Teaching a global sociology: Suggestions for globalizing the U.S. curriculum

Abstract

Increasingly, educators have called on colleges and universities to prepare their students for a more interdependent world. While sociology has begun to heed the message to globalize the curriculum, efforts to implement relevant teaching practices are hampered by lack of consensus on what "internationalizing" or "globalizing" the classroom actually means and the most effective ways to accomplish this goal. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to identify the multiple meanings of internationalizing or globalizing the classroom, and second, to suggest teaching strategies relevant to the specific pedagogical goals of teaching a more globalized version of the discipline. Three sociology courses-Race and Ethnic Relations, Classical Social Theory, and Migration in a Global Context-are used to illustrate how a more systematic understanding of globalizing the curriculum can improve course design. © American Sociological Association 2010.