Using Active Learning Projects to Teach Research Skills Throughout the Sociology Curriculum

A core element of the sociology curriculum is the methods course, intended to teach students the value of systematic observation and analysis of the social world. However, this one-shot approach to teaching methodological skills is ineffective and not well liked by students or faculty. A more effective approach is the integration of active learning assignments and projects that teach and reinforce these skills throughout the curriculum, from the introductory course to the substantive content courses. This paper describes my experiences with this approach, outlining various activities and research projects used to teach methodological skills. Also highlighted are the outcomes reported by students and the benefits for teaching sociology courses. A discussion of the possibilities for disseminating and using the research beyond the classroom and the strengths and weaknesses of integrating research across the curriculum, as well as several teaching tips are also included.     

An Approach to Community Facilitation Using Mediation Techniques: Skills for the Sociological Practitioner

Current community organization literature calls for a focus on the identification of community assets, not community deficits. This includes building relationships in the community to identify and solve community problems. In addition, the asset approach to community development redefines the role of the outside expert as one who is concerned with the process of community development, instead of the content of what needs to be changed. The shift to an asset-based approach calls for a new set of practice skills to be employed by the sociological practitioner. The authors suggest integrating specific skills from the mediation literature with the current community organization model as a first step in developing the practice skills necessary to being an effective community facilitator.     

Utilizing The Wire to Teach about Justice-Oriented Citizenship

“Charm City: Down to The Wire?” is the title of an elective class developed by Sarah Taylor, a teacher at a private school in Baltimore. In the class, students explore their city and social justice issues from a framework that correlates to Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) concept of justice-oriented citizenship. Not only do students analyze problems depicted so vividly in the television series The Wire, they investigate and problem-solve to create possible solutions for enduring problems that afflict their city. This study considers the connection of class activities to justice-oriented citizenship and how the course can be replicated in other communities.     

Linking Citizen Participation to Empowerment Practice

Abstract

The author examines the social work literature on citizen participation and empowerment in order to identify key concepts that can be used to define empowerment-oriented community practice. A historical overview of the emergence of citizen participation and empowerment in the practice literature is presented, along with an overview of similar innovations and concepts related to social service delivery: the use of informal help and the Independent Living Movement. This literature is used to develop a model of empowerment practice that focuses on the importance of participatory decision-making structures in community-based organizations.     

The Use of Dialogue in Community Organization Practice: Using Theory,Values, and Skills to Guide Group Decision-Making

The ability to engage diverse community participants in group dialogue to resolve differences, establish common ground, identify problems, set goals, and plan actions is an essential part of community organization. However, there are limited resources in the social work literature about how social work skills can best be used to facilitate group dialogue in this context. In this article, the theories and values associated with the use of group dialogue are discussed. The manner in which these skills are applied in community organizing is described. The interpersonal skills needed for facilitating group dialogue in community organization practice are also examined.     

Power and Authority in Clinical Practice: A Discourse Analysis Approach to Narrative Process

Issues of power and authority in the treatment relationship are explored using concepts from discourse analysis. Negotiative and heuristic processes of narrative co-construction are described. These concepts, which highlight issues of power and vulnerability in narrative co-construction in ordinary conversation, are then applied to a clinical case. Implications for clinical social work treatment are developed based on an expanded understanding of, and sensitivity to, the sharing of narrative power in the treatment relationship.     

Using Transfer Procedures to Teach Tacts to a Child with Autism

This applied study attempted to evaluate a combination of transfer procedures commonly used to teach tacts to children with autism. A receptive to echoic to tact transfer and an echoic to tact transfer procedure were combined during 5-min instructional sessions to teach tacts to a seven-year-old vocal child with autism. A multiple baseline design across three sets of ten tacts was used. Without the teaching procedure, the child acquired no target tacts. With the 5-min teaching procedure implemented first with Set 1 then with Sets 2 and 3, respectively, the child acquired thirty new tacts over sixty teaching sessions. The results have wide application for children with and without autism who need instruction to learn tacts.     

Using a model of group psychotherapy to support social research on sensitive topics

This article describes the exploratory use of professional therapeutic support by social researchers working on a sensitive topic. Talking to recently bereaved parents about the financial implications of their child’s death was expected to be demanding work, and the research design included access to an independent psychotherapeutic service. Using this kind of professional support is rare within the general social research community, and it is useful to reflect on the process. There are likely to be implications for collection and interpretation of data, research output and the role and experience of the therapist. Here, the primary focus is the potential impact on researcher well‐being.     

话语权的回归:论网络语境下的青年影像

在传统媒介环境下,青年影像主要从内容和接受者两个角度界定。年轻人是被叙述者,而不是叙述者。传统媒介环境下的青年影像是一种"伪青年"文化。网络激发了人们特别是年轻人的参与热情。年轻人作为自为者,而不是他为者或为他者而存在。网络青年影像是一种真正的青年文化,可以粗略地分为校园和后校园影像。网络青年影像的意义在于它的不确定性,由此呈现出向未来开放的文化特性。     

浅议一体化教学法在《电动机基本控制线路安装调试与维修》教学中的应用

通过对目前技校的学生和教学现状进行分析,认为传统的教学模式已经不适应现在的教学形势,提出理论和实践结合为一体的教学模式。结合一体化教学在《电动机控制线路安装调试与维修》教学中的具体应用实例,阐述了一体化教学法的实施过程和教学效果。     

Using live supervision to teach counselling skills to social work students

This article reports on a research project which explored how anxiety can be managed when social work students receive live supervision as they are learning counselling skills. Eight social work students volunteered to participate in an eight session project in which they role played counselling sessions and received live supervision of their work. Their subjective experience of live supervision was elicited via survey reported surveys over the course of the project. They also submitted pre-and post-project recordings of their counselling role plays which were evaluated for changes in skill level. The participants’ survey results showed that, over the course of the project, each participant became less anxious about live supervision and came to find it a valuable learning experience. Their recorded role plays all showed improvements in skill level across a range of domains. The authors contend the establishment and maintenance of positive and trusting relationships between participants and between participants and the supervisor was crucial to the success of this project, as was attention to power dynamics and differences in learning styles. These results suggest that, under the right conditions, live supervision can be a valuable addition to counselling skills teaching strategies with social work students.     

Assessing political participation on the Internet in contemporary China

Drawing on the resource model of political participation, this study examines the ways in which various resources, including money, computer and Internet access, Internet skills, and civic skills predict Chinese citizens’ political participation online. The results showed that income was a significant predictor of online political participation regardless of whether it was by using the Internet to contact governmental officials, monitoring public policies online, or participating in online protests. Civic skills also consistently predicted the three forms of online political participation. Computer and Internet access, as well as Internet skills, were significant predictors of some forms of online political participation, but not all of them. Political interest positively moderated the association between income and each of the three dependent variables. The theoretical and empirical implications of these results are discussed.     

Power mobility and the built environment: the experiences of older Canadians

In this article, we employ data from qualitative interviews with 15 men and 14 women aged 51–92 to examine older Canadian adults’ experiences of utilizing power wheelchairs and motorized scooters in the context of the built environment. When functioning properly and utilized within accessible spaces, power mobility devices provided many of the participants with the autonomy they desired. However, the features and functionality of power mobility equipment also constrained participants’ abilities to negotiate their surroundings and maintain valued social roles and physical activities. Participants’ experiences of power mobility technology as enabling or disabling were further complicated by the organization of the built environment, as the men and women described encountering various barriers to mobility within both public and private spaces. We discuss our findings in relation to the extant literature concerning the social and spatial construction of disability.     

From consumer to producer: motivations,internet use,and political consumerism

Our understanding of how political consumerism relates to broader civic engagement has been clouded by the myriad ways in which it has been conceptualized in the literature. In this study, we draw a distinction between the use of socially conscious consumption practices in everyday life and participation in organized boycotts and ‘buycotts.’ We argue that whether political consumerism is enacted as lifestyle politics or as contentious politics may depend, at least in part, on the motivations that underlie political consumerism and the way in which they orient behavior in the online environment. Results of a national survey of U.S. adults show that while both value-expressive and social-identification motivation facilitate comparable levels of content consumption, only the latter facilitates the more involved act of posting and sharing original content. Moreover, results show that while both uses of internet, in turn, facilitate lifestyle and contentious political consumerism, content production facilitates significantly greater levels of both. This was especially pronounced for contentious political consumerism. These findings suggest that content production may be an important vehicle for channeling motivations for political consumerism rooted in social-identification needs toward participation in more organized and collective modes of consumer action. Implications for understanding the potential political consumerism holds as a gateway to participation in conventional political activities are discussed.     

After the Paris Declaration: Taking on the Issue of Power

The new approach to assisting developing countries inspired by the Paris Declaration emphasises greater recipient control over the funds provided, thus confining donors’influence to upstream points in the policy process, where political aspects of development co‐operation become more important. Understanding better the role that power plays in the aid relationship will be critical to the implementation of the Declaration. This article shows how the political science literature can inform this set of issues. It argues that an understanding of aspects of power illuminates the challenges involved in transforming relations between donors and recipient governments as well as between governments and civil society organisations.     

Power To Our Journeys: Re‐membering Michael

The following personal reflections are in honour of Michael and all that he contributed to our lives. And, we honour Brigitte a key member of the group who died in 2006. Mem, Sue and Veronica, December 2008.     

Using the community of inquiry for interviewing children: theory and practice

Involvement of children in research processes requires various ethical considerations. In particular, while interviewing children, a researcher needs to take into consideration the power imbalance between a researcher and children as well as among children. This article suggests a possible way of mitigating potential risks, drawing on the idea and practice of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) as an interview method. CoI is the practice of group dialog for knowledge-making, where participants talk about a common topic by sharing their lived experiences in a cooperative manner. This article shows that CoI allows children to act as both interviewers and interviewees, which helps children in reflective knowledge-making while at the same time mitigating the ethical concerns of interviewing. To illustrate how CoI can help achieve these goals, this article draws on the empirical research conducted with a group of junior high school students in Japan.     

论《一千零一夜》的权力观

权力观是以权力为中心的价值观,是判断民众与执政者关系的价值观。《一千零一夜》的一个重要主题就是宣扬“劝君施仁”的权力观,通过故事的铺展,描述了以国王们为代表的封建社会政治结构的基本权力特征,以及民众对统治者“权力”行使的思辨和诉求。其中要求实现“公正”的基本思想贯穿始终。     

Using Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing and Direct Reinforcement to Teach Vocal Verbal Behavior to Young Children With Autism

In this study the effect of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure was used as part of a clinical investigation to increase vocalizations for two young children diagnosed with autism. This procedure involved pairing a vocal sound with a preferred stimulus (e.g., toy) to condition automatic reinforcement. In addition, this study assessed the effects of a direct reinforcement procedure to bring a vocalization under echoic control following the pairing procedure for 1 of the participants. The results showed the pairing procedure was used successfully to increase a vocalization for one of the participants, and the vocalization was brought under echoic control.