There has been a growing number of calls to improve theory instruction in sociology. These conversations have focused on what instructors should teach (with a renewed emphasis on racism and sexism) and whom to teach (with calls to diversify the reading list), but comparatively little attention has been placed on how social theory should be taught.…

This paper seeks to further develop and refine a theory of the ways in which artefacts created by humans direct and deflect the attention of groups and individuals as they act in specific institutional settings. It draws on the writings of Basil Bernstein and Lev Vygotsky. These are two bodies of theory that have strengths which, to some extent,…

Advanced undergraduate students struggle with executing complete research projects that involve data collection and analysis. Research indicates that engaging in undergraduate research is a high-impact practice. The American Sociological Association recommends that sociology majors engage in research beyond their research methods and statistics…

Despite decades of sociology scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research, integration of SoTL in sociology remains insufficient. First, some reasons for the insufficient integration of SoTL in the discipline are noted, and the foci of publications on the history and status of the SoTL in sociology are briefly summarized. Literature…

While constructivism enjoys considerable popularity in higher education, both in Australia and internationally, it nonetheless takes a variety of forms. These different interpretations make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about constructivism as a whole. In this essay, we therefore take a psycho-philosophical approach: reviewing and…

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…

In this practice-based pedagogical paper, we, the university faculty of Education, Food and Nutrition, Sociology, and History in the U.S., describe how we started a Reflective Practice Teaching Circle at our institution for interdisciplinary dialogue about the effective use of social media (SM) for teaching and learning. Our discussions led to the…

This study adopted a case-study approach to examine how associate degree sociology graduates evaluate their learning in a Hong Kong community college. Through focus group interviews, the learning experiences of sociology graduates were examined, specifically paying attention to their identification of enhancements in learning. The results of this…

This study aims to find improvements in the quality of the process and learning outcomes of sociology through problem-based learning modeling integrated with Islamic values and empirical research in madrasas. This study uses a class action research development approach. The research subjects were 32 students of class XII in an Islamic school. Each…

Using a collaborative autoethnographic approach, we discuss body mapping as an embodied pedagogical practice for teaching sexuality. Body mapping centers stigmatized bodies through guided visual, oral, and textual self-representation. We begin by discussing embodied pedagogies and the bind of representation (ideas grounded in the work of feminists…

In this paper we begin to explore how knowledges being generated in bioscience might be brought into productive articulation with the Sociology of Education, considering the potential for emerging transdisciplinary, 'biosocial' approaches to enable new ways of researching and understanding pressing educational issues. In this paper, as in our…

This article connects sociological analyses of race to sexuality to rethink the teaching of the sociology of sexualities. Through the use of the image of the sea, I locate whiteness as a root for the challenges in current pedagogical approaches at my institution, knowing that it is merely an example of multiple others facing similar problems at…

This paper draws upon research into the nature of teachers' learning practices in the context of current policy conditions in the state of Queensland, Australia. The research explores how teachers in one school in the north of the state responded to policy pressure to adopt a specific standardised approach to "explicit teaching",…

The article discusses the positive impact of an environmentally responsible individual as the social unit able to live in harmony with the natural world, himself/herself and other people. The purpose of the article is to provide theoretical substantiation of modern teaching methods. The authors considered the experience of philosophy, psychology,…

Previous scholarship has demonstrated the value of high-impact practices of community engagement, inquiry-based pedagogy, and collaborative learning for engagement and learning in sociology courses, especially undergraduate research methods and statistics. This article explores the changes made to an upper-division undergraduate course focused on…