This essay starts with the classical assertion of Niklas Luhmann that there exist no pedagogic technologies, but takes up parts of his conceptual understanding of technology to describe and understand mass schooling in the nineteenth century. It is argued that using his terminology and focusing on "technologies of schooling" brings into…

The distressing events of 2020 challenged the United States to reimagine how our social institutions can and should respond to demands for racial justice. These demands impacted higher education and debates arose about whether the classroom is an appropriate place for teaching abolition. I address this debate by introducing a senior-level elective…

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…

This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to 'discipline' the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative…

There is a consensus nowadays that the best way to develop students' academic literacy abilities is within the context of their studies in the disciplines, an approach known as 'curriculum embedding'. But despite the demonstrable value of this approach, surveys of the field in Australia suggest there has been only limited success over the years in…

This paper examines two influential views within the sociology of knowledge, specifically in literature examining relationships between knowledge, curriculum, and social justice, located in the South African context of extreme inequality and poverty. The first emphasizes the role of disciplines in creating criteria of powerful knowledge, arguing…

This article offers an example of a global approach to teaching the sociology of religion, a course that typically focuses on American religious phenomena. It builds on three interventions in the movement for a global sociology: connecting the local and global, moving beyond methodological nationalism, and developing an ethical orientation toward…

Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sciences have increasingly focused on the content of undergraduate degree programmes. Problems occur when quantitative methods are generally confined to a dedicated module, detached from substantive topics. This model makes it hard for students to…

In British social science degree programmes, methods courses have a bad press, and statistics courses in particular are not well-liked by most students. A nationally-coordinated, strategic investment in quantitative skills training, Q-Step, is an attempt to address the issues affecting the shortage of quantitatively trained humanities and social…

Increasingly, educators have called on colleges and universities to prepare their students for a more interdependent world. While sociology has begun to heed the message to globalize the curriculum, efforts to implement relevant teaching practices are hampered by lack of consensus on what "internationalizing" or "globalizing" the classroom…

The study analyses the extent to which the sociological message transmitted by the teachers' pedagogic practice recontextualizes the official pedagogic discourse of the natural sciences curriculum for a Portuguese middle school. Theoretically, the study is based on theories of psychology (e.g. Vygotsky), epistemology (e.g. Ziman) and sociology,…

The teaching and learning movement in sociology in general and within the American Sociological Association specifically has a surprisingly long history. This history can be divided into three periods of activity: early efforts (1905 to 1960), innovation and implementation (1960 to 1980), and the institutionalization of gains (1980 to 2009).…

Provides an overview of the "social constructionist" approach to teaching composition in sociology courses. Describes a course that is team taught by the authors and is based on the social constructionist paradigm. Stresses that sociological writing is a special type of discourse that can be taught most effectively by sociologists who…

Points out that instructors lack a scheme for making connections between teaching techniques and particular learning objectives. Samples the literature concerning teaching techniques for sociology in the context of Bloom's "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives." Proposes a model that will aid in matching teaching techniques with…

This article is a "conceptual experiment' in curriculum theory. The aim is to sketch five idealized theories of knowledge and to estimate how each might plausibly be expected to influence curriculum design. (Author)