Working to understand why different faculty members choose particular types of texts for their classes, Associate Professor of Sociology Julie Collins-Dogrul worked closely with Kenia Saldana ’15 to examine the reasoning behind their selection.
The paper, Text Selection and Course Design: Faculty Perspectives on Critical Reading and Critical Thinking, was published in the the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and dives into their research where they surveyed 36 sociology faculty from twelve private colleges and universities in California. Collins-Dogrul and Saldana were specifically interested in learning why they choose textbooks or alternatives to textbooks, such as academic journals.
“What was interesting to us was that faculty were willing to invest much more time in creating their courses and lesson plans from scratch rather than using the structure of a textbook in order to gain opportunities to develop their students’ critical reading and critical thinking skills,” said Collins-Dogrul. “They also weren’t just focused on helping students developing these skills. The faculty respondents themselves valued using articles and monographs in their teaching because it helped them grow intellectually and stay engaged in their field.”
Collins-Dogrul enjoys collaborating with her students and often brings them into the research she is conducting. This is the third article she has published with a Whittier student as its co-author.
