Although there is widespread agreement among academics that critical thinking is an important component to the college classroom, there is little empirical evidence to verify that it is being taught in courses. Using four sections of introductory sociology, we developed an experimental design using pretests and posttests to assess students'…

In this article, I ask for whom is our teaching developed? Although we typically think that it is developed for our students, there appears to be a considerable gap between how our curriculum, especially Introductory Sociology is organized, and what we know about current college students. Drawing on data on enrollment in sociology and overall in…

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled "How to do the Scholarship of Teaching." The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing…

Decades of research have documented the positive impacts of cooperative learning on student success: increased learning, retention through graduation, improved critical thinking, and intrinsic motivation. One cooperative teaching technique, however, has received relatively little attention. In the two-stage cooperative, group, or "pyramid" exam…

As we enter our second century, it is an appropriate time for sociologists to take stock of where we have been and where we are going. Although most of this reflection appears to focus on substantive matters, Timothy Patrick Moran is right in arguing that their gaze ought to extend to how they teach graduate statistics. This article presents the…

States that individualistic orientation of most U.S. college students presents a persistent problem for teaching sociology. Provides an empirical evaluation using an active-learning exercise. Focuses on whether mate selection increases student understanding of social structure's impact on marital choice. Indicates that the exercise participants…