Maxine P. Atkinson

Marital age heterogamy and homogamy 1900 to 1980.

Using US census data from 1900 1960 and 1980 this paper investigates age differences between spouses over time and examines the structural variables that differentiate age-homogamous marriages from age-heterogamous marriages to see if these trends also differ over time. The variables examined include wifes education wifes employment status husbands occupational status wifes occupational status annual family income race rural residence wifes country of birth and number of times married (1960) or number of years married (1900). Wives are further divided into younger middle-aged and older groups as a control variable. A shift has occured: Marriages were characterized by age heterogamy in 1900 and by age homogamy in 1960 and 1980. Using discriminant analysis to identify variables that distinguish between age-homogamous and age-heteragamous marriages in each time period the findings show that husband-younger and husband-older marriages (a difference either way of at least 5 years) tend to be characterized by lower socioeconomic attributes compared to same-age marriages. In general age-heterogamous marriages are associated with foreign birth lower education levels lower family income lower occupational status and nonemployment of wives. Further black and remarried individuals are more likely to be in age-heterogamous marriages. The authors suggest that the current trend toward age homogamy may reflect the current trend toward male-female equality in marriage that age differences may also indicate status differences.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Reconceptualizing Scholarship and Transforming the Academy

This article makes contributions toward the conceptualization of the scholarship of teaching and learning (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning). The scholarship of teaching is a concept with multiple ramifications. It is at the core of the current transformation of higher education. The scholarship of teaching challenges the existing stratification system within the academy. The scholarship of teaching and learning is a much larger enterprise, a movement, that can transform the nature of American society toward our ideals of equality and justice. Sociologists have a vital role to play within the academy and society. If we take advantage of the opportunity that the scholarship of teaching and learning offers, we can reach our potential as an intellectually liberating force in society.

Greedy Institutions: The Importance of Institutional Context for Teaching in Higher Education:

This article focuses on how the institutional contexts of colleges and universities shape these “greedy institutions.” We look at the current social, political, and economic trends affecting all postsecondary institutions, specifically the forces that encourage “greediness.” We examine the literature on structural arenas that influence teaching in higher education, including type of institution and departmental level characteristics, considering how the varied structural features of institutions and departments shape the conditions of academic life and demands placed on faculty. We identify the features of the institutional context that can help faculty manage demands on their time and enhance teaching and learning. The article closes with identification of areas for future inquiry and a challenge to sociologists to contribute to an examination of the contextual forces that shape the work lives of faculty and students.

Inquiry-Guided Learning in Sociology

This paper is based on a workshop of the same name presented at the 2007 American Sociological Association meetings. The purpose of the workshop and this article is to focus attention on teaching methods that require students to actively investigate sociological phenomena. During the workshop, participants practiced constructing inquiry-guided learning activities suitable for a range of different courses taught throughout the curriculum. These activities are described here. Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) includes a variety of teaching methods that assist students in their investigation of questions and problems. Fundamental to IGL in sociology is the notion that students should think and act like sociologists. IGL activities provide a means whereby the instructor models and the student practices the same disciplinary activities. Students “do” sociology rather than just learning about the results of others.

Integrating Sociological Research into Large Introductory Courses: Learning Content and Increasing Quantitative Literacy.

Sociologists can make meaningful contributions to quantitative literacy by teaching sociological research skills in sociology classes, including introductory courses. We report on the effectiveness of requiring a research module in a large introductory class. The module is designed to teach both basic research skills and to increase awareness of race and gender inequality. We find that a majority of students are able to interpret basic percentage tables with a minimum of instruction. Under the condition that students are willing to acknowledge inequality in our occupational system, completing the research assignment increases their awareness of race and gender inequality. We argue that one of sociologys most powerful contributions to quantitative literacy is that our core content provides a challenging and relevant context in which to learn quantitative skills.

Understanding the Juggling Act: Gendered Preferences and Social Structural Constraints

In this paper we use longitudinal data to test the strength of individual preferences and structural variables as explanations for married womens labor force participation. Data drawn from a subset of the Career Development Study are used to compare gendered preferences measured toward the end of adolescence vs. work and family structural variables as predictors of the actual number of hours married women work for pay. Family structures that push women out of the labor force and pull them into family work prove to be the strongest predictor of married womens employment hours, with work structures (e.g., aspects of “good” jobs) and the subjective definition of paid work as a career also being substantively important for explaining hours in the labor force. Our findings also indicate that attitudes formed before and during early adolescence do have a weak but statistically significant effect on married womens labor force participation, at least for baby boom women.

From the Outside Looking In The Sociology of the Classroom

Teaching Sociology, Vol. 37, 2009 (July:228-232) 228 IN MANY WAYS, our lives as teachers are complicated by the fact that we are sociologists. We know that students bring their own socio-historical contexts to class with them, and that we bring our own. We know that they are shaped by the culture in which they live and that social arrangements— many of them unequal—influence how individuals think, act and feel. Yet, as Maxine Atkinson confesses in the first article, we too often rely on individualistic explanations for our students’ behaviors (e.g., lazy, hardworking). Why do we do this? Our lives as teachers are also enriched because we are sociologists. As sociologists we have the capacity to critically analyze and understand what goes on around us. In this special issue we advocate for a more deliberate tuning-in to how sociological knowledge can help us understand our classrooms. By doing so we can achieve three goals: we can improve our effectiveness as teachers, we can contribute these new insights and understandings to the broader discipline of sociology, and we can help teacher-scholars in other disciplines better understand their classrooms.

Teaching Community Networks: A Case Study of Informal Social Support and Information Sharing among Sociology Graduate Students.

Despite the prominence of teaching in academia, we know little about how graduate students learn to teach. We propose the concept of a teaching community network (TCN), an informal social network that facilitates the exchange of teaching-specific resources. We explore the role of TCNs through a case study of a sociology doctoral program at a large state university. Results reveal that students rely heavily on informal ties within the graduate student community and existing formal programs to share teaching-related resources (e.g., information and social support) and develop their identities as instructors. We suggest that graduate programs facilitate TCNs through formal teacher-training programs and structural conditions that encourage informal, one-on-one interactions (e.g., shared offices). By cultivating TCNs, graduate programs can assist students in developing their teaching skills and identities as instructors, thus training students to balance the demands of research and teaching within an academic culture.

SOCIOLOGY OF THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM: APPLYING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AT THE CLASSROOM LEVEL*

Teaching Sociologys emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning has moved the field well beyond simple description of teaching methods. There is no doubt that the journal is more scholarly than in the past. Still, we do not take advantage of our rich theoretical disciplinary work. There is much to learn sociologically about the classroom and other sites of interaction between teachers and students. Our classrooms are social sites and our analysis of them can be of help to scholars both inside and outside the discipline. In this article, we propose a sensitizing concept, the sociology of the college classroom—the application of sociological theory and/or concepts to understand social phenomena that take place at the level of the classroom and other sites of faculty-student interaction. We situate the sociology of the college classroom as a subset of the scholarship of teaching and learning and the sociology of higher education. Sociology of the college classroom can be a place not only where research meets teaching, but it can also be a site where sociological theory meets pedagogical praxis.

Ladies: South by Northwest

The lady represented the ideal image for most nineteenth‐century American women, even those who pioneered the American frontier. The Southern lady, however, has always been considered the particular embodiment of that image. Since the advent of womens liberation and the large‐scale movement of women into the labor force, one might well question the salience of the lady as role model for contemporary women. Do modern women still want to be ladies? Using the constructed type of the lady role, this study examines the salience of the lady image for selected samples of women from the South and the Pacific Northwest. Our respondents indicated the extent of their agreement with our constructed type and also the extent to which they held the temperamental and behavioral traits of the constructed type. In general, the women in our samples supported the constructed type. Also the women in both regions felt that they lived up to the role expectations of the lady; however, the Northwest women felt that they met more...