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…

This teaching note presents a required proseminar for sociology and criminology and justice studies majors. The American Sociological Association reported that about half of U.S. sociology program curriculum integrate career resources and about one-third offer a course. On a spring 2021 proseminar pilot self-assessment pretest, 18 students…

Objective: How do learning communities influence academic performance in Introductory Psychology? Method: The present research examines the relationship between participation in first-year students learning communities and academic performance across a variety of course requirements (midterms, finals, papers, and class participation) in…

Drawing on a multiyear local research project on the affordable housing crisis, this article outlines a pedagogical approach we call Community-Initiated Student-Engaged Research, or CISER. The CISER model brings together three key groups of actors--undergraduate students, university researchers, and community organizations--drawing on and…

Engaging undergraduate students in community-based research (CBR) offers rich benefits to both students and communities (Strand, Marullo, Cutforth, Stoeker, & Donahue, 2006). Finding ways to expand its application promises to multiply those benefits. Senior capstone courses represent a promising vehicle for that expansion, as they are also…

In an era of expanding global educational privatization and shifting policies on how to fund educational facilities in many states in the US, this study engages the lenses of critical policy analysis and fiscal sociology to examine educational privatization in the school facilities industry in California. Employing critical policy document…

Focus group interviewing is widely used by academic and applied researchers. Given the popularity and strengths of this method, it is surprising how rarely focus group interviewing is taught in the undergraduate classroom and how few resources exist to support instructors who wish to train students to use this technique. This article fills the gap…

This study utilized Freire's "conscientizacão" as a framework to understand the development of student voice among traditionally underrepresented students of color in a sociology classroom at a large community college in the Central Valley of California. Understanding how student voice is developed in a community college classroom…

Through his early studies of the character of adult schools and community colleges in California, Burton Clark launched a set of ideas, sociological and educational, that served as baseline concepts in the study and practice of American higher education. His book "The Open Door College" ranks among the classic accounts of a type of…

This article examines mathematics education as both the site and object of transformation for a youth PAR project in which students researched and evaluated their urban high school in Oakland, California. These youth researchers were trained as part of a sociology course as well as a mathematics class designed to both remediate gaps in math…

Many sociologists now seem to assume that most, if not all, sociology students enter statistics courses full of anxiety. The problem is that this assumption is based solely on anecdotal and informal evidence. The present study seeks to correct this problem. The author begins by examining the nature and quality of the evidence that sociologists…

Online education continues to permeate mainstream teaching techniques in higher education settings. Teaching upper-level classes in an online setting is having a major impact on education as a whole and is fundamentally altering global learning. "Cases on Critical and Qualitative Perspectives in Online Higher Education" offers a…

Drawing on a critical race theory framework, this article weaves together sociology, education, history, and performance studies to challenge deficit interpretations of Pierre Bourdieu's cultural capital theory and to analyze Culture Clash's play Chavez Ravine. The play recounts a decade of Los Angeles history through the perspectives of displaced…

Robert N. Bellah turns 80 early next year, and Duke University Press is honoring him with "The Robert Bellah Reader," edited by Bellah, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, and Steven M. Tipton, a professor of sociology at Emory University. The book, just published, presents a selection of…

Examines data from California from the 1850 opening of the prison system to 1970. Finds no evidence to support the hypothesis that, for a given society over time and in the absence of major societal upheaval, the proportion of people subjected to punishment by the state closely approximates a constant. (Author/GC)