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Teaching my own courses, completing pedagogical courses and participating in the Preparing Future Faculty program were instrumental in the development of my skills and philosophy as an educator. My student-centered approach creates a classroom environment where students thrive. I carefully design my courses so that students engage in lower and higher order thinking regardless of the course number. Further, the incorporation of various technologies into class meetings increases student engagement and establishes a dynamic learning environment.
Philosophy The sociological perspective stands in direct opposition to the individualist orientation in the U.S. context. Students often enter sociology courses with little or no understanding of this unique perspective and find shifting their level of analysis from the individual to the macro difficult and often uncomfortable. Although academics easily and comfortably employ the sociological imagination in their personal and professional lives, we occasionally forget the initial pain and discomfort associated with this epistemological shift. Three overarching objectives – command and synthesis of the material, development of critical thinking skills, and improved writing – shape my approach to each class meeting. In many cases, introductory courses unnecessarily emphasize lower-order thinking. Textbooks often present material in a manner that encourages lower-order thinking such as memorizing and defining concepts. Although I believe that building a working conceptual vocabulary is essential for moving higher-order thinking, solely relying on textbooks denies students of the opportunity to engage with what they learn through analysis and evaluation of scholarly work. I avoid this conundrum by supplementing textbook materials with scholarly articles that demonstrate applications of concepts learned from textbooks and lectures (see syllabus for examples). I develop critical thinking skills by actively and openly applying the sociological imagination in my introductory courses. One way I achieve this goal is through the development of an overarching question for a section of material. I present this question at the beginning of a section and we collaboratively develop a sociological explanation for the phenomenon as we explore the engage with course materials. For instance, in an introductory course when covering class based inequalities my students read selected portions of an article that suggest a class disparity in childhood rates of obesity. I usually elicit explanations for the disparity and we return to the question several times as we cover the material. When we compare our final explanations with initial suggestions, I find that this strategy not only demonstrates their initial reliance on individualistic explanations, such as personality and choice, but also provides evidence of the utility of sociological explanations. Collaborative applications of this type make clear the unique strategy sociologists adopt for understanding the social world. Students in my introductory course also embark on a collaborative research project. The norm violation project provides students with the opportunity to collect and analyze data and drawn conclusions about the strength of social norms. I find that this project, although initially daunting, excites my students’ interest in sociology and pushes them to move beyond lower-order thinking. Courses with a substantive focus provide greater opportunities for higher-order thinking. The seminar-style format of my courses encourages my students to evaluate evidence, compare and contrast competing claims and construct critiques presented in scholarly articles. Through a collaborative and careful dissection of the theoretical arguments, measurement and analytic strategies, students develop and design their own research projects. During guided laboratory sessions, students learn to manipulate and analyze data, present the findings of their own research and adjudicate between competing hypotheses. Employers frequently complain that college graduates lack the requisite writing skills for employment. I use formative and summative assessments to improve my students’ writing skills. The formative assessments serve two important purposes: 1) they implicitly delineate steps in the research process and 2) provide opportunities for feedback on organization, grammar and overall quality of their writing. Further, I use formative assessments as an opportunity to build a list of common writing mistakes which I present and distribute to my students prior to the summative assessment of their writing.
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