Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Graduate Training In Sociological Theory And Theory Construction, Barry N. Markovsky

Faculty Publications

Nearly all of sociology's top graduate training programs require their students to complete one or two courses on sociological theory. The instructors for these courses have an extraordinary opportunity to affect the perspectives and practices of future generations of scholars. This study assesses the backgrounds, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of those instructors regarding different approaches to theorizing, with particular attention paid to topics related to science and to theory construction. Sociologists who teach required theory courses in the discipline's top fifty graduate training programs were asked a series of questions pertaining to their own training and to the courses they …