Sociology Commons^™

From The Editor In Chief, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Summer 2024 issue of Parameters. We open this issue with a special “In Memoriam” by General Charles A. Flynn, Commander US Army Pacific, honoring the life and legacies of our director and consummate colleague, Carol V. Evans. We dedicate this issue to her. General Flynn’s memoriam is followed by an In Focus commentary on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. We then feature three forums covering the Russia-Ukraine War, the Middle East, and Professional Development. This issue also contains special essays on the role of professional writing, the US Army War College’s Civil-Military Relations Center, …

Three Card Spread: Theorizing Queer And Trans Futurity For Tenure-Track Faculty Through Divination Dialogues, Justin A. Gutzwa, Sergio A. Gonzalez

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This article lies betwixt methodological, conceptual, and empirical scholarship, queering traditional presentations of qualitative research to imagine what a future in the academy could look like for queer and trans faculty if the academy instead prioritized queer and trans joy, thriving, and life. The authors, two queer and trans early-career tenure-track faculty, utilize divination dialogues, or conversations that take place during and following a divinatory practice such as tarot reading, as a liberatory politic of community building and co-theorization on how to actualize our own futures in a colonial, neoliberal academy. In presenting excerpts from the conversation that took place …

“I Thought I Knew”: Teaching Graduate Students New Ways Of Understanding Meanings Of Diverse Social Identities, Maria S. Johnson

Feminist Pedagogy

Instructors should not assume that graduate students understand meanings of terms for various social identities. In this article, I highlight a teaching activity I created titled, “What’s in a name?” that requires graduate students to research historical and contemporary uses of various racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, and immigration terms. The assignment helps graduate students develop inclusive vocabulary and deepen their understanding of their positionality. It also supports braver classroom contexts for students and instructors. The assignment is best facilitated by instructors informed of diverse social identities, open to difficult conversations, and aware of the influence of their own social identities …

Critical Race Theory, Neoliberalism, And The Illiberal University, Rodney D. Coates

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Editors' Introduction, Raj G. Chetty, Beverly Greene

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Understanding Incarcerated Education: A Review Of The Digital And Gender Inequality Impacts Of Accessibility And Inclusivity Of Higher Education For Incarcerated Students, Bianca R. Parry Phd

Journal of Prison Education Research

Education in the correctional environment is endorsed as an effective rehabilitative tool linked to reducing recidivism and improving reintegration. Unfortunately, while researchers from the Global North are particularly active on the subject of the accessibility of digital education in corrections, the same cannot be said for the Global South. Of further concern is that few of the studies conducted have focused specifically on incarcerated women’s access to education. As discussed in the literature review to follow, research regarding higher education in corrections has the potential for expanding academics, stakeholders, and policy makers understanding of incarcerated students’ pathways towards education attainment. …

“100%, I’M Not Trained For This:” Understanding How Professors Navigate Higher Education As Student Mental Health Declines, Clio F. Chazan-Gabbard

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Generational and cultural changes have led mental health to become an increasingly common concern among the general population, especially Generation Z. As a result, professors have become very aware of declining college student mental health, and some have become advisors for struggling students; in the process, they are learning to navigate boundaries in and out of the classroom (Lipson, 2021; Price et al., 2020). Using six qualitative interviews, this study seeks to ask: how do professors understand, navigate teaching, and one-on-one interactions as student mental health issues increase? This paper argues that as student mental health suffers and campus counseling …

A Qualitative Study On Malaysian Academics' Perceptions And Suggestions On Gamified Learning, Mohd. Elmagzoub Eltahir, Nagaletchimee Annamalai, Arulselvi Uthayakumaran, Samer H Zyoud, Bilal Zakarneh Dr, Najeh Rajeh Alsalhi

The Qualitative Report

This study explores lecturers' perceptions and suggestions on integrating gamified lessons in Malaysian higher institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the norm of traditional classroom teaching by accelerating digital integration amongst educators and necessitating the need to address classroom gamification. To further understand educators' perceptions, we conducted in-depth interviews with 25 lecturers. We thematically analyzed the interviews by following the steps undertaken by Braun and Clarke (2006) to identify the emerging themes. The findings determine that educators found gamification suitable in teaching and learning activities during the set induction, reinforcement and assessment of specific skills. Several misconceptions also evident …

College Teaching As Care Work, Julie Collins-Dogrul

Feminist Pedagogy

Sociology and higher education pedagogy scholars argue that college teaching is care work. I analyze reader comments generated by two essays published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed about academic care work and find that many commentators think women should care less. Commenters argued that care work was detrimental to student development and faculty performance. In contrast, I argue that care work promotes learning. What is needed are institutions that make it clear that care work is an expectation for all professors, that provide training to enhance care in the classroom, office, lab, and the field, …

Racializing Service (Learning): A Critical Content Analysis Of Service Learning Syllabi, Tania Mitchell, Carmine Perrotti

Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice

This study examines service learning pedagogy and its use of racialized terms to frame service. Through a critical content analysis using 270 syllabi from 193 four-year U.S. institutions with the Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, this study explores how the language used in service learning syllabi perpetuates and sustains racialized hierarchies in community engagement experiences.

Going To A Psychiatric Hospital Saved My Life And My Student Affairs Career, Jo Wilson

The Vermont Connection

The ongoing mental health crisis for college students has been a notable topic in recent years and while a necessary conversation, this often overlooks an underlying mental health crisis for higher education staff and the connection between both crises. As a former mentally ill graduate student and now (still) mentally ill student affairs practitioner, the connection is clear and a conversation now is critical. Using my personal narrative as a current practitioner, self authorship, and disability theory intersections, I am using this piece as a counternarrative and interruption to traditional student and staff development. Lastly, I seek to encourage a …

Examining Faculty’S Transition To 100% Online Learning During A Pandemic: A Narrative Inquiry, Christa Ann Banton, Jose Garza

The Qualitative Report

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) quickly emerged as an unprecedented pandemic that has impacted communities at every level. Although online teaching is not a new concept, many faculty entered new territory as they transitioned into the online learning environment at the onset of the pandemic. This qualitative, narrative inquiry sought to capture the unique experiences of on-ground faculty during the rapid transition into online learning. Through these twenty interviews, some emerging themes included the instability and usage of technology, changes in engagement and participation, and the need for additional student and faculty support. Emerging themes provide insight to future implications related …

Discrimination And Exclusion In Higher Education Is Reflected In Multiple Autoethnographies, Jane Edwards

The Qualitative Report

A synthesis review of 17 autoethnographic (AE) studies revealed experiences of 33 academic staff and graduate students in higher education, the majority of whom are women. These papers, from more than six countries, were found through a Google Scholar search. Most authors identified as marginalised and outsiders in their higher education contexts, whether because of gender, ethnicity, race, or intersectionality. Analysis of tacit and explicit themes in the papers resulted in creation of eight final superordinate themes. The themes represent experiences of fear and insecurity whereby personal vulnerability was exacerbated by lack of cultural and gender awareness in higher education, …

Interviews In Global Catholic Studies: Kenneth Parker, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Mathew N. Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Catholicism, interviews Kenneth Parker, Ryan Endowed Chair for Newman Studies, Professor of Catholic Studies and Historical Theology, and the inaugural Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at Duquesne University.

University Foreign Language Teachers’ Perceptions Of Professor-Student Rapport: A Hybrid Qualitative Study, Maryam Roshanbin, Musa Nushi, Zahra Abolhassani

The Qualitative Report

Research has shown a consensus that positive professor-student relationship makes meaningful contributions to academic outcomes such as faculty effectiveness, increased motivation, enhanced learning, and excellent teaching. Employing a qualitative research design, the authors of this study examine the conceptualization of one specific aspect of faculty-student relationship; namely, rapport, which they believe is particularly salient in college classrooms characterized by effective teaching and a positive interpersonal climate. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with 26 Iranian foreign language professors who were selected through snowball sampling. A hybrid thematic analysis of the data revealed two core themes of rapport antecedents: (1) …

Building Resilient Higher Education Communities: Lessons Learned From Pandemic Teaching, Christian Williams, Carmen Veloria, Debra Harkins

Pedagogy and the Human Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many educators grappling with uncertainties about the future of higher education while feeling exhausted from the stress and pressure to deliver quality education in unprecedented ways. While learning to incorporate new technology into remote, hybrid, and flipped classrooms, educators also find themselves responding to the psychosocial needs of students more than ever before. Yet the lack of established promising practices coupled with limited training and support on how to support students’ emotional well-being creates confusion and self-doubt. This conceptual article explores teacher experiences of teaching during a pandemic, missed opportunities, and highlights the need to …

Women In Stem Fellowship: An Intersectional And Interdisciplinary Approach To Advancing Inclusion In The Sciences, Ina C. Seethaler, Gabriela Perez-Alvarado

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

At our university, women-identified individuals make up 23% of students in STEM fields; less than 15% of them graduate with a STEM degree. Nationally, more than 40% of women who enter a STEM job leave it within fewer than ten years. Gendered issues within STEM industries have been identified, yet we are far from equal opportunities for all genders. In 2018, we—the director of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) with colleagues in Math, Computing Sciences, and Chemistry—received a $45,000 grant to create a “Women in STEM Fellowship.” The inclusion of WGS made the fellowship interdisciplinary, intersectional, and informed our decision-making …

Narratives Of Gendered And Racialized Carework: Feminist Faculty Of Color Organizing During The Pandemic, Analena Hope Hassberg, Araceli Esparza, Lori Baralt, Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Inspired by feminist narrative and the Latin American tradition of testimonio, this paper is grounded in the lived experiences of the four authors as academics, mothers, and organizers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on women of color feminisms and theorizing anti-racist feminist understandings of motherhood as a political identity, we examine how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated challenges faced by parenting and caregiving faculty, especially those positioned at the intersection of multiple structural vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 tipping point presented both unsustainable challenges for parenting and caregiving faculty and opportunities for collective support and organizing as parents and caregivers. We participated in …

Shapeshifting Power: Indigenous Teachings Of Trickster Consciousness And Relational Accountability For Building Communities Of Care, Ionah M. Elaine Scully

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

Difficult dialogues are necessary work in order for communities to form coalitions, yet often these dialogues pose challenges for engaging in long-term work for social justice and systemic change. Power dynamics, microaggressions, and discomfort unlearning power and privilege can make long-term collaboration difficult. It is for this reason I discuss thinking of coalitions as communities of care and offer practical strategies for collaborating differently for sustainable action. Using Indigenous epistemology and methodology, Indigenous feminist and Indigequeer scholarship, as well as Indigenous land-based pedagogy and storytelling, I offer interventions using trickster teachings or trickster consciousness which I describe as comprised of …

Iranian Students’ Experience Of K-12 And Higher Education: Use Of Drawings To Convey The Difference Between Ideals And Reality, Iman Tohidian, Abbas Abbaspour, Ali Khorsandi Taskoh

The Qualitative Report

The focus of education during K-12 and Higher Education (HE) in Iran is on theoretical empowerment of students; therefore, our students get an illusion of knowing. In fact, what happens is not learning and understanding; rather, it is verbatim transfer of available information in the textbooks into the students’ minds. It might be because the students and teachers (as the main stakeholders of the education) are the least powerful parties within the pyramid of power amongst educational practitioners and policymakers. It means their voice, feedback, needs, and ideologies have no place in the educational decisions and policies. In alignment with …

Proximity To Power: The Challenges And Strategies Of Interviewing Elites In Higher Education Research, Kevin Mcclure, Jon L. Mcnaughtan

The Qualitative Report

Presidents, provosts, deans, and other upper-level administrators in higher education fit common definitions of “elites” in the context of qualitative research. Scholarship on methods specific to the field of higher education has not identified or described the unique challenges of interviewing these and other elites. The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges and share strategies for elite interviewing, with specific application to qualitative research in the field of higher education. We provide three examples of empirical studies involving elite interviewing and, using literature from other fields, highlight challenges and strategies. By anticipating challenges and implementing these strategies, researchers …

A Qualitative Description Investigation Of U.S. Higher Education Quantitative Datasets, Mia Ocean, Karon T. Hicks

The Qualitative Report

Currently, the U.S. system of higher education is almost exclusively evaluated by quantitative data based on traditional student trajectories and university structured programs. This could be problematic for community colleges and post-traditional students, who are a growing population at all institutions. Therefore, we conducted a pilot, qualitative description analysis of three U.S. quantitative national datasets to assess their accuracy and identify factors that influence classifications. We interviewed individuals (n=13) who would qualitatively be considered success stories, specifically individuals who attended community colleges during their undergraduate studies and ultimately high ranking graduate programs, to gather information about their educational timelines. In …

Factors Affecting Successful Quality Assurance Implementation In Vietnamese Higher Education: A Qualitative Study, Loc Thi My Nguyen, Trung Tran, Thuan Van Pham, Tien-Trung Nguyen, Hien Thi Thu Le, Thao Thi Phuong Trinh, Thanh Thi Nghiem

The Qualitative Report

Quality assurance and accreditation was officially introduced into the higher education system in Vietnam over ten years ago. It is evident that quality assurance has resulted in positive impacts on university management, teaching, learning and research activities. This paper aims to explore factors that aid the successful implementation of higher education quality assurance and accreditation in Vietnam. Through semi-structured interviews with 32 participants, this study identified a number of factors that contributed to quality assurance processes, including awareness of the importance of quality assurance, better institutional manager leadership, support of university lecturers, staff, and students, and the vital responsibility of …

Move: We Don't Need To Convince You That Our Oppression Is Real, Dr Frederick V. Engram Jr

The Vermont Connection

This article will address the lived experiences of Black people (faculty, staff, students, student-athletes) who navigate academia in majority white spaces. Black people have known throughout time that the Black voice is not valued. We constantly find ourselves embattled in our personal lives, at work, and on social media. The constant and incessant need for whiteness to tell us how we should feel, respond, and react to acts of white supremacy, white manning, sexism, and misogynoir are triggering. The system of higher education is a constant reminder that academia exists comfortably in a bubble. A bubble that unless you are …

Transforming Higher Education: Responding To The Coronavirus And Other Looming Crises, Michael Mascolo

Pedagogy and the Human Sciences

Higher education is being deeply challenged by the coronavirus. The immediate threats of the coronavirus come at the heels of an existing panoply of problems that already threaten higher education as we know it. These include, of course, the looming enrollment crisis, the high cost of higher education, intractable student debt, the corporatization of education, limited learning on campus, and a general loss of faith in higher education among many sectors of the nation. How are colleges and universities to respond to these challenges? This paper calls upon colleges and universities to consider the need for structural transformation in order …

Behind Quality, There Is Equality: An Analysis Of Scientific Capital Accumulation In Social-Democratic Welfare Regimes, Olivier Bégin-Caouette

Comparative and International Education / Éducation Comparée et Internationale

ABSTRACT

Trade-offs between quality and equality are at the forefront of multiple debates in higher education, and one conceptual tool to approach societies’ adjustment in resolving these trade-offs is the welfare regime typology. Relying on the theory of academic capitalism and using research production as a proxy for quality in higher education, this study analyses how social-democratic welfare regimes resolve the trade-off between comparatively high levels of academic research production, access to higher education and equal citizens’ living conditions. Interviews with 56 system actors suggest that equality is perceived to contribute to academic freedom, public investments in research and the …

Social Dimensions Of Student Debt: A Data Mining Analysis, Dirk Witteveen, Paul Attewell

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Media commentary on undergraduates' loan debt portrays a crisis in which many students are unable to pay back their loans, having borrowed large sums and lacking sufficient post-college income to repay. Several scholars have questioned the media accounts, noting that indebtedness is highest among students from high income families, while defaults predominate among low debt students. Using a data mining technique known as CART, we analyze national data on the indebtedness of recent baccalaureate graduates, to uncover combinations of social characteristics that are associated with loan pressure: the ratio of indebtedness to post-college earnings. We find that students from lower …

An Education In Sexuality & Sociality: Heteronormativity On Campus, Jason K. Wallace

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

In An Education in Sexuality & Sociality: Heteronormativity on Campus, Dr. Frank Karioris discusses the role of universities in creating sexed and gendered relationships and hierarchies within society. Through his ethnographic study, Dr. Karioris explores homosociality and challenges heteronormativity on college campuses. This book review provides an overview of this work along with critique and implication for higher education.

Intentional Leadership For More Just Experiences: Supporting Black Males On College Campuses, John D. Egan

Georgia Journal of College Student Affairs

This essay explores the unjust experiences of Black males and minority faculty on college campuses that perpetuate inequality in higher education. The literature shows Black male undergraduates experienced both overt racism and more subtle insults on some college campuses, which serve as a barrier to integration into the college system. This essay also connects the underrepresentation of minority faculty as a contributing factor to the climate that inhibits the integration of Black male students into the college system. Through intentional leadership, educators should create or support existing Black male initiative programs on their campuses as this evidence-based practice contributes to …

Non-Traditional Students At Public Regional Universities: A Case Study, Lizabeth Zack

Teacher-Scholar: The Journal of the State Comprehensive University

This paper investigates the topic of non-traditional students enrolled at four-year public regional universities and addresses questions about who they are, what makes them non-traditional and how they experience college life. The analysis is based on survey data collected from 187 undergraduates at one regional public college in the southeastern United States. The study found a higher portion of non-traditional students than expected and that the non-traditional students tended to break down into two types, a younger worker-student and an older adult student, rather than conforming to a single profile. While the findings highlight other similarities with the broader population …