How Do We Integrate Students’ Vocational Goals into Introduction to Sociology Curricula,and What Are the Effects of Doing So?

Abstract

President Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal has brought renewed attention to community colleges’ capacity to connect the college and career aspirations of today’s undergraduates. Despite this capacity, however, community colleges have historically offered students two distinct educational pathways: a liberal education transfer-oriented program or a terminal vocational program. In the face of this long-standing and ideological divide, some community college instructors have taken to integrating students’ liberal and vocational learning in individual courses, an act that requires a willingness to define “liberal” and “vocational” learning in broad terms. Through a preliminary qualitative case study and content analysis of students’ assignments, this research explores the nature and impacts of said integration in two spring 2015 sections of Introduction to Sociology at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York.

Keywords

professionalization of student introduction to sociology sociology curriculum student learning work and occupations

At the time of this writing, more than 12 million Americans are enrolled in the nation’s community college system (American Association of Community Colleges 2016). These students are more likely than their baccalaureate-seeking peers to be working, parenting, low-income, female, of color, first generation (college and American), and of nontraditional age (Brock 2010; National Center on Education and the Economy 2013). They turn to community colleges for a variety of reasons, chief among them their desire for an affordable college education and their need for help in achieving immediate or long-term career goals.

President Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal has brought renewed attention to the institution’s unique capacity to connect the college and career aspirations of today’s undergraduate students. Despite this capacity, however, community colleges have historically offered students two distinct educational pathways: a liberal education transfer-oriented program or a terminal vocational program (Cohen and Brawer 2008). Thus, even at an institution charged with their connection, liberal and vocational learning are typically experienced as separate and unrelated fields of inquiry and skill development.

In the face of this division, some community college instructors have taken to integrating students’ liberal and vocational learning in individual courses; an act that requires a willingness to define “liberal” and “vocational” learning in broad terms,¹ additional uncompensated course preparation, and the careful negotiation of disciplinary boundaries and power dynamics (Rose 2012). While Rose (2004) characterizes these instructors’ efforts as engaging and effective, little is known about their nature or impacts. This preliminary research aims to address that gap by exploring the integration of students’ vocational goals into two spring 2015 sections of an Introduction to Sociology course at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York.

Historical Background

America’s first independent public community college—Joliet Junior College—was established in Chicago in 1901 under the guidance of William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, and J. Stanley Brown, principal of Chicago’s Joliet High School (Brint and Karabel 1989). The details of its founding reflect the institution’s original goals: (1) divesting four-year colleges of their responsibilities to first- and second-year students and (2) expanding the American high school experience to include college-level work (Mellow and Heelan 2008). Consistent with these goals, America’s first community college students enrolled primarily in liberal arts courses designed to transfer as academic credit toward a baccalaureate degree (Brint and Karabel 1989).

Two decades after its founding, America’s community college system matriculated only a small percentage of the nation’s college students: In 1920, only 2 percent of all first-year college students studied at a community college (Eells 1931). Neither prestigious nor popular, the system sought to identify—and fill—a niche in the field of higher education. For this reason and as early as 1930, community college administrators, who had a significant stake in the survival of their system, began to steer their institutions away from liberal curricula and toward vocational coursework (Brint and Karabel 1989).

The vocationalization of the American community college crystallized in the 1980s, just as the system’s student population began to surge and the nation’s economy began to decline (Brint and Karabel 1989). Enrollment statistics from this time evidence the extent of this vocationalization: While two-thirds of community college students enrolled in liberal education coursework for transfer in 1970, by 1980 almost the same number of community college students enrolled in vocational programs (Ballantine 2001:271). Many students came to appreciate and benefit from this institutional shift in direction; others, however, were cut off from their larger academic goals by the system’s weakened liberal education programs and narrowing transfer function (Brint and Karabel 1989).

In the American community college of today, students continue to confront this programmatic divide. Now referred to as career and technical education (CTE) programs, vocational programs tend to enroll students pursuing a certificate or an associate degree (often an AAS) in skilled/middle-skill trades. While some of these programs include general education coursework oriented toward a future degree, students’ experiences in CTE and liberal education courses rarely intersect on a conceptual or experiential level. Likewise, contemporary liberal education programs, which tend to enroll community college students interested in transferring with an AS or an AA to a baccalaureate-granting institution, are seldom institutionalized in a way that highlights their applied dimensions.

Theoretical Framework

The dual/dueling programmatic orientations of the American community college reflect an ideological divide with a much longer history.² According to T. Lewis (1994), a distinction between liberal and vocational knowledge can be found in the earliest works of Western philosophy, in, for example, the Platonic rejection of utilitarianism and early characterization of liberal education as an end in and of itself and in the distinct privileging of intellect over physicality in Aristotle’s Politics. Yet, in T. Lewis’s (1994) account, the champions of liberal knowledge are vociferous and prolific, and the defenders of vocational knowledge are few. In fact, most proponents of vocational knowledge focus not on the aforementioned conceptual distinction but on the organization of knowledge in schools. Roth’s (2014) chapter on the critics of purely liberal learning in America confirms this point. In it, he describes Benjamin Franklin’s critique of formal decontextualized liberal education, and he reveals the role German technical education played in early American efforts to make higher education more “practical,” but he provides no evidence of the valuing of a purely vocational knowledge as such.

Although oversimplified, this brief account captures the ideas that both created and perpetuate the divide between liberal education and vocational programs in the American community college: As an end in and of itself, liberal knowledge risks corruption by a vocational orientation, and as a pragmatic utility, vocational education risks dilution by a liberal orientation. Missing from this account, however, are those ideas that bridge this conceptual divide; like the ideas of Saint Augustine, who saw the value in all forms of knowledge and considered the mechanical arts a means for understanding scripture (Stokes 1912), and even the ideas of Dewey (1916), whose experiential educational philosophy encouraged students’ critical reflection on the world, including the context, processes, and organization of work.

For T. Lewis (1994), such ideas constitute a kind of progressive vocationalism: an educational philosophy focused not on the development of vocational skills but on the synthesis of liberal curricula and students’ vocational interests. Consistent with this bridging perspective is the idea of “integrative learning,” where students’ course work is applied to and experienced in real-world contexts (e.g., through academic service-learning, participatory action research, and other civic engagement pedagogies).³ Perhaps not surprisingly, the institutions that seem to have most formally embraced the liberal-vocational linkages of “integrative learning” are liberal arts colleges, which are frequent targets of popular and political critiques regarding the “utility” of higher education (Lapovsky 2005).⁴ Yet, according to Rose (2012), given its long history of serving vocational and liberal arts students on the same campus and its embrace of innovative teaching and learning strategies for diverse learners, community colleges might be best positioned for this integrative work.

The breadth and flexibility of sociology renders the Introductory course an appropriate space for this integration in the community college context. After all, it is often in their efforts to balance school and work that community college students come to recognize the “common social forces” and “structural lags” that complicate their lives and beg the sociological perspective (Sweet and Meiksins 2013:xvii). However, to date, little is known about the nature and impacts of instructor efforts to integrate liberal and vocational learning in an Introduction to Sociology course at the community college level. In fact, because students’ “integrative learning” tends to occur in upper-level capstone courses or projects, little is known about the nature and impacts of instructor efforts to integrate liberal and vocational learning in an Introduction to Sociology course, in general.⁵ This research aims to address that gap by asking and answering the following three questions: How can we integrate students’ vocational goals into Introductory curricula? What, if anything, is gained and/or lost in this integration? How does this integration impact students’ learning of course material and their vocational goals?

Data and Methods

Institutional Context

This research occurred at Queensborough Community College (QCC), an open-enrollment minority-serving institution in The City University of New York (CUNY). In the fall of 2014, QCC enrolled 14,197 degree/certificate students. In that semester, approximately 67 percent of degree/certificate students studied full-time, 53 percent of degree students were female, and the average age of a degree student was 23 years old (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2015). In that calendar year, almost 40 percent of QCC students lived in a household earning less than $20,000 a year, more than half of students worked for pay, and approximately 70 percent of first-time, full-time, first-year students received Pell grants to attend college (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2014, 2015).

Reflecting the diversity of the borough of Queens, 32 percent of degree- and certificate-seeking students attending QCC in the fall of 2014 described themselves as Hispanic, 26 percent as black/non-Hispanic, 18 percent as white/non-Hispanic, and 26 percent as Asian or Pacific Islander (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2015). Additionally, 25 percent of degree/certificate students were born outside of the United States, representing 139 different nations and speaking 87 different languages (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2015).

Approximately 70 percent of first-time, full-time fall 2014 QCC students needed some form of developmental coursework, with 12 percent requiring triple remediation in reading, writing, and math (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2015). Significantly, most QCC students have college and career aspirations that extend beyond their completion of an associate degree. While the majority of 2013–2014 QCC graduates earned a liberal arts degree, fall 2014 enrollment saw an increase in the number of students opting for career degree programs (Queensborough Community College Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2015).

Instructional Setting and Course Design

Central to this research are two spring 2015 sections of an Introduction to Sociology course taught by the author. The first section enrolled 25 students, while the second section enrolled 23 students. All enrolled students were queried for consent to examine their work for IRB-approved research purposes.

At QCC, Introduction to Sociology courses are designed to satisfy three levels of learning outcomes/objectives: CUNY-wide general education learning outcomes for courses oriented toward the study of “Individual and Society,” QCC’s general education objectives, and course objectives set by QCC’s sociology faculty. While the CUNY and QCC general education outcomes/objectives coalesce around students’ development of critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills, use of evidence in written and oral arguments, and integration of disciplinary perspectives at the micro, meso, and macro levels, the Introductory course objectives are appropriately sociological: Students must be able to demonstrate familiarity with sociological theory and paradigms, describe the principles of social research methodologies, and convey an understanding of social structure and related areas of study.

To best achieve these outcomes/objectives while integrating students’ vocational goals, the two introductory course sections were organized around the same problem-based question: How can sociology help me to think critically about my intended career? Each of the seven course modules—the sociological perspective and paradigms; culture; social deviance; identity; social groups, networks, and institutions; inequality (race, class, and gender); and social change—took up this question by synthesizing relevant concepts with an appropriate research method (content analysis, observational fieldwork, interview methods, experimental research, and secondary data analysis). Details about the course assignments follow in the Results section.

Analysis

Students’ assignments were collected, scanned, graded, and returned within the week following their due date. At the end of the semester, after students’ final course grades had been submitted to the college registrar, the scanned copies of consenting students’ assignments became data for qualitative case study research and content analysis.

A case study engages multiple sources of data in a researcher’s effort to answer how/why questions about contemporary phenomena in real-life contexts (Yin 2003). As such, this research best reflects three different case study types: a descriptive case study, where the researcher’s intent is to describe an intervention and its context (Yin 2003); an exploratory case study, where the researcher aims to explore a range of undefined outcomes (Yin 2003); and an intrinsic case study, where the researcher has an interest in the case (Stake 1995).

Within the bounds of case study research, multiple sources of data were analyzed via content analysis, which Babbie (2001:305, 309) describes as “the study of recorded human communications” through “a coding operation” that “(transforms) raw data into a standardized form.” This content analysis began with a process of open coding. Although inductively generated, these codes did not emerge in a vacuum: The three research questions and aforementioned theoretical framework helped to guide what elements of students’ assignments were deemed interesting and/or important (Snow, Morrill, and Anderson 2003). A second phase of coding relied on these emergent codes, which were broad and inclusive to allow for multiple associations within and across students’ assignments.

Results

How Can We Integrate Students’ Vocational Goals into Introductory Curricula?

Students’ vocational goals were integrated across the three component parts of their coursework. The first part was comprised of reflective journal entries, which students wrote at each class meeting in a notebook collected periodically by the author. The reflection prompts connected course content and outcomes/objectives to students’ vocational goals and scaffolded students’ thinking/skill development toward successful completion of their research projects. For example, one early semester prompt asked: What do I need to know about how society is structured, has changed, and is changing to understand you as a current and future worker?

The second part consisted of two exam essays. Each essay asked students to connect the exam content and relevant course skills/activities, like critical thinking and evidence-based writing, to their experiences as students and workers.

The third and most significant part included three research projects. The first research project linked fieldwork at a worksite to course content on culture. Prior to beginning this project, students learned how sociologists define culture and why fieldwork is an appropriate method for the study of culture. They also learned the difference between fieldwork and analysis of fieldnotes by comparing/contrasting Besen’s (2004) work-focused fieldnote with Besen-Cassino’s (2013) later analysis of that fieldwork. Students’ grasp of this distinction was also scaffolded: They selected a worksite at which to conduct their fieldwork; conducted one hour of observation at that site; recorded, typed, and turned in their fieldnote for a grade (they could later revise/resubmit); and then completed a two-page analysis paper for a separate grade and opportunity to revise/resubmit. Successful analysis papers applied concepts related to the study of culture to excerpts from the fieldnote, considered the specific and general findings about culture and work that emerged at the field site, and connected these findings to students’ career goals.

The second research project linked data from an interview with an individual employed in a career of interest to course content on socialization and identity. Prior to completing this project, students learned how sociologists define socialization and identity and why interviews are an appropriate method for the study of both. Students in each section read J. Lewis (2008), which grounded their collaborative development of five work-focused socialization/identity questions for their interviewees. This project was also scaffolded: Students began by conducting and transcribing (for credit and the opportunity to revise/resubmit) a half-hour interview with an individual employed in a career of interest. After this, they spent a class period learning how sociologists code interview data by examining transcripts of work-focused interviews from Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs (Bowe et al. 2001) and StoryCorp.org.⁶ Their analysis papers related concepts like socialization/identity to their graded interview transcripts, considered the specific and general findings about socialization/identity and work that emerged in their data, and connected these findings to their career goals. They were given the opportunity to revise/resubmit this analysis paper as well.

The third and final research project incorporated Sweet and Dewitt’s (N.d.-a, N.d.-b) DataCounts! OER modules, which link U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to course content on race- and gender-based inequalities. As summarized and assessed by Sweet and Baker (2011), this module guides students to identify and analyze the extent of gender and racial disparities in the composition and compensation in students’ intended profession. Prior to completing this project, students learned how sociologists define race, gender, and social stratification, as well as the benefits of using statistical techniques to study all three. They also read Pager (2004) and Roos (2010), which reflect intersectional analyses of inequality in the context of work. During one class session, students accessed BLS data and identified, calculated (percentages and ratios), and recorded how race and gender intersect with opportunities and pay in two career fields: postsecondary education and a field of their choice. Students’ calculation errors were corrected in class, and they received credit for completing the classwork. Their analysis papers related gender, race, intersectionality, and social structure to data on their chosen career field and considered the specific and general findings about inequality and work revealed by the data. Students could also revise/resubmit this analysis paper.

What, if Anything, Is Gained and/or Lost in This Integration?

This research reveals the ease with which students’ vocational interests can be integrated into the Introduction to Sociology curricula. It also suggests the distinct benefits of this integration. For example, students noted appreciation for the vocational orientation of the integrated course across their coursework. While many QCC students are enrolled in or headed toward pre-professional CTE courses, and many more work for pay while attending college, students in the integrated course described it as novel in its design: “We as a class learned a lot about the work field, which is very important and useful because you don’t learn about this in any other courses.” This integration also seemed to have a significant impact on students’ engagement with the material and in the course, more generally: “I have enjoyed every single assignment that we have done because it’s all about what I want to be in the future and it has allowed me to learn and see things beyond what I knew and know.”

Prior to implementing this integrated course, the author anticipated two risks in its design. First, as the sociological imagination tends to be new to Introductory students, an integrated course risks them developing the mistaken impression that all sociologists exclusively study work. Second, given that the problem-based question central to the integrated course—How can sociology help me to think critically about my intended career?— brings sociological insights to bear on one individual’s life, a course of this design also risks students developing the mistaken impression that all sociologists solely study micro-level phenomena. However, as indicated in the following quote excerpted from one student’s in-class journal entry, students understood clearly the nature of the discipline, recognizing the sociological imagination as a general way of looking at the world that can and should be applied to any object: “Sociology is the study of the causes and effects that shape generations of people. It’s mostly about studying humans and the way we influence each other, along with other major forces like religion, economy, education, family, etc.”

That said, this integration did not unfold without issue; instead, the issues that arose were at once more mundane and profound than the anticipated risks. For example, this integration took a great deal of time to prep and implement, and that time had to come from somewhere. Most significantly, conceptual depth was often sacrificed for breadth as the author sought to integrate the “core” of the Introductory course with students’ vocational goals. In addition, while the vast majority of students across the two sections focused their attention on a single career, few students had access to worksites or networks in the middle-class careers to which they aspired. As a result, the author had to exercise flexibility with project due dates, draw on personal networks, and engage QCC’s Office of Career Services to help students complete fieldwork and interviews in careers of interest. The silver lining: Many students walked away from the integrated course with at least one new contact in a career of interest. In fact, two students parlayed these contacts into internships for the summer of 2015.

How Does This Integration Impact Students’ Learning of Course Material and Their Vocational Goals?

As a result of this integration, students developed an understanding of sociology that was, in the author’s experience, unique. First, they came to recognize and embrace the predictive capacity of the discipline. Many wrote that sociologists look backwards and forwards, unearthing historical trends and foretelling future change as they studied social processes—like labor market shifts—from a macro perspective: “Sociology is the study of the structures of society and how society functions. This can help us with finding jobs because it shows us what jobs are on the decline and which jobs are most important to society.” Yet, students’ acknowledgement of the predictive capacity of the discipline wasn’t rooted in their understanding of the nature and value of sociological theory; instead, it was grounded in a developing empiricism that was likely encouraged by the research projects and data-rich orientation of the course (both of which are recommended elements of T. Lewis’s 1998 “education about work” curriculum). For example, many students wrote about coming to “pay more attention” to phenomena unfolding around them and about their efforts to make connections between these phenomena and events of the past. They also reflected on the effects of their attention to social patterns and processes, claiming it enabled them to think more clearly about tomorrow. This new perspective on life—and work—seemed to empower students, with many writing that they had become more “decisive” about their future: “I learned that collecting data is a helpful thing to know and can help you with many things in life. Collecting this data can help you make a lot of big decisions, like your intended career or any type of decision for the future.” Yet, when the discipline’s predictive capacity is predicated on an abstract empiricism devoid of theory, the generalizability and transferability of sociological knowledge is potentially at risk. As a result, and in the future, the author will have students aggregate their data (across projects and each other) and relate these collective findings to relevant theoretical literatures.

Second, students in the integrated course came to see intersections of self and society with great clarity. Many sociology instructors struggle with the extent to which Introductory students experience the discipline as “depressing.” Newly aware of the social forces that structure their lives, students can feel pessimistic about possibilities for social change. Such was not the case for students in the integrated course, which connected sociology to their lives and goals. Significantly, this design seemed to position students as savvy insiders, adaptable actors ready to respond to rapidly changing work contexts and other types of social upheaval:

Oblivion to our surroundings is a crucial reason as to why we let our environment control us. By observing critically with a non-biased view, we begin to look at our environment from an outside point of view, finding nuances and opportunities to act that we were never aware of.

Again, however, this takeaway requires careful and deliberate work on the part of the course instructor. For example, students in the integrated course needed regular reminding that they were more than reactive subjects; they were also change agents. Efforts to connect class conversations about inequality to collective action—specifically the intersecting Fight for Fifteen and #BlackLivesMatter movements—were particularly fruitful in highlighting human agency, as well as the power of collaboration, within the course focus on work. These connections were also central to connecting students’ course learning and skill development to their civic engagement and socio-political citizenship.

Additionally, while the integrated coursework affected students’ understanding of sociology, it also impacted their vocational goals. First, many students expressed a stronger commitment to, or a shift in, their occupational goals as a result of the course:

I started this semester without knowing what is ahead of me when it came down to my future profession (career). However, now I have a sense of what I would like to become. I see myself helping people through the law . . . and this class has given me a sense of reality of what I need to achieve these goals.

Significantly, students’ sociological learning seemed to drive these commitments or shifts. For example, students—particularly those who studied a single career across the three research projects—often attributed their continued interest in that career to the data that they had personally collected on that career: “Observing a nurse, interviewing a nurse, and checking data on nurses’ salaries really taught me a lot. I learned that my intended career of nursing is very promising, which encourages me even more to work hard in getting it.” Also noteworthy was the extent to which core course concepts—like “social networks” and “culture”—structured students’ thoughts on future careers. For instance, a student interested in mechanical engineering expressed a stronger connection to that career field because of his understanding of its “culture”:

By utilizing a sociological study of culture, I got a better understanding of the material and non-material products that the “engineering society” creates over time. I also got a better understanding of the tools necessary to do the job, what the proper attire is, and the language which engineers speak.

While this research demonstrates how sociology can mediate students’ career planning and preparation, one can imagine the critical effects of integrating students’ vocational interests with the methods and insights from other liberal arts courses as well (see e.g., Okker 2014). Such is ripe for additional research.

Second, students were also vocationalized through their integrated coursework. For example, many came to conceptualize specific (but transferrable) sociological skills—like critical thinking, ethical data collection and analysis, and objective reading and writing—as workforce skills. Some students described employing these skills in their current workplace: “I have learned that I need to be more observant. I became more observant in my work and started doing my job better. I do my work the best I ever have from what I learned in this class.” Others referenced that these skills would likely prove valuable in their future careers. Still others began to define schoolwork and paid work as similarly “skilled,” each requiring honest effort, collaboration, timeliness, organization, and respect. Thus, the value of integrating students’ vocational goals into Introduction to Sociology curricula—for students’ course and career success—should be explored further.

Conclusions and Implications

Despite the institution’s framing and their interest, most American community college students confront a divide between liberal/vocational curricula and courses. This divide has a long institutional history, and it reflects a larger ideological debate about the inherent and contradictory values of liberal and vocational learning. Yet, consistent with Rose (2012), who argues that community college students’ occupational goals can enliven their liberal learning at the same time that their liberal learning can add depth to their occupational goals, some community college instructors have begun to integrate liberal and vocational learning in individual courses.

This research engages a case study methodology and content analysis of student assignments to understand the nature and impacts of this integration in the Introduction to Sociology course at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York. In doing so, it addresses and answers the following questions: How can we integrate students’ vocational goals into Introductory curricula? What, if anything, is gained and/or lost in this integration? How does this integration impact students’ learning of course material and their vocational goals? This preliminary analysis reveals that students’ vocational goals can be integrated into Introductory coursework toward constructive ends. Although this integration does require time and care, at times complicating the delivery of course material, it does not negate the broader orientation—and more general outcomes and objectives—of the Introductory course and/or the discipline. Furthermore, efforts to achieve this integration in the community college context stand to develop and capture the sociological imaginations, engage and develop the professional aspirations and networks, and encourage the social activism of the nation’s most academically and occupationally marginalized undergraduates.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a 2015–2016 Chancellor’s Research Fellowship for CUNY community college faculty as well as a relationship with the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ “Transparency and Problem-centered Learning” project.

Editor’s Note

Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Brandon Bosch, Suzanne Hudd, and Carol Jenkins.

Notes

Author Biography

Amy E. Traver, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology at Queensborough Community College of The City University of New York (CUNY). Traver is interested in intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, adoption, and (dis)abilities in contemporary American families and educational institutions. She has published articles on these topics in such venues as Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Focus, International Journal of Sociology of the Family, and The Journal of Education Policy. Traver is also interested in community college pedagogies. She is the co-editor (with Zivah Perel Katz) of Service Learning at the American Community College: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan 2014).

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