuing that atmosphere for the rest of the semester.

Kylie M. Smith is a sixth-year doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia. She has taught several courses for the sociology department including Introductory Sociology, Sociology of Gender, and Social Psychology. Her research interests include gender, social psychology, and inequality.

Sociology courses frequently focus on helping students understand the severity of our social problems. We can do even better by also helping students take practical steps to address these problems. Helping students practice civic engagement is important because it addresses a too-frequent blind spot in our pedagogy: we assume that students who learn about problems will be inspired to act and know how to act on them. But it isn’t necessarily true that students who learn about poverty, racism, environmental destruction, and the like will be moved to act and know how to do so; they might instead become fatalistic or depressed. Teaching them how to productively express their views in a real-world civic context may reduce the risk of defeatism and encourage positive action.

One approach I’ve used is teaching students how to call their elected officials to share their views on a course-related topic. This activity can take on added significance during or just after elections, but can be used in nearly any class regardless of election cycles. I typically mention calling elected officials briefly on the first day of class and then return to it after a month or two once students have built up content knowledge. I begin real preparation about two class periods before asking students to make a call. I ask students to find a current local, state, or national policy issue connected to a course topic on which they would want elected officials to hear their view. Since class members vary widely in how closely they follow politics, I give time to research policy connections, encouraging them to look for legislation currently under consideration.

I ask students to generate ideas and to talk with others, and to write up a paragraph explaining who they might call and why. I remind them of differences between levels of government and decision-making (in particular, many students need an explanation of state vs. federal legislators). I share resources on how to find relevant lawmakers; example issue guides; information on what happens when you call and why calls may sometimes have an impact; and tips for reducing anxiety. In particular, mentioning that most calls go to an intern whose job is to note constituents’ opinions, or to voicemail where students can leave a message, relieves a frequent worry. 

Using speakerphone, I make a call while in front of the class. Students then have 10-15 minutes to fan out and make a call themselves. Though in practice I have limited control over whether they call, most report (in follow-up anonymous surveys) that they do. The most commonly shared reaction during debriefing is that calling was easier and less anxiety-provoking than expected. Most class members also report that the exercise has made them more likely to call an elected official in the future. I share more facilitation suggestions and learning outcomes evidence in a Teaching Sociology article describing the exercise in detail.

In a mostly-democratic system such as the modern U.S., citizen input shapes some political outcomes. That students learn how to engage the political system around social problems—and crucially, that they actually engage it—helps them develop citizenship skills they can use throughout their lives. Further, moving from solely learning about problems to taking action generates satisfaction that can fuel continued learning. For these reasons, civically-minded instructors should incorporate this activity in their classes.

Raj Ghoshal is an associate professor of sociology at Elon University in North Carolina. He has published over a dozen journal articles, mostly on race and ethnicity. He teaches courses on race and racism, political sociology, quantitative methods, and criminology. His most recent work appears in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

One of the main tasks we have as instructors and teaching assistants is reading students’ writing and assisting them in communicating their ideas. Even when we have engaging class discussions, how do we get students to do good thinking and move their ideas from their heads to the written page? One way to help students is by providing effective feedback. Feedback serves as a conversation between a reader and the writer. The goal of feedback is to offer a different view of the writing, from which the writer is obscured. Feedback also helps the writer see what others take away from their writing and if their ideas have been effectively communicated.  

After serving as the department’s writing intensive teaching assistant this past year, I have a few manageable pieces of advice to offer. These ideas and techniques are adapted from the University of Georgia’s graduate Writing Intensive Program course, discussions with other writing-intensive teaching assistants, and Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004)’s The Elements of Teaching Writing: A Resource for Instructors in All Disciplines. The advice below should help instructors provide effective feedback on all forms of writing, from short pieces to longer, scaffolded essays:  

1. Focus on the forest and not the trees. Our main goal is to help students grow as writers. Students enter the classroom with different writing skills, experiences, and backgrounds.. You cannot fix everything in one semester, but you can help them identify what they are struggling with. Focus on these issues when giving feedback instead of honing in on individual sentences or singular minor points. 

2. Focus on giving each student a manageable number of tasks. When commenting on a first draft, I usually concentrate on only 2 to 3 big points related to major content or overarching arguments. Sometimes, for longer pieces, I might include 1 or 2 small points as well. 

3.  Do not write directly on students’ work. Instead, I write a note on a separate page (or a separate attached comment on our online system). This indicates to them that not only did I thoroughly read their essays but that I value their contribution and do not see them as just a number in the class. Having a note format for feedback also indicates that this is their work and gives them ownership over the page.

4. Think critically about the verbiage of your constructive criticism. One of the changes I have made to get students to really think about big picture issues is always including a sentence about what I thought their main point/key takeaways were. Rearticulating their argument in my words serves as a point to see if there is miscommunication between their thoughts and what the reader is taking away from the page. It creates an opportunity for them to clarify their intentions in revision. I have also changed the verbiage of how I articulate this to “As a reader, this is what I took away.” Furthermore, no matter how creative I have to be, I always try to start with a sentence of positive reinforcement on what they are doing well. 

5. Do not copy edit a draft. Copy editing students’ work can make the writing feel finalized and subvert the revision process, preventing students from producing a new, better draft as a finished product. Emphasize that grammar errors and minor style issues are part of the polishing stage writers enter once they have worked through content. To help students polish their work, suggest (the free version of) Grammarly or your campus’ writing center. You can also provide specific guidance on polishing once they have submitted a “final” draft.

As public sociologists, part of our job is to encourage critical thinking and clear writing. The tips for providing feedback I offer here promote students’ agency in the writing process and encourage deep thinking throughout the revision process. Students can often feel resistant to receiving feedback on assignments often preferring to turn in one draft, this feedback encourages them to lean into the revision process. The goal is to emphasize writing as communication and part of a collaborative process. 

Emily Tingle is a second-year doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Georgia where she currently serves as the department’s writing intensive teaching assistant. She holds a Master of Science degree in Sociology from Mississippi State University. Her areas of study include political sociology, social movements and collective action, and rural sociology.