Assignment
2 – Sociological Imagination and the Future of Work/Education. Due the end of
week 7. Assignment should be a minimum of 700 words, not including the
reference list. Worth 16% of final grade. This assignment assumes that you have
studied the Learning Resource materials for week 6. It may help you to go back
and review your Discussion post and the Learning Resource materials for Week 1.
Please structure your assignment as an essay, not as a list. Be sure that your
assignment has an introduction and a conclusion. Your assignment should be
structured as follows:
Part 1: Introduction In a
single paragraph, provide the reader with the key points you will be addressing
in this assignment.
Part 2 (300-400 words): Sociological
imagination Briefly discuss and define the sociological imagination, which
you learned about in Week 1 of this course. Identify and explain at least two
broader social condition(s) related to education, the workforce, and/or the
economy that might affect your personal future plans for work and/or education.
You might find a relevant social condition in your Week 6 Learning Resources.
Some examples of social conditions are automation in the workplace,
polarization of the workforce, globalization, and the wage gap between men and
women. Then go to the “Future of Work” page (https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/economy-work/business-workplace/future-of-work/) or
the “Education” page (https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/other-topics/education/) of
the Pew Research Center and find an article related to one of the social
conditions that you identified.What three key research findings in the article
do you find most relevant to this social condition, and why are they relevant?
Part 3 (200-300 words): Sociological
perspectives Use one of the three main sociological perspectives
(functionalism, conflict theory, or symbolic interactionism) to analyze one of
the social conditions that you chose. First, briefly explain the perspective.
Then answer the question: How might you use that perspective to explain/analyze
the social condition? For example, if you choose the condition of a wage gap
between men and women, how might a conflict theorist explain why this gap
exists in society?
Part 4: Conclusion/Reflection
In a final thorough paragraph, explain what you learned from this
assignment. Based on what you have learned about sociology and social
conditions, how might you modify your plans for future education and career?
Please explain one key aspect of your plans for the future that you might
change because of what you learned in your sociology course this term. If you
wouldn’t change anything, explain why.
Part 5: Reference List Your Reference List should include all the resources that you have cited in your Assignment. At the very least, it should include the reference information for the Week 1 and 6 Learning Resources, as well as the Pew Research article that you discussed.
There
are plenty of people pontificating about the future of work/education. And
while there are many, many theories out there apocalyptically predicting a
drastic change, the truth is that it is much too early to tell. One way to look
at a scenario would be through a sociological imagination; this does not
necessarily mean you have to be a sociologist. What it means is that one needs
to put oneself in the center of a globalized world and figure out how things
got here, where they are going, and what kind of future they will have. It is
essential to understand sociological imagination, social conditions related to
education, the workforce, and the economy that might affect your plans.