Assignment Family in the News

Paper 1 Assignment Family in the News

100 points

Purpose:

For this Paper assignment you will find and interpret from a sociological perspective a news article on a family-related topic that interests you.

Knowledge: After doing this assignment you will:

· Understand how the sociological perspective and the public and private family concepts can be used to understand everyday family phenomena.

· Recognize how existing sociological theories and knowledge can be used to understand new phenomena.

Skills: After doing this assignment you will be able to:

· Articulate how sociology can be used to interpret observed family phenomena.

· Explain what theory is and articulate one specific sociological theory of family.

· Use academic conventions to write, argue, and cite.

· Integrate ideas and support from sociological works.

Tasks:

· Find a news article published since 2000 in English in a national paper that reports on or speaks about a family phenomenon, from anywhere in the world.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, are acceptable sources. Check with the instructor if you select an article from a source different from this list.

Please note: as a UW student you have free access to many news articles through the UW libraries. For continued and free access to an article you find say through an internet search, locate and use it for free via the UW libraries’ system. (Sometimes the articles located via the library databases may have slightly different titles or publication dates.) Utilize your UW librarians, via chat or in person, to help you locate free access to your article.

· Read the article, taking notes on what you think may be sociologically relevant points. Pay special attention to details that might relate to ideas and social developments that we have explored.

· Write an 800+ word double-spaced 12-point font paper, labeled with a title and your name and date, in which you:

· Summarize very briefly what the news article reports on

· Demonstrate your ability to apply sociological concepts and to the phenomenon being reported on in your news article. At minimum:

· Define and explain the sociological perspective, the role of theory in sociology, one specific theory, and the concepts of public and private family.

· Apply the above to your article.

· Integrate ideas, discussion, examples from a minimum of 3 course materials (at least 2 readings and 1 lecture).

· Create in-text citations any time you use ideas, words, findings from other sources, using APA citation style, like this: (Qian and Lichter 2011). If you use a particularly well-stated quote, you must use quotation marks and a parenthetical citation with a page number, like this: (Cherlin 2013, p. 428). Limit your use of direct quotes to two.

· Include a Reference section or page at the end of your paper that has full bibliographic entries in APA style that correspond to the-text citations in your paper.

· Check the paper against the grading rubric in Canvas.

· Label the paper’s file as SOC352P1YourlastnameFirstinitial and save as a .docx or similar file (pdf’s will not be accepted).

· Submit to Paper 1 Assignment in Canvas before you move on to Lesson 4.

To submit your assignment:

· Use the +Submit Assignment link located in the top right corner.

· Click the Choose File button to find and select the saved document file.

· Click the Submit Assignment button to turn in your assignment.

Criteria for Success:

An example of an appropriate article for Paper 1:

Kantor, J. and J. Silver-Greenberg. (2013). A stay-at-home dad’s dilemma, when marriage ends. Motherlode blog. New York Times. (http://nyti.ms/1avAuc8)

See the attached rubric for criteria for success. The explanations for the ratings on the rubric are the following:

· Sophisticated: The criteria have been met with an outstanding, creative, sophisticated argument, presentation, skill, understanding.

· Developed: The criteria have been met with a fine, developed argument, presentation, skill, understanding. There is room for more sophistication.

· Emerging: The criteria have been met with an emerging or minimal argument, presentation, skill, understanding. There is room to indicate a more developed level.

· Absent or inadequate: The criteria have not been met adequately or at all.