Review of Sociology Through Active Learning Student Exercises
The exercises described in Active Learning will help us as a student develop that "quality of
mind that will help us to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid
summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within
themselves". If we still believe that development of the sociological imagination should be
an ultimate goal of sociological instruction, then an activity collection that helps us achieve
that goal, such as Active Learning, should be used in all of our courses. Over the past two
decades our discipline has experienced a "pedagogic, paradigm rift" of sorts. As a base, our
primary academic role remains a "conserving" role, that of facilitating the transfer of
accumulated sociological knowledge in hopes of allowing the next generation of sociologists
to pick up where others, including ourselves, have left off. In the past, this purpose was
commonly accomplished through the use of the traditional introductory textbooks and test
banks both designed to provide brief exposure to key theoretical models, numerous
theoretical constructs, various methods for conducting research, and the primary findings of
sociologists conducting research across the numerous sub-disciplines. Many departments, on
the other hand, particularly those in smaller liberal arts college and university settings, have
been expected to fulfill a secondary role, that of servicing the broader university by
introducing non-majors to the social sciences. From outside and in, sociology is commonly
viewed as a liberal discipline (in the classical, "liberating" sense), capable of helping us
students to develop critical thinking skills. Some instructors eagerly embrace that secondary
role, and rather than using traditional textbook and lecture methods, approach the
introductory course through monographs on sociological perspectives and insights. They
often supplement that theoretical framework with a limited set of readings intended primarily
to ground the aforementioned perspectives, and focus the course on whatever the instructor
considers to be key content areas (work, education, politics, race, class, gender, etc.). This
depth model may miss a few students along the way (if we ignore criminology, family, etc.),
but does seem to facilitate our secondary service role by grounding majors and non-majors
alike in key aspects of the liberal arts model of education