Hi all, I really like what Kathleen and Robert are saying. Ive incorporated quantitatively-oriented journal articles in two different soc classes, statistics and research methods. In both instances, students really struggled, but with a lot of assistance they also learned quite a bit. And in both instances, students recognized that they learned tremendously and they felt much more confident to engage quantitative material on their own. Part of this confidence-building process is to help them learn that they do not need to know all the details of quantitative analyses to understand the strengths and limitations of a particular article.
Thanks to all for the postings on this topic, especially to Mike DeCesare for getting us to address this a bit more deeply, Michael -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kathleen McKinney Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 12:08 PM To: [email protected] Subject: TEACHSOC: Re: List of Sociology Journals I agree that John and Mike raise some valid and important points. At the same time, scholarly journal articles--for better or worse--are one (the?) major way we make public the research in our discipline. I think it would be remiss to not expose undergraduate students to this type of work. I also believe it is not an either-or, understand all or do not, statistics too hard or not, etc. situation. 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 Kathleen McKinney 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ilstu.edu/~kmckinne/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
