First, not all of our scholarly articles are empirical and, if empirical, quantitative. Second, students can often understand much of a difficult article even if not all. Third, students can often understand a quantitative article (the question, general method, results in words, discussion...) even if they don't follow all of the statistics. Fourth, the challenge and struggle to understand (if not too extreme) can be a useful experience. Fifth, I think they learn some things about our field, discourse and genres, what we do, ways of knowing, etc.--again, perhaps for better or worse but still learning-- by reading articles (though that is an empirical SoTL question!). Sixth, as others have already offered, there is much we can do to help our students to better understand the scholarly articles they read. Seventh, some types of assignments or projects we may consider critical to the sociology major (e.g. a senior thesis) necessitate the reading of scholarly articles for a literature review and a good project so we need to help them with this. I could go on... but my point is that I believe students can and should read, understand, and learn from exposure to scholarly articles with appropriate learning objectives and scaffolding.
Kathleen
At 10:46 AM 5/11/2006, Michael DeCesare wrote:
Hi everyone,
I think John raises some valid and interesting issues. Among other things, he asked about the proportion of articles we can expect students to understand. I'd like to add another, related question: Is it important for students to even read the articles that appear in our journals?
It seems to me that there's a reasonable case to be made that much of the work that's published in our journals--and not just the top-tier ones--is not only incomprehensible to people who aren't thoroughly trained in statistics, as John pointed out, but is also perceived to be trivial and/or irrelevant to lots of sociologists. So why is it important for our undergraduates to read the latest ASR, AJS, or Social Forces articles--especially when not many of us even read them?
I ask because aside from using them to teach students the differences between scholarly and non-scholarly work, it's increasingly difficult for me to justify requiring students to read the latest and greatest articles from our discipline's journals.
Stirring the pot,
Mike!
******************************
Michael DeCesare
California State University, Northridge
Department of Sociology
336 Santa Susana Hall
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330-8318
818.677.7198
818.677.2059 (Fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.csun.edu/~mdecesare
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: John Glass
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 8:26 AM
- Subject: TEACHSOC: List of Sociology Journals
- just curious...has anyone ever asked students about whether or not they understand journal articles? i think it is an unwarranted assumption that directing students to journals is going to assist them in learning material within our discipline. let's face it, how many of the articles can we expect undergraduates to understand given the increasing complexity of statistical analyses? how many do WE understand? and we expect students to use current research to write term papers?
- i have asked students to pick a journal article, read it, rate their level of undertanding (likert scale of 1 - 5) and then discuss what they DID understand and what they DIDN'T understand. it was an interesting assignment...for me. has made me reconsider things like "research" papers.
- something to think about?
- john
- John E. Glass, Ph.D.
- Professor of Sociology
- Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences
- Colin County Community College
- Preston Ridge Campus
- 9700 Wade Boulevard
- Frisco, TX 75035
- +1-972-377-1622
- http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/
- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- "We are more concerned about the discovery of knowledge than with its dissemination"
- B. F. Skinner
Cross Endowed Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Professor, Sociology
Carnegie Scholar
Box 6370
Illinois State University
Normal, Il 61790-6370
off 309-438-7706
fax 309-438-8788
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