Social Problems: Sociology in Action

The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award―enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

Wake up your social problems classes! Social Problems: Sociology in Action helps your students learn sociology by doing sociology. 

Social Problems: Sociology in Action will inspire your students to do sociology through real-world activities designed to increase learning, retention, and engagement with course material. Inspired by the best-selling introductory sociology text, Sociology in Action, this innovative new book immerses students in an active learning experience that emphasizes hands-on work, application, and learning by example as they grapple with the causes and consequences of social problems as well as possible solutions. Each chapter explains key concepts and theories in social problems and pairs that foundational coverage with a series of carefully developed learning activities and thought-provoking questions. The comprehensive Activity Guide that accompanies the text provides everything you need to assign, carry out, and assess the activities that will best engage your students, fit the format of your course, and meet your course goals.

This title is accompanied by a complete teaching and learning package.

• Digital Option / Courseware
  SAGE Vantage is an intuitive digital platform that delivers this text’s content and course materials in a learning experience that offers auto-graded assignments and interactive multimedia tools, all carefully designed to ignite student engagement and drive critical thinking. Built with you and your students in mind, it offers simple course set-up and enables students to better prepare for class. Learn more.
  
  • Assignable Video with Assessment
    Assignable video (available with SAGE Vantage) is tied to learning objectives and curated exclusively for this text to bring concepts to life.

• LMS Cartridge (formerly known as SAGE Coursepacks): Import this title’s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don’t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site. 

• SAGE Lecture Spark: Designed to save you time and ignite student engagement, these free weekly lecture launchers focus on current event topics tied to key concepts in Sociology.

Maxine P. Atkinson is Professor Emerita of Sociology at North Carolina State University, a research  extensive university in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Her area of specialty is the scholarship of teaching and learning and her published work has appeared in such journals as Teaching Sociology, The International Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, and TRAILS: TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology.  She is also one of the  authors of the recent American Sociological Association’s work defining best practices in the undergraduate sociology major,   “The Sociology Major in the Changing Landscape of Higher Education: Curriculum, Careers, and Online Learning” in addition to In the Trenches: Teaching and Learning Sociology, co-authored with Kathleen Lowney. She focuses on teaching introductory sociology courses and “Teaching Sociology,” a PhD course required for graduate students at NC State.

Maxine has won an impressive array of teaching awards including the American Sociological Society’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award, ASA’s Section on Teaching and Learning Hans O. Mauksch Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Sociology and the Carla B. Howery Award for Developing Teacher-Scholars, the Southern Sociological Society’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. Maxine was the first woman from NC State University to win the University of North Carolina’s Governor’s award for Excellence in Teaching.

Maxine has served in several administrative positions including being Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at NC State, director of NC States’ first year seminar program, and the Founding Director of the Service Learning Program at NC State. She has also served as Chair of ASA’s Section on Teaching and Learning, and President of the Southern Sociological Society along with a plethora of task forces dedicated to undergraduate sociology. Maxine works as a consultant for other sociology departments as a member of the American Sociological Association’s Departmental Resources Group. 

Kathleen Odell Korgen is Professor of Sociology at William Paterson University, a comprehensive university in Wayne, New Jersey. Kathleen enjoys teaching her students that sociology is a remarkably useful discipline and highlights how “Sociologists in Action” make a positive impact on society. Her published works on race relations and racial identity include From Black to Biracial, Crossing the Racial Divide, Multiracial Americans and Social Class, Race Policy and Multiracial Americans. Her teaching texts, in addition to Sociology in Action, include Our Social World,  The Engaged Sociologist,  Sociologists in Action, , and Social Problems in Action. Kathleen is also the editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology.

 

Kathleen works as a consultant for other sociology departments as a member of the American Sociological Association Departmental Resources Group and received William Paterson University’s award for Excellence in Scholarship/Creative Expression in 2006 and the university’s award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014.

Mary Nell Trautner is Associate Professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Arizona and her BA from Southwestern University. She is an award-winning teacher of courses in sociology of gender, criminology, sociology of law, and social problems. Mary Nell is an author of a forthcoming active learning textbook on social problems, and has published a variety of articles on topics ranging from physical appearance bias and images of women in popular media to day labor workers’ legal knowledge and environmental pollution. She is active in the American Sociological Association and Law & Society Association. In her free time, she enjoys travel and scuba diving.