@article{Gray_2010, place={Washington DC: American Sociological Association.}, title={THE LIFE HISTORIES AND FAMILY CHANGE PROJECT}, url={https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/the-life-histories-and-family-change-project}, abstractNote={The ‘Life Histories and Family Change Project’ is an undergraduate research seminar that provides students with the opportunity to explore long-term patterns of family change by linking them to individual life stories and family histories. Students conduct in-depth interviews with three generations of a single family. Key family events recorded in each interview are entered into shared SPSS files in order to provide basic demographic information by period and cohort. Individual students then ‘make sense’ of these general patterns of family change by qualitatively analyzing the individual life stories and family histories. This strategy meets a number of important objectives in teaching Sociology of the Family. It helps students to place their immediate, personal experience of family life into a broader comparative-historical and theoretical context. Condescending and often inaccurate stereotypes about family life in the past are dispelled. The classroom becomes an exciting environment for learning and applying sociological concepts as students share vivid and often moving family histories in the group discussion. While the project is located in an Irish university, I believe similar teaching strategies would be effective in other countries, including the United States.}, journal={TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology}, author={Gray, Jane}, year={2010}, month={Apr.} }