SOLUTION: RCGC Sociology Ability Grouping and Tracking in Schools Essay

Write an essay response to the questions listed below. Your paper should begin with an overview of your opinion and summary of data supporting it, rely on evidence from the readings stated in a clear and organized manner, and conclude with a re-stating of your thesis statement based on the evidence you cover. The paper should be approximately two-and-a-half pages double-spaced with citations of our relevant sources to provide evidence for your argument. Include a bibliography. Post your writing on the Blackboard course site in the appropriately marked portal.

The questions are:

Find and review an academic article from a sociology journal on a topic of your choice that fits within the scope of the course. Beyond summarizing the article, you need to provide a critical review of the content. This means you need to evaluate and determine how successful or not the author(s) was in clarifying and supporting their argument with evidence including how accurate their analysis was based on that data. Does the conclusion(s) the author(s) reaches logically flow from the evidence and is it appropriate in scope (i.e. does it over-generalize or not)? Some additional examples of critique on which you may choose to focus include the appropriateness and reliability of the research methods used and whether or not there is key evidence missing that could have reasonably been collected or included.

There are multiple scholarly journals that cover sociology. You can find these by searching the Rowan College at Burlington County library online (www.rcbc.edu/library) or in person. I especially recommend the following:

American Journal of Sociology

American Sociological Review

Contemporary Sociology

Criminology

Demography

Economy and Society

Journal of Health and Social Behavior

Population and Development Review

Social Forces

Social Indicators Research

Social Networks

Social Problems

Sociology of Education