Creating a positive classroom experience for students can be a challenge, especially when teaching a contested topic such as gender studies. Teaching and learning gender is teaching and learning against the grain, which can lead to feelings of comfort and discomfort among students. The objective is to capture different manifestations of…

Across courses in the social sciences, instructors confront the challenge of how to teach (theories of) culture, yet no consensus exists as to what helps students best comprehend and digest its full complexity. This article offers a metaphorical and heuristic approach to culture that is accessible, multifaceted, and reflective of a wide range of…

Many instructors use a syllabus quiz to ensure that students learn and understand the content of the syllabus. In this project, I move beyond this exercise's primary function and examine students' syllabus quiz scores to see if they can predict how well students perform in the course overall. Using data from 495 students enrolled in 18 sections of…

To what degree is explicit care/work policy taught in family courses in Canada's leading research-intensive universities? We analyze family courses in sociology departments and in political studies and women's/gender studies programs in Canada's 15 R1 universities to make a contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This national…

The sociology of disability has emerged relatively recently as a subfield in sociology and has seen growing institutionalization within the field, including the establishment of a section in the American Sociological Association. The field, however, is still emerging. There is not yet an American journal dedicated to it or more than a few…

This article is a constructively self-critical autoethnography of my evolving identity as an instructor in a race and ethnicity course. I supplement and contextualize my self-reflections with data in the form of comments from student evaluations. I begin by considering how my social location mediates class dynamics. I then present comments from…

The learning outcome, "Students will learn to engage with and impact society," is common in curricular frameworks addressing undergraduate sociology education; however, it does not receive adequate coverage compared to other competencies. The lack of attention to this outcome coupled with the tendency to focus heavily on social problems…

This article analyzes 764 syllabi spanning 2012 to 2023 to illustrate how, why, and when the sociological canon evolves. It is shown that in terms of frequency of assignment, W. E. B. Du Bois has clearly entered the sociological canon, overtaking both Weber and Durkheim. The timing of these changes also suggests that Du Bois's addition to the…

The introductory sociology course is typically the only course most students take in sociology; hence, the introductory textbook becomes the only sociology textbook they may ever read as college students. The textbook, however, often lacks rigor in explaining concepts. This study focused on the thoroughness of explanations of the relations of…

In this article we reflect on our experiences as supervisors in a field methods course in order to explore how ethnographic research practices can be used as tools in the supervision of students that conduct field research for the first time and as such to provide insights about what constitutes "good supervision." Our reflections follow…

Although there is a great deal of available material on using nontraditional resources for teaching sociology, the pedagogical uses of science fiction have not been examined for 20 years. This essay first asserts the need for an update based on changes in society and in science fiction over the past two decades. The paper then focuses on the uses…

The current research examines whether a visual syllabus aids in information retention compared to a traditional text-based syllabus. The data derive from two lower-division sociology classes, each having a different syllabus format. Utilizing a syllabus quiz during the first week of the class provides the data about whether syllabus format…

Scholars of teaching and learning in sociology have argued that introductory courses should teach toward foundational learning goals instead of providing an exhaustive review of the discipline. Nevertheless, prior research has provided far more guidance on what instructors ought to teach than how they can cohesively support learning across the…

We report on a cross-disciplinary collaboration between sociology and mathematics education to more effectively cultivate quantitative literacy (QL) in the introductory sociology course. Focusing on an instructional unit presenting the Gini coefficient (the most commonly used summary measure of income inequality), we engaged in iterative cycles of…

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…