Faking sociology? A content analysis of an introductory sociology student photography assignment

Abstract

I analyzed student submissions from a photography-based assignment in introductory sociology. In this exploratory study, I discuss the patterns found in student submissions to uncover what sociological concepts students observed in their everyday lives. My primary research question, therefore, was what do introductory sociology students see when they are given few guidelines as to what they “should” see? The intent of this research was to focus on what concepts students identified, not my interpretation of students’ meaning or to gauge the effectiveness of the assignment on learning outcomes. The goal of this research was to describe what students are actually identifying as sociological and how this does or does not reflect the goals of the assignment or the course. In turn, the results of systematically analyzing student submissions can inform future iterations of the assignment and my overall teaching strategies in introductory sociology. Results indicate that students used a range of concepts, yet tended to focus on broad (e.g., norms) rather than specific (e.g., folkways) or abstract (e.g., sociological imagination) concepts. By analyzing student submissions across semesters, I can illuminate how successful students were at applying sociological knowledge to their everyday lives. Moreover, this analysis demonstrates that students were superficially meeting the standards of the assignment, but it remains unclear whether students were demonstrating a grasp of sociological knowledge or simply relying on preexisting commonsense knowledge to complete the assignment.