Using a Portfolio Approach in Sociology

I have been exploring portfolio approaches to teaching, so this semester I am using this approach with my Contemporary Social Issues class. I can't seem to find a good definitive, but simple explanation of the elements of this approach that students can understand, so I'm writing my own here. I decided to do this more publicly because I think it is something other teachers might like to see.






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The Basics

A portfolio is simply a collection of items that have something in common. So it can be artwork you've done or papers you've written or pictures of your family or pets. It can also be documents that demonstrate your abilities and skills. The basic concept of a portfolio approach to learning is that when you address a particular subject, you can collect what you learn in one place (nowadays, that is usually an electronic "place") where you can review it as a whole and see the commonalities in what you have done.

There are numerous ways to do learning portfolios, but they almost all have the following in common:

1. Process Oriented: an effort is made to build upon previous work and connect that work in a coherent form.
   
   
2. Revision and Correction as Learning Process: instead of a "testing" recall and penalizing for lack of recall, the portfolio is built, in part, as appropriate on the ability to take feedback or further research and incorporate that into improving previous work.
   
   
3. Reflecting upon Learning: milestones are built in that allow the student to review previous work and consider questions like: What did I learn? What did I do well? Where did I improve? How has my thinking been changed? What would I like to explore next? How do I feel about these efforts?

Other Considerations
There are, of course, other elements that can be added. The context does change things. For example, some departments have portfolio approaches so a student might be seeking their best work from each course to add to a larger portfolio that will be presented as part of either a comprehensive review before graduation or some sort of capstone experience. A single course approach is much less ambitious.

The subject of the course also give context. A portfolio experience in Sociology is much different from one in English or Biology.

There is also debate on how such things can be graded. Some approaches have feedback throughout the course and a single grade of the portfolio at the end. Others grade individual pieces within the portfolio, but allow for revision or correction and re-grading.


Conclusion

My goal in writing this is not to be comprehensive but to give both student and colleagues a taste of what this approach entails. I plan to use this approach in examining social problems through three lenses. One is a theoretical framework, which provides methodology to consider what is and is not a social problem and how some claims evolve into social policies and programs where others fall flat. The second area which builds upon the theoretical framework is community involvement. Students will be volunteering for 9 hours at a local charity or organization. They will be writing about these experiences using the theoretical framework as a guideline for understanding the organization and its purpose in light of what problem it hopes to address. Then finally, working with a group, we will address specific social problems and debate issues in various topical areas. The analysis of the problem, the construction of the in-class debates and the assessment of different approaches will build on the theoretical framework.

If you teach and you have used a portfolio approach, I'd love to hear about your experience(s). If you are a student and have been in classes or programs that use this approach, I also love to hear about your experience(s). I will write more at the end of the semester about how this goes.

Empowerment as a Response to Stigma

Erving Goffman, in his now seminal work, Stigma: Notes of Management of Spoiled Identity, asserted that persons who are discredited through social stigma find ways of coping with that status. These methods have a single thing in common -- none of them change the stigma. This is because in order for stigma to change, the people holding the discrediting ideas about the status must change their attitudes and their behaviors.

This does not mean, however, that understanding these coping mechanism is not important. And the relationship between those who hold stigmatizing views and those who suffer from a "spoiled" social identity is more complex than often represented.

A new study, The Role of the Fatosphere in Fat Adults' Responses to Obesity Stigma: A Model of Empowerment Without a Focus on Weight Loss in the online journal, Qualitative Health Research explores blogging as a method of coping with fat stigma.

By way of background, blogging about fat acceptance has been around almost as long as blogging. I personally started blogging in 2001 when a friend set me up and created FattyPatties. What started as a "joint" blog ended up with me pretty much sharing my life's events on a semi-regular basis with my thoughts on being fat and fat acceptance thrown in often. Much of the writing I did on FattyPatties became the basis for Taking Up Space. I was one of the 44 bloggers who were interviewed for this study.

There is a lot that could be said about this study. It certainly is original research in that few have even asked fat people what their lives are like. Most studies about fat, fatness and even fat acceptance have centered around the effect of weight on health. Most of that research assumed the same stigmatizing assumptions that the general public has about being fat. So in that body of literature, this study is refreshing and rare.



But as a sociologist, I was also interested in this concept of empowerment in face of stigma. The dilemma for most stigmatized people is that they have little control over their social identities. Stigma "spoils" social identity because it prevents the stigmatized person from impression management. No matter what a stigmatized person does, their actions are interpreted through the stigma.

I've experienced this myself often. People are "shocked" to find out that I am smart, educated, articulate and so forth. The first impression I give is fat and all the negative things that go with it. I am praised for "bravery" when I'm simply being myself and accepting myself. And, for those who do not take the time to get to know me, I am dismissed as lazy, obsessed or defensive because I have the audacity to not fit the stereotype and to be educated about it. In short, if I deviate from the expectation of being lazy, jolly, stupid, ugly, etc., it is noted. Even those who like me do so through the lenses of the stigma as they are surprised at finding me not those things.

That is why stigma doesn't change because I don't fit the bill. All of my efforts are about my behavior and thinking, not the one who stigmatizes. I have no doubt that knowing me may change the minds and hearts of a few people, if they are open to the change. But it is they who change. Not me.

Still, it can be said that those of us who have publicly talked about our plight might be influencing those hearts and minds and empowering ourselves in the process. I find this an interesting question and one that goes beyond Goffman's theory and most of what's been written about stigma since Goffman.

Empowerment is a difficult concept sociologically. Generally, it has been psychological in nature. Basically, it has been constructed as a sense of personal identity that rises above or beyond one's social identity. From a sociological point-of-view, empowerment may not change group dynamics that much and could be seen as problematic because it can be used to ignore social dynamics. In other words, if I feel empowered but the power dynamics have not really changed, am I just reinforcing those dynamics instead of changing them?

But blogging is a different aspect of this empowerment. Blogging is social. Blogging is creating the possibility of changing the dynamic. And blogging can be a form of organizing into groups of resistance to power.

I share a portion of our book with my Soc 101 students and ask questions about stigma management in relationship to the excerpt. One of the questions is about what the author (me) can do about the fat stigma? The answer I'm looking for is "nothing" because a stigmatized person is not the one who can change it. But I often give partial credit for another answer that comes up frequently: the author is changing the stigma by challenging it, writing about it and living differently.

I like the process identified in this research. It rings true to me personally. I had several crisis moments that led me to empowerment. But I think that there is another stage that bloggers move to as it were and that is challenging power structures. In a way my movement of my writing from FattyPatties to the book to now blogging for Psychology Today is an example of that transformation from a personal experience to an empowered experience to someone who challenges the forces that set up the stigma in the first place.

Of course, glance at the comments and you can see that I still am stigmatized in writing about fatism. But with the new media and the ability to be "out" in much more public ways, perhaps it is time to expand Goffman's ideas and challenge the concept that the discredited cannot find a voice in social discourse. It is, of course, a complex question.

Sociology and the Space Shuttle

As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.


Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.

Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.

We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.

As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.

Enjoy!

(note, depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a few minutes to load)

CSN SCHEDULE SPRING 2011--TELL YOUR FRIENDS :)

I just confirmed my teaching schedule for Spring 2011:

SOC 205 001 30438 6:00PM-8:50PM R CY1684 CY 24-Jan 22-May

SOC 101 817 30400 12:30PM-1:50PM TR WCHI302 WC 24-Jan 22-May

SOC 101 824 30414 9:30AM-12:20PM T WCHC222 WC 24-Jan 22-May


Former 101 students -- note I'm teaching an upper level class, SOC 205, Ethnic Groups in Contemporary Societies (which is also an Anthropology class). So I hope to see you again.

Cheers,
Dr Pattie

Going to be a Student again this Fall

We are a week and a day away from the start of Fall semester and I find myself more jittery than usual. The reason is that I've decided to learn Spanish. In addition to teaching at CSN this semester, I'm going to be a student at CSN.

I'm nervous because this will be the 5th language I've tried to learn and the only one that has stuck in English. This is way out of my comfort zone. It will be interesting to see how it affects my teaching. I think I'm pretty empathetic already but it will definitely be a different perspective.

I do have a lot more support than previous attempts and Spanish is pervasive in Las Vegas. It won't be hard to have opportunities for immersion. The second language I attempted to learn was Latin and it was the one that stuck (took Latin in Jr. High, German in High School and French in undergrad). I'm hoping the Latin will help. I suspect it will.

The downside is that this is not my natural inclination and I'm old for learning languages. I've read the studies about language acquisition and multiple languages are best learned as a child. I did well in my French classes (in my late 30s), but within six weeks of finishing the course I lost it all. Well, maybe not all, but I can barely parse out writing in French.

It will be an interesting and challenging experience no matter what happens. I like learning new things. I will keep you posted.

Looking for Participants in Study at Purdue--NO MORE

MICHAELA HAD SUCH A LARGE RESPONSE THAT THE SURVEY CLOSED IN A LITTLE OVER 3 DAYS! -- SHE SAYS THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT!
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Michaela Null, a doctoral student in Sociology at Purdue University is looking for individuals who are interested in volunteering to participate in her study on the "embodiment of size-accepting fat women, with attention to the ways in which gender, race, orientation, and body size intersect" (from her website):

If you are interested in volunteering to participate in an interview, I ask that you take an electronic informational survey, which will take approximately 5 minutes. Please go here and complete the informational survey. After all survey data is collected, participants will be selected for interviews, which will be conducted in-person, by phone, or via internet video chat, and will last between an hour and an hour and a half.

Participation is voluntary and participants must be at least 18 years old.

This project has been approved by my university’s Institutional Review Board, which protects human subjects of research. I will provide confidentiality to all volunteers and participants will be referred to by a pseudonym in all research documents.

If you have any questions regarding this study, you can contact me at mnull@purdue.edu. For more information on me, you can access my university profile. You can also contact Professor Eugene Jackson, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, at jacksone@purdue.edu.

Sincerely,

Michaela A. Null, Doctoral Student in Sociology, Purdue University