Celebrating Sociological Teaching: A Showcase of Everyday Lesson-Level Pedagogy

Pedagogic scholarship generally privileges the atypical: unusual, exceptional, one-off examples of isolated, resource-intensive teaching innovations, often presented through beyond-the-classroom analysis at the programme, disciplinary or professional level. But what about the day-to-day teaching of sociology that characterises the mainstream experiences of students, the practices of sociological teachers, and the educational zeitgeist? What does your everyday teaching look like?

This session invites descriptive and reflective showcasing of individual lessons, lectures, workshops, seminars or tutorials that portray “normal” sociological teaching. Beyond the traditional conference offering of disseminating major curriculum design projects and empirical pedagogic research, this session celebrates the excellent work of global colleagues in their usual, day-to-day teaching of sociology and cognate disciplines. Each oral presentation will present pedagogic reflection on just a single sociology lesson. We invite educators to share an example of something they teach annually: a lesson you are proud of, enjoy teaching, and look forward to delivering each year. Whilst welcomed, empirical data, assessment outcomes, and student feedback are not required or expected. Instead, colleagues are invited to focus their reflections on how the lesson has developed over time, to remain relevant in the face of social change, and respond to evolving student interests. With a focus on “lesson-level” pedagogy, a key feature of this session will be the opportunity to receive constructive peer feedback from global educators, to further develop the lesson. Together, we will initiate a shift in pedagogic scholarship in sociology, from the unrepresentative exceptional (unusual teaching) to the representative exceptional (brilliant teaching).