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July 25, 2006

Sociology and General Education

The challenge of higher education is to engage students actively in order to develop in them the capacity for continued intellectual learning. The problems of today are not likely to be the same problems that will confront these students and their societies in the future. While the content of a curriculum will most certainly change, the process of learning is likely to remain central to the mission of higher education. Toward this end, sociology contributes to students’ learning outcomes in several fundamental areas, including quantitative literacy, knowledge of society, multiculturalism and diversity, global awareness, critical thinking, civic engagement, communication, moral reasoning, and collaborative work. That sociology can articulate demonstrably its contribution to important areas of student learning is noteworthy. But sociology can and must do more to advance student learning. As a result of our work, we now know that sociology, while acknowledging the importance of these learning outcomes through reports such as Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major, has not assessed students’ performance in these areas either systematically or comprehensively. Much work remains to be completed in the areas of curriculum development and assessment of student outcomes in ways that attend to the relationship between sociology and general education. Toward that end, we offer six recommendations, which build upon the preceding and ground breaking efforts of earlier ASA Task Forces.

Posted by Gary Holden at July 25, 2006 11:13 AM