Journal Article — Reflexive Pedagogy and the Sociological Imagination — by L. Lynda Harling Stalker and Jason Pridmore

This article suggests that enabling students to develop their ‘sociological imagination’ is best accomplished through the use of ‘reflexive pedagogy.’ Reflexive pedagogy is here described as the dual process of guiding students through different modes of sociological learning while maintaining a critical and reflexive self examination of one’s own approach to instruction. Using Jennifer Mason’s (2002) description of the three ways of ‘reading’ data, this paper indicates that sociological learning can be seen to occur in three similar modes: literal, interpretive and reflexive. In progressing through these modes of learning, students are able to acquire the sociological imagination more fully. Further, instructors who model these practices by being transparent about their own pedagogical practice provide an example of how the sociological imagination can be employed even within the context of sociological instruction.