Summary
Contents
“A great source for kinesthetic learning activities. I've used the book for designing my course for multiple learning styles.”
—Megan Thiele, University of California, Irvine
This student workbook is designed to allow you to easily integrate multiple active learning exercises into your Introduction to Sociology courses. Many teachers want to use “active learning” in their class, but don't have the materials commensurate with that pedagogy. These 51 active learning exercises have been carefully selected from a nationwide search of the best class-tested active learning material available in sociology. Affordably priced, this workbook provides the best that sociology has to offer!
Key and New Features
Offers many fresh exercises—about 40% of the assignments are new to this edition; Features tear-out worksheets for ease of submission and grading; Presents a wide variety of exercises in terms of content, time required, usefulness for individual or group completion, and relevance for in-class or out-of-class practice
Accompanied by High-Quality Ancillaries!
Instructor Resources on CD provide detailed information on using, grading, and adapting the exercises. In addition the CD also includes commentary from the contributing authors explaining their experiences with the exercises, including how they promote specific learning goals and how current instructions to students facilitate the assignment. This CD-ROM features new components to the summary chart for instructors that indicate which assignments have web components, which have global aspects, and other criteria to help professors select the most useful exercises for their teaching needs. Qualified instructors may receive a copy by contacting SAGE at 1-800-818-SAGE (7243) between 6 am — 5 pm, PST.
Intended Audience
The book is designed as the ideal active learning companion to virtually all Introduction to Sociology texts, making it an ideal supplemental text for any undergraduate Introduction to Sociology or Principles of Sociology course.
Contributor to THE ASA/SAGE Teaching Innovations & Professional Development Awards Fund
Application Exercise on Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Application Exercise on Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Rationale
One feature of the sociological perspective is that it sheds light on the relationship between culture and behavior. When we understand that different cultures have different norms for behavior, then it becomes easier for us to understand why people in different cultures act the way they do. Our feelings about the superiority or “naturalness” of our own culture's ways, however, can lead us to automatically judge unfamiliar cultural practices. Such judgment can act as a barrier to understanding; in effect, it blinds us to the social organization that is present in other cultures.
Suspending our own cultural assumptions and judgments can help us better understand other cultures, and it has the additional effect of helping us to see our own more clearly. We do not need to permanently shed our sense of what is right or wrong—for example, our views on human rights. That is, if we make an effort to set aside judgment for a while and try to see the world from the perspective of members of another culture, we will gain a richer understanding of their behavior and society.
The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand the difference between taking an ethnocentric view of a behavior and taking a culturally relative view of a behavior. This activity is a collaborative group exercise; you will write your own response to the questions, share your responses with other members of a four-person group, and construct a group response that is clearly superior to any of the individual responses.
Instructions
After reading the passage that follows these instructions, write your own response to the questions on the worksheet. You can refer to your textbook or notes for this assignment. Put your name at the top of the page.
When we indicate, break into groups of four. Read your individual answers to each other. Choose one group member to be a scribe. Redo the assignment with everyone contributing, and write one group response to the questions on a separate sheet of paper. As a result of your collaboration, the group response should be superior to any of the individual responses. Do not merely recopy one of the individual responses; to receive full credit, you must work as a group to improve upon the individual responses. Use complete sentences and check your grammar and spelling. Every group member must read and approve the group response before you hand it in. Print the name of each group member at the top of the group response.
When finished, each group should turn in all four individual responses with the group response stapled on top.
Grading
See your instructor for details regarding how this exercise will be graded.
Read the following passage:
In 1997, Annette Sorensen, 30, an actress from Copenhagen, Denmark, and Exavier Wardlaw, 49, a movie production assistant from Brooklyn, NY, were arrested for leaving their 14-month-old daughter outside a Manhattan restaurant on a chilly day while they ate inside the restaurant. They left the child in her baby carriage on the sidewalk. Many passersby called 911 to alert the police. New York authorities took the child away from her parents and temporarily placed her in foster care.
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