Week 4 — Mapping a Self: Agents, Mirrors, and Stages

Assignment 4 of the term — map who taught you to be you, walk a first day through Cooley's mirror, and explain it to someone who thinks only families matter.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, evidence-based map. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week you learned how a person learns a culture and becomes a self: who does the teaching, how a self forms in other people's eyes, and how a self can be stripped and rebuilt. Week 1 gave you the three perspectives and the two levels of analysis, and Week 3 showed what a culture is made of; this assignment puts both to work on your own socialization. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Sociology in Action Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will map socialization in your own life, or, if you prefer to keep your own life private, in the life of an illustrative person you describe. Either choice earns the same credit, and an illustrative person stays unnamed.

Work these two problems, showing how you got each count:

1. You map 6 agents of socialization and give 2 lessons you learned from each one. How many lessons is that in all?
2. You walk 2 first-day scenes through the 3 steps of Cooley's looking-glass self. How many step labels do you write?

Beside each count, add the interpretation that makes it sociology:

• Problem 1, the agent map. For each of the six agents (family, peers, school, media, religion, the workplace), write two short lessons and say what that agent taught. For the school agent, make at least one lesson part of the hidden curriculum (an unwritten lesson about obedience, punctuality, or hierarchy). Then write one sentence about a skill on your map that shows nature and nurture working together.
• Problem 2, the mirror and the stages. Pick two first-day scenes (a first day at a job, a team, a school, or a new group). Walk each one through Cooley's three steps in order: imagined appearance, imagined judgment, self-feeling. Then give one example of a Mead stage (preparatory, play, or game) from your own childhood or from a child you have watched, and say where the generalized other shows up. Apply the one-authority test to one setting you know and say whether it is a total institution. Finish with one sentence from each of the three perspectives about one lesson on your map, naming each level (macro or micro).

Explain it to a non-expert

A parent tells you, "Kids today are shaped by their families, full stop; friends and phones don't really matter." Write a 3–5 sentence message to that parent that names at least two other agents of socialization and what they teach, explains the looking-glass self in everyday words, and names one limit of your own map, such as that it describes one life and cannot speak for every family. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a library volunteer explaining to a new helper why the library's quiet rule matters. Model answer: "Nobody is born knowing to whisper in a library; people pick it up by watching others and by a few raised eyebrows. That makes the quiet rule something we learned together, not something natural. It matters because people come here to study, and the rule only works if everyone keeps it. The limit is that quiet rules differ from place to place, so a visitor from another library may not know ours yet."

Use that pattern for your message to the parent, with your own wording and evidence.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft both counts, the agent map, the mirror-and-stages work, and your message to the parent before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show how you got each count when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one lesson, step, or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write the work for you, and you decide how much of your own life to share.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for an introductory sociology course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about socialization: the agents that teach a culture, Cooley's looking-glass self, Mead's stages, total institutions, and the three perspectives. Do not write my assignment for me, do not invent work I did not show, never invent a statistic, a study, or a quotation, never ask me to share more about my private life than I offer, and never judge me or anyone I describe.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. I may map my own life or an unnamed illustrative person; both earn the same credit.
PROBLEM P1: You map 6 agents of socialization and give 2 lessons you learned from each one. How many lessons is that in all?
PROBLEM P2: You walk 2 first-day scenes through the 3 steps of Cooley's looking-glass self. How many step labels do you write?
After each count, I must interpret it: for P1, two lessons for each of the six agents (family, peers, school, media, religion, the workplace) saying what each agent taught, at least one hidden-curriculum lesson for the school agent (an unwritten lesson about obedience, punctuality, or hierarchy), and one sentence showing nature and nurture working together; for P2, two first-day scenes walked through Cooley's three steps in order (imagined appearance, imagined judgment, self-feeling), one Mead stage example with where the generalized other shows up, the one-authority test applied to one setting, and one sentence from each of the three perspectives naming its level (macro or micro). I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a parent who believes only families shape children, naming at least two other agents and what they teach, explaining the looking-glass self in everyday words, and naming one limit of my map. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.
Course facts to hold me to: the looking-glass self is Cooley's (1902); the preparatory, play, and game stages and the generalized other are Mead's (1934); total institutions are analyzed in Goffman's Asylums (1961). The generalized other is society's expectations in general, never one specific person. A total institution is a place where one authority controls every part of daily life, not any strict place.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct counts (20 points), socialization reasoning (40 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (20 points), and showing work so it can be checked (20 points). For each of P1 and P2, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 count points, 10 reasoning points, 5 clarity points, or 5 showing-work points. Sum both problems within each criterion. Count my message to the parent only with P2.
COUNT UNITS: A correct count = 2; the right values and operation with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing count or the wrong values or operation = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent correct notation.
REASONING UNITS: For P1, all three parts accurate (a lesson for each agent saying what it taught, a hidden-curriculum lesson, and a nature-and-nurture sentence) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. For P2, all parts accurate (both scenes through Cooley's three steps in order with Cooley credited, a Mead stage example with the generalized other as society's expectations in general, the one-authority test applied, three lenses each with its level, and the message to the parent with at least two agents and one limit) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. Crediting the looking-glass self to Mead, reading the generalized other as one person, or calling any strict place a total institution earns no unit for that part. Naming a term alone does not earn a unit.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labeled evidence understandable to someone new to sociology, with technical terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or jargon = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the starting values and the operation behind the count are visible = 2; a relevant but incomplete value or step = 1; a count alone or no method = 0. A visible method stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both counts with their interpretations AND written my message to the parent AND revised at least one lesson, step, or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; never round it. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my counts and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with both counts, the agent map, the mirror-and-stages work, and your message to the parent — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of your agent map with a short note; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 4 skills — naming the agents of socialization and what each teaches, walking a scene through Cooley's looking-glass self, placing an example in Mead's stages, testing a setting for a total institution, and reading socialization through the three perspectives at their levels — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same two problems, the agent map, the mirror-and-stages work, and the message to the parent. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that answers one of two reflection options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which lesson or step you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have; or (b) which agent on your map you first overlooked, why it was easy to miss, and what it taught you. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The map, the reasoning, the revision, and the final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment, write lessons from a life you did not describe, or add evidence you did not produce. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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