In this lesson, students analyze a celebrity in order to understand how dominant American values are reflected in, and reinforced by, the mainstream media.
In this lesson, students use a cultural simulation to experience the development and impact of stereotypes.
Students are instructed to break a social norm of dress or attire, and then interact with others and observe their responses.
Students will observe how everyday behavior is linked to macro-level social change through their own social experiment.
This classroom simulation uses rounds of flipping coins to explain how social structures can limit individual outcomes, yet produce unequal outcomes that students may attribute to individual effort.
Lesson plan to guide students through an archeological dig in order to understand the influence of culture on the form that social institutions take in different societies.
Students complete a survey and analyze the results to understand the central sociological features of deviance.
Students explore data on median annual income for different groups across the U.S. to address questions of income inequality.
Students will discuss a film to examine influences of peer groups and media on teenage socialization.
This activity identifies major technological changes and their influence on society and shows how everyday behavior is linked to macro-level social change.
Students discuss a film which demonstrates the importance of social interaction for normal development.
Students to explore what percentages of the U.S. population describe themselves as various ethnic groups.
The exercise uses relatively simple cultural elements, both material and non-material, toform two artificial cultures that both oppose and complement each other. In their earnest efforts to interact with the other "game" culture, students learn that cultural differences exist, that they must try to discern the cultural patterns of the other in order to achieve a successful interaction, and that negative reactions resulting from minor cultural infractions can exacerbate interaction difficulties in ways that are difficult to overcome.
Students will identify major sources of cultural dissemination and study the impact of globalization on local communities.
Students will locate local information from census data to explore how residential patterns affect intergroup relations.
This exercise involves accessing the latest U.S. Census data to learn more about an individual's home community. Learning Goals: To understand the data-based nature of sociological investigations; To become familiar with a major source of data about people in the United States; To learn one way of using the world wide web to access data.
This exercise asks students to locate abstracts to papers containing original research, using a database of scholarly abstracts. Students can either search on an assigned topic or on one of their own choosing. Since not all abstracts are to papers with original research, students need to learn how to distinguish such papers from ones without original research.