Given pandemic restrictions on learning and research, autoethnography has recently garnered renewed attention as a potential alternative. Drawing on our experiences as instructor and student, we make the case that autoethnography is not only relevant to pandemic-era teaching but could also offer an effective pedagogical tool to critically engage…

This article describes a departmental initiative designed to integrate the teaching of graduate and undergraduate sociology through research methodology and the completion of actual research projects. The goal was to develop a multilevel team approach within which faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates would view their work as part of a…

Reflexivity has gained paramount status in qualitative inquiry. It is central to debates on subjectivity, objectivity, and, ultimately, the scientific foundation of social science knowledge and research. Although much work on doing reflexivity by researchers and practitioners has been published, scholars have only recently begun to explore how one…

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled "How to do the Scholarship of Teaching." The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing…

Describes an activity that (1) illustrates the classical experiment as a research tool; (2) demonstrates the interplay among hypotheses, methods, and data; and (3) nurtures the excitement of a method of study. (BSR)

Explores the use of autobiography as a tool for increasing student participation, uncovering student attitudes and values, and as a source of examples for lectures and class discussion. Concludes that information gathered can be used to alert students to potential problems of using summary statistics and nonrepresentative samples when generalizing…

Participatory exercises are standard practice in qualitative methods courses; less common are projects that engage students in the entire research process, from research design to write-up. Although the teaching literature provides several models of complete research projects, their feasibility, and appropriateness for large, compulsory,…

These goals for an undergraduate research methods course in sociology range from providing students with an understanding of the central problems in all scientific investigations to introducing students to the specific problems sociologists confront in designing research projects. Means for achievement of the goals are also discussed. (Author/RM)

The development and implementation of simulated research experiences for use in teaching research methods to undergraduate sociology majors are described. (Author/DE)

Describes a method used to help introductory college sociology students explore the range of sociological literature and become acquainted with the works of current scholars. Students read a number of journal articles and wrote critiques of six of them in the form of letters to their parents. (Author/AM)

Describes a survey project for use in sociological research methods courses. The project is built around the American Council on Education's Freshman Survey, and provides instructors with valuable opportunities to design panel studies focusing on the experience of the students over their college years. Claims that the suggested project reduces the…

Describes a "learning by doing" approach to sociological research designed to gather a comprehensive understanding of the Racine, Wisconsin youth gang situation, led to a nontraditional approach to research in typical research methods course. Includes information about student and faculty involvement, the process of research training,…

With an eye to improving the quality of research on teaching sociology, the article reviews research on teaching sociology--most of which falls into two categories: 1) presentations and evaluations of innovative teaching strategies, and 2) presentations of specific techniques to teach ideas or concepts. (Author/DB)

Suggests how to reduce student passivity in large-enrollment college level classes by directing students to participate in a social survey which involves research replication. (Author/DB)

Describes a visual device, borrowed from matrix algebra, which helps students integrate theory, methods, and statistics in sociological research. Data are organized in a rectangular structure, with the columns of variable names representing theory, the rows representing observations whose quality is related to methodological concerns and the need…