How do students’ accounts of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees?

Ashwin, Paul and Abbas, Andrea and McLean, Monica (2014) How do students’ accounts of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees? Higher Education, 67 (2). pp. 219-234. ISSN 0018-1560

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Abstract

In this article we examine how students’ accounts of the discipline of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of 86 interviews with 32 sociology and criminology students over the course of their undergraduate degrees, we constituted five different ways of accounting for sociology. These ranged from describing sociology as a form of personal development focused on developing the students’ opinion to describing sociology as a partial way of studying the relations between people and society. The majority of students expressed more inclusive accounts of sociology over the course of their degrees. However, some students’ accounts suggested they had become disengaged with sociology. We argue that the differences in the ways that students were disengaged were not captured by our phenomenographic categories. In conclusion, we argue that our analysis illustrates the crucial role that students’ relations to knowledge play in understanding the transformative nature of higher education

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Higher Education
Additional Information:
The original publication is available at www.link.springer.com
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3308
Subjects:
?? conceptionsknowledgephenomenographysociologystudentslawgeneral arts and humanitiesarts and humanities(all) ??
ID Code:
66317
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
17 Sep 2013 08:04
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
25 Sep 2024 00:31