Painting by Helen Burdon Price
 

Creation of this site 

  When the American Sociological Association (ASA) Task Force’s work of creating a curriculum ended, two individual members of the Task Force, Caroline H. Persell and Barbara Schneider, submitted a proposal which was funded by the National Science Foundation, in an effort to elaborate, validate, assess, and share the curriculum and some of the resources assembled by the Task Force. 

 

         The purpose of this website is to freely share with teachers and learners of sociology the curriculum and the best of the resources found.  The website was designed by Caroline H. Persell, Department of Sociology, New York University, with the technical creativity and assistance of Jonathan Kelly.

 

Selection of the Resources:

 

           

The sources included here were selected as follows:

 

1)   ASA Task Force members wrote and/or proposed a number of lesson plans, exercises, data explorations, films, readings, and other materials.

2)   Other teachers and scholars in the field wrote and/or recommended resources.

3)   All of these resources (numbering over 100 items) were independently reviewed and rated by an undergraduate sociology major at New York University, Jennifer Gerdes, and by Caroline Persell, a professor of sociology at New York University.

4)   Going forward, there is a feedback form attached to each page that can be used to rate and comment on each resource. 

 

Criteria Used:

 

1)   To what degree does the resource illuminate an important and relevant sociological topic, concept, or process?

2)   Does it involve active learning?

3)   Is there research available assessing how well the resource achieves its learning goals?

4)   Is it relevant to the lives of students?

5)   Does the resource involve multiple senses, including text, numbers, visuals, sound, video, kinesthetics, and narrative?

6)   Is it interesting to students?

7)   Can it be made readily available on the web?

8)   Is it fun?

 

Not every resource met every criterion, particularly #3 on the availability of research assessing its efficacy, but the ones included were rated highly on most if not all of the criteria.

 

Permissions: When PDF files of articles from Teaching Sociology or the American Sociological Review are linked to this site, those files are being used with the permission of the publisher, the American Sociological Association.