Rising Hope, Inc. | Evaluated Learning Experience
Introduction to Sociology
45 hours (15 weeks).
September 2017 - Present.
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to: analyze social data and formulate arguments, drawing on both observation and sociological theory, to explain why it appears the way it does; critique various perspectives on social inequalities, their causes, and how they are maintained; compare different sociological perspectives on how to analyze data; assess the meaning and role of sociology in understanding societies, institutions, and groups; apply the sociological imagination to things and events around them; evaluate arguments about cultural difference and cultural change; assess the role of socialization in the construction of the self; compare arguments about nature versus nurture; analyze the meaning of power, the structure of a group, and apply an analysis of power to group/institutional situations; assess the difference between positive deviance and negative deviance from various perspectives; critique socio-economic structures from multiple perspectives, and evaluate arguments for how and why society is divided; analyze the roles of structural racism and prejudice in the construction and maintenance of social inequality; compare sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity; apply sociological understandings of sex and gender to real-world scenarios and debates; and analyze important social issues, evaluate sociological evidence about them, and construct arguments about them.
Instruction is offered via classroom lectures accompanied by readings, essays, quizzes, homework, debate, role-lay, interactive problem solving, a midterm exam, and a final exam. In this course, students discuss how to become equipped to analyze the construction of self and society through empirical observation and theoretical analysis. Students learn to understand important theoretical perspectives and methods of observation in sociology. Using these theoretical foundations and methods of sociological study, students learn to understand social institutions and important social constructions such as race, ethnicity, class, sex, gender, and religion, and will learn ways of understanding and explaining social inequality from a sociological perspective. Prerequisite: College Writing I.
In the lower division baccalaureate/associate degree category, 3 semester hours in Sociology (9/17) (4/22 revalidation).