Stripping Down: Centering Critical Thinking to Build Students’ Sociological Imaginations in Intro Sociology

• In Event: Teaching and Learning in Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 3: Pedagogical Innovation

Abstract

We work so hard to innovate and provide a sociological backbone to our students while teaching in increasingly hostile times and places. Our own education and background may be under attack and our students are coming to class often hungry, overworked, overwhelmed, and potentially feeling unsafe, even in their own neighborhoods and campuses. Teaching sociology in 2026 is a shitshow, and yet we as sociologists and educators are uniquely positioned to help guide our students through the horrors of our current political moment and the impact of societal strife on our everyday lives and experiences.

In this talk I want to focus on one major change I have made in my introduction to sociology courses at an urban community college in New York City. In stripping the course down to its most basic roots, I focus solely on developing my students’ sociological imaginations. No vocabulary, no memorization, no tests. We see the world together, we talk and share, and we work to understand how to flex our sociological muscles to analyze what we observe and experience. Students engage in a semester-long data collection project through their own lenses and of their own lives, seen through a newfound sociological understanding and theoretical underpinning. We work together to share language to analyze injustice and inequalities and are oriented to thinking of ways we can work to find solutions for social problems.

Author

• Alison S. Better, CUNY Kingsborough Community College