Search

In the field of higher education, there are two dominant strands of interpretation of criticality, either as a decontextualized skill of logical reasoning, or a sense of action within larger contexts more than mere cognition. This research offers a reclaiming and reimagining of criticality in universities as an affective process, highlighting the entanglement of social, discursive and material perspectives. This research takes a comparative lens to investigate undergraduate students' perceptions of criticality and institutional cultivation of it in a Sociology undergraduate degree in China and the UK, adopting a qualitative interview method. Differences were found between cultures regarding the level of engagement with a range of criticality-embedded practices, including field work, critical inquiry in class, group work, etc. Through the development of criticality in various activities, students' feelings towards it shifted with contexts. While placed within physical and discursive universities that convey a sense of professionalism, students in the study acknowledged the importance of criticality and proactively demonstrated it. However, the feeling towards showcasing criticality outside campus was two-fold. Whereas criticality can be associated with negativity in social interactions, its value is appreciated as it enabled students to reconstruct their identities into a more rational, tolerant and caring one.

No previous study has explored why the translators selected children's literature while translating Japanese literature into Bangla. This study aims to identify the tendency of selecting Japanese texts for translation into Bangla, which have educationally valued contents. It employed descriptive translation studies approach to prepare a periodized catalog of translated Japanese children's literature in the quantitative section to develop a history. The qualitative part is conducted based on two recent concepts of the sociology of translations: sociology of translation process in functioning and interpreting and sociology of translation as a cultural product. This study reveals that the translators primarily select tales with moral values a child or an adult learns from the societal sectors other than the educational institutions. They intend to circulate those moral values in the target society because the contents are socially apposite and deemed socioculturally necessary in the target region. "Totto-chan" is analyzed as a cultural product to explore why and to what extent it is circulated. The interpreted texts are used to enhance reading literacy in reading programs. This study establishes a fundamental basis for translation, society and education altogether in the target society focusing on Japanese literature translations. In future, this study could be used as a foundational work in the field of translation studies in Bangladesh.

Sociological research has long been interested in inequalities generated by and within educational institutions. Although relatively rich as a literature, less analytic focus has centered on educational mobility and inequality experiences within graduate training specifically. In this article, we draw on a combination of survey and open-ended qualitative data from approximately 450 graduate students in the discipline of sociology to analyze graduate school pipeline divergences for first-generation and working-class students and the implications for inequalities in tangible resources, advising and support, and a sense of isolation. Our results point to an important connection between private undergraduate institutional enrollment and higher-status graduate program attendance--a pattern that undercuts social-class mobility in graduate training and creates notable precarities in debt, advising, and sense of belonging for first-generation and working-class graduate students. We conclude by discussing the unequal pathways revealed and their implications for merit and mobility, graduate training, and opportunity within our and other disciplines.

Conversations surrounding decolonial humanistic sociology have been guided by a moral imperative--to advance a radical critique of society for the purpose of reducing inequality. Storytelling has been used by marginalized groups to advance decolonization. Exactly how can instructors use the power of storytelling and maps to facilitate the study of migration among students? We argue that narratives, maps, and museum-like exhibitions can be used to teach human migration in a way that moves beyond the dominant approach of push-pull nation-centered demography. This contribution describes how decolonial humanistic sociology informed the development of the Global Migrations Exhibit Assignment: a hands-on learning experience focused on translating students' learning into action. We outline learning outcomes, review a sample of students' work, and consider the limitations of the assignment. We also consider the hostile responses those who use the assignment may face and discuss the peril this poses to academic freedom and democracy.

This teaching note reviews a four-part discussion post assignment that asks Black-identified students enrolled in a class connected to a Black living-learning community to make sociological and personal connections to concepts related to race, anti-Blackness, and institutional racism in Yaa Gyasi's novel "Homegoing." Reflecting on their posts, I share how using literary fiction in the classroom can support students' development of a sociological imagination grounded in history's missing voices and an intersectional and structural understanding of race and racism. Moreover, by making connections between the characters, their peers, and their own lives and sharing these connections via their discussion posts, students create a space of collective vulnerability where they can reflect simultaneously upon the dehumanizing aspects of anti-Blackness and assert their individual and collective humanity in the face of this oppressive force.

Courses: This unit activity applies critical theories from the fields of communication, sociology, and gender studies and therefore can be used in any course that discusses gender studies, qualitative research, content analysis, media effects, film analysis, or LGBTQ studies. This can be modified as an activity for graduate or undergraduate courses. Objectives: The activity utilizes clips from five popular horror films that feature common transphobic tropes and teaches students to apply each tenet of critical media effects (CME) theory into their analysis of the films. This encourages both students and instructors to adopt a trans-inclusive approach to communication theory. By the end of this activity, students will be able to describe CME theory and its tenets, apply components of CME to film analysis, and utilize queer theory as a lens for analyzing media.

The research project assignment can create meaningful opportunities for students to apply sociological concepts. For grading these projects, assessment rubrics are useful pedagogical tools to evaluate students' abilities in achieving course learning objectives. In this study, I analyzed final research papers collected over multiple semesters in my undergraduate Methods of Social Research course. My goals are to (1) evaluate the grading rubric's effectiveness in enabling students to meet course objectives and (2) identify improvements in students' outcomes from revisions to the rubric over time. Findings indicate that rubrics can provide students the information needed to apply course concepts to their work and that rubric revisions are necessary to ensure validity, reliability, and equity across grading. In conclusion, I provide suggestions for implementing a semester-long research project assignment and initiating iterative revisions to rubric criteria.

Despite being intensely sociable, ethnographic research is also deeply isolating. Although fieldworkers may feel lonely, we contend that they are not (or should not be) alone. At the 10th anniversary of Urban Ethnography Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, we reflect on the ethnographic training cultivated there. We detail objectives, experiences, and lessons learned while also considering challenges for pedagogical projects of ethnographic collectivity--as well as techniques to address them. We contend that learning and teaching sociology through the ethnographic craft is not limited to the classroom but combines reading, writing, fieldwork, and dialogue with other ethnographers. These four dimensions are cultivated through various, simultaneous, classroom-based and research-development activities. We examine activities conducive to the creation of what we call, borrowing from Norbert Elias, an "ethnographer aperti." Finally, we discuss the replicability of this model, suggesting how universities can expand pedagogical support by pursuing ethnography as more than work in isolation.

The introductory course to sociology serves the multiple roles of providing students with the foundations of the field while also being its "public face" and possibly improving its image. The outcomes of introductory courses have been investigated mostly in quantitative ways in the past. The article presents a qualitative, longitudinal study of the "mental image" that 397 students of an introductory course at a Hungarian university formed about sociology. Participants were asked to draw mind maps around the central concept of "sociology" right before, right after, and years after taking the course. Results from the content analysis of mind maps indicate that while students are able to situate sociology as a science of the human world, their mental image of the field is often vague beyond that. Mind maps drawn years after taking the course bear the closest resemblance to the ones drawn even before studying it.

There is general agreement among sociologists that teaching social structure is a core component of a sociological curriculum. Despite this agreement, there are few guides for instructors on how to teach this key concept. Using the sociological literacy framework, this research examines the most popular undergraduate Introduction to Sociology textbooks and their supplemental resources. Most texts offer a basic definition, but beyond that, there were few additional resources for helping to clarify the concept. With this in mind, additional resources for supplementing the textbooks are offered.

Graduate students face obstacles when attempting to pursue public sociology in general, but specifically when they desire to utilize public sociology as both a research and teaching orientation that fully incorporates undergraduate students. Drawing on a two-year public sociology project on student financial security challenges, the author advocates for graduate students interested in public sociology to engage in campus collaborations, where connections between undergraduate students and campus partners are forged based on relevant campus resources easily accessible to graduate students. Based on the specifics of the author's campus collaboration, six tips emerge for graduate students interested in replicating this approach to public sociology early in their careers. Gaining familiarity with conducting public sociology that fully incorporates undergraduate students in graduate school, a model that has been shown to benefit students, community partners, and sociology as a discipline, will prepare graduate student instructors to implement the model when they become faculty.

Educators have recently highlighted the importance of social science courses for students entering the medical field. This has led to the inclusion of sociological theories and concepts on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), a requirement for any student seeking formal medical training. Using open-ended survey data responses provided by students who recently completed the MCAT, we explore how students perceive that sociology courses prepare them for the MCAT and their lives more generally. We find that students report that their sociology courses introduced them to key concepts and laid a foundation for material assessed on the exam, but those courses could improve by aligning with the MCAT structure by prioritizing application of concepts and critically analyzing case studies. Students also reported that sociology courses helped them develop empathy and inclusivity and use their sociological imaginations, which will ultimately positively impact their careers in the medical field and lives overall.

This study is the first to analyze data from a national survey to investigate the significance for deaf identity of the different forms of social and technological support that deaf people rely upon. Data were derived from a survey among 839 deaf people and were analyzed with regard to social identification as deaf, hearing, bicultural, and marginal. Findings showed connections between technology and identity, including the use of a range of technology to support being culturally deaf. Findings also showed that the deaf and hearing groups had strong homophilous social networks, while the bicultural group tended toward more mixed but equally strong social connectivity. The marginal group had a much thinner social connectivity and relied more upon institutional social support, findings that are in line with previous research revealing a sub-group struggling with social participation and well-being. Theoretically, the paper builds bridges between the fields of social identity and microsociology and shows how a microsociological perspective brings attention to the significance of reiterated social relations and practice for constructing social identity.

The study explores journal citations from 104 doctoral dissertations in sociology from 2010 to 2021 at the Pennsylvania State University. A citation analysis of 10,395 journal citations explores journal use from three graduate degree programs in sociology. Journal use is based on the top 32 journals for concentration of citations (CitRank), number of dissertations citing the journal (DissRank), and the average (CDRank). Forty journals are identified from 38 dissertations (degree in sociology), 40 journals from 57 dissertations (dual degree for sociology and demography), 34 journals from nine dissertations (dual degree for sociology and criminology), and 41 journals from 104 dissertations. An analysis of variance and correlation is conducted to determine the strength of the relationship of the three measures of use. The study identifies 71 unique journal titles from all degree programs and a core of 13 journals.

Climate change is a complex, multisystem phenomenon that disrupts human development both directly and indirectly through the interactions of interconnected systems. This article outlines the physical, social, and psychological impacts of exposure to climate disasters, which are already increasing in frequency and ferocity across the globe. Climate change poses particular challenges for billions of people with vulnerabilities related to geography, age, injustice, poverty, and many other social or economic disadvantages. In this article, we apply resilience and positive development frameworks to describe the resources and processes at the level of the individual, the family, and the community that can prepare and support people as they contend with the impacts of climate change. To illustrate these frameworks in action, we give examples of promising interventions that focus on mobilizing powerful human adaptive systems to build hope, agency, social cohesion, and a shared sense of belonging. We conclude by calling on developmental scientists to engage in research, interventions, and collaborative advocacy to address the unprecedented and existential threat posed by climate change.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surfeit of information and misinformation in the media about it. The lockdown in England meant that schools were closed from March to June, meaning that students had limited access, in school, to ask questions and discuss the biology of the novel virus (SARS-CoV-2) or the impact of the pandemic on themselves, their families and friends. In this small-scale exploratory study, we decided to ask students (15- to 16-year-olds) on their return to school in June 2020 and in September 2020, what they wanted to know about COVID-19. Findings show that their questions were similar at both time points, indicating that students wanted to know the same things. This suggests that despite the high volume of information available in the media, some of the students' questions had not been answered or that sources of information were confused and at times contradictory. Interestingly, the questions they asked were based on reliable sources of news rather than fake news, and this finding seems to contradict the literature that indicates young people are prone to believing misinformation. The implications for teaching and learning about COVID-19, and other zoonotic diseases as socio-scientific issues are discussed.

This study aims to describe a learning model of sociology education based on case studies of banking crimes for university students. Sociology learning is considered one of the most important studies for students at the Faculty of Social Sciences. That is why this study can examine the interactions and cases that occur from the perspective of the perpetrator and the victim. Thus, this study can be considered an interesting study to present learning as a form of case study in sociology lectures. Contextual learning is one of the correct learning models used as steps in learning. The study used a qualitative method employing a case study. Researchers used interviews, observations, and document analysis in the data collection process. The number of respondents of this study was 20, consisting of five lecturers and 15 students from the sociology department. The findings of the study revealed that contextual learning models can be an alternative in teaching sociology because this learning model can be used by presenting problems in daily life and problems related to banking crimes. In the end, the lecturers can conduct an evaluation, and the result is that the students can obtain and improve their abilities about banking crimes. Contextual learning can also foster student engagement where students actively give their opinions in class, and gain knowledge and curiosity when learning it.

Universities across Canada and elsewhere have a longstanding focus on improving students' writing skills, including for the purpose of fostering better learning. In this paper, we present findings from two sources of data--a discursive analysis and student survey--exploring the impact of writing instruction and support in the context of a required social science research methods course. The course is situated in an institutional context whereby specific courses are targeted for writing support through the provision of additional funds. The results indicate that the structure of the course-- featuring components like tutorials and scaffolded assignment design--facilitates gains in student writing. The discursive analysis shows improvements across the three assignments submitted throughout the term and a positive impact of tutorial attendance. The survey indicates that students have an overall positive impression of the supports designed specifically with the learning of writing and research skills in mind.

Purpose: This article presents the place and the role of Sociology teaching in the current Brazilian context, marked by the rise of extreme right ideologies and practices, more specifically by its ultraliberal economic bias and moral conservatism. Design/methodology/approach: Organized in three parts, it outlines, respectively, the macro political and curricular scenario, and some of its unfolding in school practices. The main effort is to reflect on the ways in which school Sociology has been--ambiguously--understood and instrumentalized in the Brazilian context. The reflections are based, besides the literature review, on the analysis of the conjuncture and political-institutional directions, on curriculum documents and on reports of teaching experiences collected during the year 2022. Findings: We verified that the extreme right advance in the public space is due to the articulation of two factors: 1) scenario of political and economic crisis; 2) structural aspects that guarantee, in the moral field, the predominance of conservatism and, in the economic field, the prevalence of ultraliberalism. With regard to education, the extreme right has had an impact in the definition of legislation that regulates the education system and on boosting surveillance and persecution in relation to teachers who distance themselves from their political ideology. Research limitations/implications: We believe that, despite having brought some data that allow us to glimpse a certain ambiguity with regard to the teaching of sociology, which can occur either in the sense of criticizing the status quo, or in the sense of reaffirming it, we believe that a more systematic research on this is still needed.

The DepEd Order No. 41, s. 2017 catapulted the implementation of the Arabic Language and Islamic Values Education (ALIVE) Program. However, since its inception, there is a dearth of professional literature on a coherent sociological understanding of Muslim education in the Philippines. This paper aims to provide an understanding of the implementation challenges of the ALIVE program employing sociological perspectives. The study utilized a qualitative research method anchored on Case Study Research Model. Five ALIVE implementers in Metro Manila were part of the research participants. A thematic analysis was initiated and triangulation of data was employed from relevant data sources. The analysis results showed several challenges faced by the select ALIVE schools: The intended curriculum lacks appreciation of the approaches and evaluation of student learning. The scarcity of learning spaces was evident. In teaching, most of the "Asatidz" or Madrasah teachers require enhancement of their pedagogical competence. The cultural variance among Muslims is still evident, especially in non-Muslim communities. The findings indicate that there is a need to create deliberate plans to achieve the intended learning outcomes of the ALIVE Program. Given the various gaps and challenges identified in this study, there is a necessity to evaluate the program at the grassroots. In conclusion, maximizing and strengthening the participation of the various stakeholders and different sectors in society is imperative in the development and sustainability of Muslim education programs in the Philippines.

Providing students with opportunities to wrestle with and engage with messy, real-world problems can be challenging in traditional, higher education courses. However, for students in helping and applied professions, engaging with challenging problems in a supportive environment is critical to developing their skills and confidence. This paper presents an innovative pedagogical pilot project that utilizes design thinking in the context of a community-engaged applied learning experience to guide students as they worked on a real problem for real organizations. Undergraduate sociology and master's level social work students engaged in the experience during their regular course work. Their instructors coached them through the process. At the conclusion of the project, they reflected on the process and what they learned. These student reflection papers were analyzed using both a deductive and inductive approach. We found three themes present in these reflection papers: skill development, deeper understanding, and meaningful experience. We conclude our paper by describing how instructors can incorporate aspects of this project into their own classrooms.

Deficit framings of marginalized students, though maintaining widespread social influence, are thoroughly condemned in recent educational scholarship. The goal of this "counter-deficit" scholarship is to challenge racism in schools and improve opportunities for marginalized youth. To meet the lofty ambition of racial equity in education, how scholarship understands racial oppression is a central concern. Sociologists of race have emphasized the duality of racial oppression. Racism is ideological and structural. Ideologically, racism shapes how communities of color are perceived and how they are treated in educational settings. Structurally, racism is embedded in histories and policies that systematically disadvantage racially minoritized people. Both processes matter to educational inequality. However, in this review of counter-deficit literature, we find that racism is primarily understood by way of ideology and seldom by way of structures. This framing has important implications for how schools can support racially minoritized students to overcome racism in schools and communities.

The research on education philanthropy typically characterizes foundations as practicing either "traditional" or "strategic" philanthropy. These labels are used to indicate divergent ways of thinking about the impact of grants and approaches to grantmaking between the two models. Drawing on a theoretical framework informed by institutional theory of sociology, I analyze data from interviews with officers at foundations characterized as traditional or strategic to identify areas of convergence between different kinds of funders. I find that while differences remain, a third ecosystem model of philanthropy is emerging across the sector that balances the demand for grantmaking driven by measurable outcomes with the reality of the institutional field in which grantees operate and projects are implemented.

This paper discusses the conception of a joint intercultural students' research program of one German and two Kyrgyzstani teachers and students from the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg (Germany) and the American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The paper conceptualizes such a research training program and gives reference to qualitative methods teaching in the two corresponding universities. What follows is a description of the chosen research topic: "The 'Intersections' of Gender, Family, and Society in Kyrgyzstan" and the course program. With different academic cultures concerning research ethics in the Anglo-Saxon and continental European contexts, a challenge for such a program will be addressed. A short review of the research results of the different students' teams is provided, and the paper is finalized with a self-reflection upon such a joint intercultural undertaking.

This paper presents and analyzes a case study of a five-week study abroad course called "Inequality in Brazil: An exploration of race, class, gender, sexuality, and geography." The course was constructed to teach social inequality in the context of Brazil by using place-based and experiential learning within the framework of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1989). By examining inequality through the lens of culture and geography, students were empowered to become "student-teachers" in their explorations of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they linked theory to practice and lived experience. This paper provides an example of how study abroad can be used to teach about issues of inequality by partnering with community members to build learning environments where students and community members can all benefit.

Social scientists increasingly use video data, but large-scale analysis of its content is often constrained by scarce manual coding resources. Upscaling may be possible with the application of automated coding procedures, which are being developed in the field of computer vision. Here, we introduce computer vision to social scientists, review the state-of-the-art in relevant subfields, and provide a working example of how computer vision can be applied in empirical sociological work. Our application involves defining a ground truth by human coders, developing an algorithm for automated coding, testing the performance of the algorithm against the ground truth, and running the algorithm on a large-scale dataset of CCTV images. The working example concerns monitoring social distancing behavior in public space over more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we discuss prospects for the use of computer vision in empirical social science research and address technical and ethical challenges.

Visual data have dramatically increased in quantity in the digital age, presenting new opportunities for social science research. However, the extensive time and labor costs to process and analyze these data with existing approaches limit their use. Computer vision methods hold promise but often require large and nonexistent training data to identify sociologically relevant variables. We present a cost-efficient method for curating training data that utilizes simple tasks and pairwise comparisons to interpret and analyze visual data at scale using computer vision. We apply our approach to the detection of trash levels across space and over time in millions of street-level images in three physically distinct US cities. By comparing to ratings produced in a controlled setting and utilizing computational methods, we demonstrate generally high reliability in the method and identify sources that limit it. Altogether, this approach expands how visual data can be used at a large scale in sociology.

Youth from every continent used online tools to exchange ideas, debate alternatives, and create a document that represents their voice on the relationship education should have with global citizenship: the International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship. This paper applies de Sousa Santos' sociology of absences and emergences to trace the ways in which the White Paper extends--and limits--decolonial thought in relation to global citizenship education. Through document analysis of the White Paper, we note particularly the students' emphasis on a decolonial and processual notion of relationality that challenges current neoliberal notions of the global community and instead is oriented toward justice. Further, the students connect political resistance to epistemological resistance, asserting that diverse ways of being, knowing, and seeing are necessary to ensuring those who are marginalized are included in the decision making processes that affect their lives.

The proficiency in vernacular has long been a methodological ethos pervasive among field researchers and--despite new dynamics of fieldwork--still overshadows discussions related to collaboration with translators and interpreters, which are either marginalized or hidden within the category of a 'research assistant'. The purpose of this study is to take a step beyond anecdotal evidence and explore trends in language proficiency and use of translation services among US based field researchers who had conducted international or domestic studies in an area where a language other than English was present. We conducted the largest-to-date survey on the subject and analyzed 913 responses from faculty at sociology and anthropology programs in the United States. We documented their global fieldwork activity and found only limited proficiency in field languages accompanied by a proliferation of reliance on translators and interpreters, not matching any methodological discussion present in the textbooks and other scholarly sources. We indicate disparities in the use of vernacular and translation services in the post-colonial societies and point out related ethical and methodological concerns. Furthermore, we analyze the researchers' decision-making processes and their general perspectives on the importance of vernacular's knowledge and opinions on the admissibility of translators in the fieldwork.

El Puente Research Fellowship is a transformative program that uses culturally relevant and reflective pedagogies, curriculum, and praxis for first-generation, working-class college students beyond the traditional classroom. Drawing on the Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies of "plática" and "convivencia," we argue that the practice of "convivencia" facilitates a relational and collective learning environment that allows students to learn from one another, build relationships of authentic caring, and support one another academically and holistically. Through our "plática," we illuminate the ways "convivencia" manifests in our pedagogical and curricular approaches. As a teaching framework, the implementation of "convivencia" in classes, research programs, and learning environments paves the way for new forms of teaching and learning that value and center collective and cultural learning practices from the home. We conclude with practical tools, strategies, and reformulations of classroom environments that can be applied in sociology classrooms and beyond.

First-generation students often feel alone on college campuses. These students can find themselves excluded from organizations, traditions, and spaces that require financial, social, and cultural capital they may not have. In my Sociology of Work course, I use a family work history project to center and validate their experiences. Using census records and other sources, students reconstruct their parents', grandparents', and great-grandparents' experience in the workplace. The histories of my first-generation students, in turn, provide the lens through which we collectively build a sociological analysis of the way that work shapes the trajectory of our lives. More specifically, these histories have taken us from farm and factory to the low-wage service sector, revealing both the troubles facing those without a college degree as well as their resilience. Overall, students describe this as a deeply meaningful project that confirms the pedagogical value of storytelling, particularly for first-generation students.

In this article, we investigate the college teaching experiences of four first-generation and working-class (FGWC) sociology educators with varying social locations. We used collaborative autoethnography to compare our backgrounds and university navigational strategies employed and shared with our students and mentees. Using an intersectional lens, we find our experiences reflect both commonalities and divergences in the FGWC experience, including disclosure of our FG and/or WC origin status to students and our perceptions of how race, gender, and parental status shape our teaching of sociology across differing institutional settings. We end by using insights gleaned from comparing our experiences to provide recommendations for creating more inclusive classroom and institutional environments.

One challenge sociology departments face is conveying to undergraduates the relevance of a sociology degree for future careers. This challenge is more notable for first-generation and working-class students who research shows have more limited access to mentors. Here we present a department-level mentoring initiative designed to address systemic gaps first-generation students face in accessing mentorship, especially in relationship to career readiness. The mentoring module we examine here is the first of four delivered across our curriculum and focuses on introducing what sociologists do in "the real world," advancing the idea of career transferability, and providing information on university resources helpful to developing student personal and professional identities. We discuss the context, implementation, and analysis of student reflections and conclude with lessons learned and strategies departments can draw on to improve mentoring of first-generation sociology students.

Rural and first-generation students face unique challenges to accessing and persisting through college. While there is increasing literature on how to better serve first-generation college students, rural first-generation students have received far less attention. By associating student experiences with key concepts such as social groups, social class, inequality, community, and culture, sociology is well positioned to address the needs of first-generation rural students and enhance learning for all students. In this conversation piece, we will discuss the intersection of first-generation and rural identities and provide ideas for countering the urbancentric teaching of sociology and engaging rural first-generation students as assets at the classroom, faculty, department, and institutional levels.

In an institution where assessment was viewed as meaningless box-checking for the purpose of accreditation, a new reflective assessment practice changed 15 faculty members' perception of assessment in a single semester. Piloted with an interdisciplinary graduation requirement for Cultural Competency, the new assessment practice became a powerful tool for closing the loop in which participating faculty analyzed evidence to make improvements for student learning. This article provides a detailed history of the inception and development of that practice and evidence of faculty appreciation for a new four-question protocol.

Exchanges between the great range of disciplines and experts within IOE (Institute of Education), UCL's Faculty of Education and Society (University College London, UK), can be very productive. This article celebrates two professors who, in markedly different ways, have transformed interdisciplinary understanding of their chosen specialties. Some of their ideas are summarised here to encourage readers who could benefit from their publications and are not yet familiar with them to be keen to study and gain from them. Berry Mayall and Roy Bhaskar might seem too dissimilar to fit into one article. Berry worked here for nearly fifty years, Roy for only seven. One was a sociologist, working mainly on empirical research, the other a philosopher developing extremely advanced theories. Yet they both developed critical new ideas and were under-recognised within IOE despite their international influence. Roy is such a prestigious philosopher, many may wonder why a whole article is not dedicated to him. My aims include recording some benefits of the interdisciplinary thinking he promoted. This article briefly considers some of the ideas that each developed and why these are important; their collaborative work; memories from colleagues they have influenced; and their contribution to IOE's history and, potentially, to its future.

Peer mentorship programs have mostly emphasized formal structures, wherein a more experienced student guides a less experienced student. However, these practices are hierarchical and require substantive resources to organize and implement. Searching for alternatives, we research the effectiveness of an informal teaching technique that facilitates active learning and peer-mentorship from everyday classroom settings and processes. Drawing on formative feedback from students enrolled in a lower-level Sociology course over a term, this paper analyzes how a "Liberating Structures" (LS) technique called Five Whys (an adaptation of the Nine Whys of LS) can promote in-class collaboration, peer mentorship, and increased engagement without training and the need to design a formal peer-mentorship program. Students identified many benefits, including that Five Whys promoted community, reflective learning, and deepened engagement with course content. However, the structuring of interactions was seen to be stifling to natural group processes. Broader implications for LS and in-class mentorship are discussed. [Articles in this journal were presented at the University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching.]

Providing evidence that can inform awarding is an important application of Comparative Judgement (CJ) methods in high-stakes qualifications. The process of marking scripts is not changed, but CJ methods can assist in the maintenance of standards from one series to another by informing decisions about where to place grade boundaries or cut scores. The research described in this article set out to increase understanding of the risks associated with this use of CJ. Specifically, the research explored how robust the outcomes of CJ-based awarding activities would be to mismarking in the script evidence. In this article, the author explores the extent to which the simplified pairs (SP) method would be robust to mismarking in the sample of scripts used for the comparison exercise. The research has two main conclusions: (1) The SP method appears robust to single large marking errors and to fairly large marking errors in quite high proportions of sampled scripts; and (2) The SP method is more vulnerable to a general degradation of marking quality.

With its distinct characteristics, the research article (hereafter RA) abstract has been a major area of interest within the field of metadiscourse. Investigating authorial presence displayed in RA abstracts can play an important role in illuminating the nature of the interaction among the writer, the text, and the reader. This study aimed to shed light on the disciplinary variation on how much, and for what purposes, authorial presence is shown in RA abstracts through the use of the first-person plural pronoun "we" as an engagement marker (the inclusive form) and a self-mention device (the exclusive form) using a corpus of RA abstracts in the fields of Bioengineering and Software Engineering (hard sciences), and Psychology and Sociology (soft sciences). The inclusive "we" was found to be very rare, therefore, the majority of the analysis focused on the exclusive "we." The results indicated a considerable variation across the sampled disciplines and a general tendency to use self-mention when explaining purposes, procedures, and results, but not when introducing and concluding, or elaborating arguments. The findings of this study will contribute to a deeper understanding of the disciplinary variation in the use and communicative functions of "we," which could enhance academic writing practices.

Shaping and developing communication skills in non-linguistic faculties in higher education institutions remain relevant. Thus, the theoretical and methodological guidelines for training English professionally-oriented spoken production are among significant problems. Intending to overcome some related challenges, we conducted this study to investigate the efficiency of using presentational speeches based on authentic video materials. The main aim of the research was to analyze the problem from methodological and didactic perspectives and substantiate the theoretical and methodological principles of the professional training of monolingual students through the experimental verification of the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. To achieve the objectives of this study, in the first stage, we determined the efficiency of pedagogical conditions for developing the foreign language competence of students. Then we verified the efficiency of using presentational speeches in teaching Spoken Production. At the last stage, we analyzed the effectiveness of the proposed methods of forming and developing foreign language competence (Spoken Production) by using presentational speeches. The study sample included 45 students of the Sociology and Law Faculty in the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute". We obtained the results that confirmed the efficiency of the presentational speech approach in teaching spoken production. Our study revealed that the presentational speech approach facilitates enhancement in the level of students' professional competence. These findings provide a good starting point for discussion and further research.

Taking a sociological view, we can investigate the empirical consequences of variations in the rhetoric of sociological methodology. The standards advocated in Qualitative Literacy divide communities of qualitative researchers, as they are not explicitly connected to an understanding of social ontology, unlike previous qualitative methodologies; they continue the long-growing segregation of the rhetorical worlds of qualitative and quantitative research methodology; and they draw attention to the personal competencies of the researcher. I compare a rhetoric of qualitative methodology that: derives evaluation criteria from perspectives on social ontology that have been developing progressively since the early twentieth century; applies the discipline-wide evaluation criteria of reactivity, reliability, representativeness, and replicability; and asks evaluators to focus on the adequacy of the textual depiction of research subjects.

Examinable physical education (i.e. physical education as a certificate subject in a high-stakes environment) has distinctive forms of practical and theoretical knowledge, and the concept of 'integration' has been identified as a means to bridge such forms of knowledge. This paper explores how teachers interpret, translate, and enact curriculum policy, particularly the notion of 'integrated learning experiences', and how students respond to 'integrated learning experiences' in the Irish examinable physical education curriculum. Figurational sociology was used to locate the teachers and students in a web of interdependent relationships and conceptualise them as 'policy actors'. Through analysing a year-long data set of teacher and student qualitative data, this paper sheds light on how teachers and students 'do' policy work which we explicitly argue is influenced by the independencies within their figurations in the multi-layered policy enactment context. This paper contributes to our understanding of the policy enactment process and how teachers and students engage (or not) with the enactment of curriculum policy.

The 1950s saw the emergence of the science-driven model of engineering education. In the following decades, the model has been continuously challenged to incorporate aspects such as liberal arts, information & communication technology, design, entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainability, industry 4.0, and more recently, online-learning. This has triggered several initiatives at institutional and national levels, and manifested in approaches and practices for transforming engineering education. One approach that appears to be gaining attention is design-centric engineering, with its emphasis on learning-by-doing, product design and entrepreneurial orientation. While literature points to several variants of design-centric engineering and challenges in implementation, it also calls for more empirical studies and deeper theoretical inquiry into the contradictions and paradoxes that this approach might present to the students at the micro-level, and guidance on how they might make sense and find pathways of action jointly with internal and external stakeholders. This paper throws light on the contradictions and paradoxes experienced by undergraduate engineering students while implementing a design-centric engineering program at a young public-funded institute in India, involving approximately 1500+ students over a period of six years. The paper also discusses the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of the approach adopted to encourage students to make sense of the contradictions and paradoxes, namely: (a) leveraging the affordance offered by one of the courses in the program--"Sociology of Design--to synthesize engineering, design and sociological perspectives; (b) turning the contradictions and paradoxes into sources of learning and change, informed by the theory of complex responsive processes; and (c) application of multiple methods such as rich pictures, reflective writing, self-organized interactions and data analysis to enable sense-making.

The undergraduate research assistantship is key in the professionalization of future sociologists. Our study is the first in the social sciences to document benefits and challenges from both faculty and student perspectives. By interviewing 13 undergraduate research assistants (RAs) and 10 faculty in sociology departments at primarily undergraduate institutions, we outline the benefits and challenges of faculty-directed research with undergraduates. We find that students develop practical research, project management, and interpersonal skills while learning about career interests and developing relationships with mentors. RA challenges include repetitive tasks and time management. Faculty benefit from assistance with their work, the opportunity to mentor, and pedagogical feedback. Faculty challenges include communication, undergraduate turnover, and institutional barriers. Comparing these benefits and challenges with the goals and motives of both RAs and faculty, we suggest recommendations for departments and institutions interested in increasing undergraduate engagement in research.

Teaching during a global pandemic has prompted many discussions about how faculty can best support students and create classrooms where deep learning and engagement occur. In this conversation, we argue there is a role for empathy in college classrooms. We present data from interviews with faculty at a small, Midwestern, teaching-focused university during the fall of 2020. We map these perspectives onto the empathy paths framework and suggest that the therapeutic and instrumental paths are most useful for understanding empathy in the classroom. We also discuss why it is important for faculty to think about empathy and the role sociology can play in these conversations. Finally, we present a series of empathetic practices individual faculty can incorporate into their pedagogy and structural supports that departments and universities can provide to help faculty engage in empathetic practices in the classroom.

Scholars have long praised the ways in which film can provide students with an opportunity for deep intellectual and emotional connections to classroom material. With contemporary technology, however, instructors are instead turning toward shorter audiovisual material that can be accessed with little preparation, take up less class time, and cater to an instructor's needs. But what has been lost? Are film's established advantages now irrelevant? Here we aim to begin a conversation about the continued use of film in the classroom. We do so through an analysis of surveys sent to students who have previously taken a class that used streaming services to assign over a dozen films as homework assignments over the course of the semester. Results show that films remain an immersive and reflexive complement to course readings and often continue to have an impact on students after the class has concluded. Nevertheless, instructor guidance remains essential.