Use of Current Events to Foster Student Engagement with Social Justice Issues

• In Event: 3123 - Teaching and Learning Symposium: Workshop on Engaging Student Learning

Abstract

Sociology courses typically provide numerous opportunities for students to recognize the fundamental importance of social justice and their own potential role as agents of social change. Those opportunities may be missed if instructors are not fully comfortable exploiting ‘teachable moments’ or are too focused on core content to take advantage of the natural laboratory. Fostering students’ sociological imaginations at the event level requires a classroom atmosphere that promotes critical thinking and information literacy, manage participants’ value differences, and diplomatically but directly addresses credibility challenges.

This workshop will include discussion by two experienced sociology instructors who have employed a range of techniques to incorporate current events analysis into a variety of undergraduate course offerings with a diverse array of students. Some approaches have been quite successful, others have proven to be problematic. Of particular importance is the need to recognize variations in students’ vested interests and comprehension levels, and to provide supportive background data. A requisite component of successful current events approach is an emphasis on information literacy, since most students have not fully developed the ability to distinguish legitimate sources from propaganda.

One particular difficulty that must be addressed carefully is managing disputes between students with differing ideological approaches to social justice issues. Instructors must serve as neutral moderators of discussions while acknowledging their own perspective, and that can easily be misunderstood by students or interpreted as unreasoning bias against them. It is impossible to remain ‘objective’ in the face of tragic events, but there are tools which can be used to maintain a collective sense of fairness. This workshop will examine some of those tools.

Authors

• Kathleen E. Miller, D'Youville College

• Yvonne M. Downes, Hilbert College