Polling to Interrogate Students’ Lay Definitions of Violence

Abstract

Students in social problems, deviance, criminology, and similar courses often conflate crime, violence, and deviance. Defining violence sociologically is challenging, and speaking clearly about its social functions requires understanding its boundaries and contradictions. This activity challenges the normative assumptions present in students’ existing...

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Details

Subject Area(s):

Criminal Justice, Criminology/Delinquency, Deviant Behavior/Social Disorganization, Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems, Law and Society, Peace, War, World Conflict, and Conflict Resolution

Resource Type(s):

Assessment, Class Activity

Class Level(s):

College 100, College 200, High School

Class Size(s):

Any

Usage Notes

This lesson plan was designed for a Zoom meeting of a synchronous undergraduate “Violence and Society” course, which enrolled mainly upperclassmen in, including majors in Sociology, Psychology, Pre-Law, and Public Health. It could easily be adapted to suit any course where violence is a major topic by tweaking the polling questions. It uses Zoom’s...

Learning Goals and Assessments

Learning Goal(s):

1. Students will understand that they possess preexisting mental models of violence which include certain actions and exclude others, and that these models are not universal.
2. Students will begin to justify their bounded definitions of violence with reference to empirical benchmarks, rather than emotional reactions.
3. Students will begin to become aware of and evaluate the social origin and outcomes of those cognitive schemas around violence.

Goal Assessment(s):

1. By answering poll questions, students necessarily include and exclude certain behaviors from being “violent," thus externalizing formerly-unspoken definitions and standards of violence. By viewing the final results of the poll, students visualize the disagreement within their classroom community.
2. Students analyze and respond to the descriptive statistics the poll generates by free-writing on the similarities and differences in their personal responses and hypothesizing why they appeared using sociological thinking. Students will then share their hypotheses with a partner, then with the class in discussion.
3. In discussion, supported by the instructor, students justify their voting choices and explain their reasoning in sociological terms.