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The Curriculum Mapping Toolkit for Sociology

The CMTS and Your Program

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The New Recommendations of the ASA

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The Learning Systems Paradigm

Consensus

Learning

Systems Paradigm

Learner Centered

Communication

Aligned

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Learner Centered Decisions

Teaching Paradigm

    • What issues are important to me?
    • What do I want to teach?
    • Am I challenged and do I feel successful?
    • What do I do to students?

Learning Paradigm

    • What is important to my students?
    • What should my students learn?
    • Are my students challenged and do they experience success?
    • What do I do with students?

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Consensus Driven Decisions

Factional Orientations

    • Power and status matters
    • The past is more important than the present and future
    • I know more than everyone else
    • My perspective doesn’t matter

Consensus Orientations

    • Facts matter
    • Unknowns matter
    • Listening matters
    • Compromise matters

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Aligned Actions

Individualistic Orientations

    • Academic “freedom”
    • My course, my way
    • I am a rock

Team Orientations

    • Collective effort
    • Divisions of labor
    • Leadership
    • Collective goals

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Communication

Uncommunicated Curriculum

    • Hoops to jump through

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Communicated Curriculum

    • Why these courses?
    • Why these levels?
    • Why these requirements?
    • What is achieved?
    • To what end?

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What your department will gain:

  • Guidance – on how to identify and communicate your collective priorities and interests

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  • Technical Assistance – to reveal your departments strengths and weaknesses

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  • Information – a detailed report that allows for fact-driven decisions

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  • A Stronger Program

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What will we have to do?

  • Hold one or more department meetings to discuss your mission and vision (we provide a tool for this)
  • Identify the purpose(s) of each course in your curriculum in consideration of the Sociological Literacy Framework (we provide a tool for this)
  • Your department representative will integrate this information into the curriculum mapping tool
  • Review your report and consider if you would want to make any changes to your curriculum

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About the Project

  • This project is supported by grants from the American Sociological Association, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, and the National Science Foundation.
  • We will be involving 150 other departments and will share the information they provide with you. Your department or its members will not be identified by name in any publication.
  • Questions can be directed to the co-principle investigators:
    • Stephen Sweet ssweet@ithaca.edu
    • Susan Ferguson fergusos@grinnell.edu
  • Additional information can be found on the project website https://www.ithaca.edu/cmts

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Thank you!

For more information, please contact:

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Susan Ferguson Stephen Sweet

Dept. of Sociology Dept. of Sociology

Grinnell College Ithaca College

fergusos@grinnell.edu ssweet@ithaca.edu

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