Co-Teaching Social Research Methods in a Joint Sociology/Anthropology Department

Abstract

In the course of developing and co-teaching Social Research Methods (SRM), an interdisciplinary, upper-division undergraduate course at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS), the authors discovered that this type of partnership is ripe ground for exploring integration of anthropology and sociology on epistemological and methodological levels. Their attempt to make disciplinarity and the process of interdisciplinary integration transparent to students has transformed the course, student experience in the joint major, departmental goals, and the authors' own scholarship. This paper describes challenges in the development of the course and provides disciplinary "toolkits” from sociology and anthropology, which are illustrated through a semester-long, hands-on project involving a campus racial climate survey.