Week 4 Sociology in Action Workshop: One Week of Lessons

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that nobody is born knowing how to act: families, peers, schools, media, religion, and workplaces teach us, and a self grows partly from imagining how others see us. In this workshop you read a small, made-up observation log the way a sociologist would. An unnamed first-year student who has moved to a new city kept a one-week diary of 10 moments when someone taught them how to act. You tally who did the teaching, turn each tally into a share, and spot the looking-glass moments. Then you run one school moment through the three perspectives, observe a setting of your own with the same steps, and ask a chatbot the same questions so you can catch where it goes wrong.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: In one illustrative week of a new student's life, which agents of socialization did the teaching, where does Cooley's looking-glass self show up, and what can a single diary tell you, and not tell you, about how people are socialized?

Workshop data: a one-week observation log of 10 lessons (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative dataset constructed for this workshop, not from a real person: a one-week diary of 10 moments in which an unnamed first-year student in a new city was taught how to act.

• Rows: 10 rows of data, one per logged moment (the log table in Part 4 shows all 10, with a blank column for your notes)
• Columns: entry; what happened; who did the teaching; what was learned; looking-glass moment (Yes or No)
• Agents named: family, peers, school, media, religion, workplace

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet)
• A document or notebook for your written answers

Ways of working

• apply-a-perspective-to-a-case
• read-and-interpret-social-data
• structured-observation-and-reflection

Procedure

1. Open a blank sheet. In row 1 type the headers Entry, Agent, and Looking-glass in columns A, B, and C. In rows 2 to 11 copy each entry number, its teacher from the log, and its Yes or No. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: Rows 2 to 11 hold all 10 entries, one per row.
2. In E2 to E7 type the six agents: Family, Peers, School, Media, Religion, Workplace. In F2 type =COUNTIF($B$2:$B$11,E2) and copy it down to F7. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The six tallies add up to 10.
3. In G2 type =F2/10*100 and copy it down to G7 to turn each tally into a share of the 10 entries. Then in F8 type =COUNTIF($C$2:$C$11,"Yes") and in G8 type =F8/10*100 for the looking-glass moments. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The six agent shares add up to 100, and every share is between 0 and 100.
4. Copy every tally and share into the tally table in Part 4. Then complete the concept table for entries 4, 6, and 10, writing the evidence from the entry in your own words. Check: Each of the three rows names a concept, quotes or paraphrases evidence, and credits a theorist only where the week names one.
5. Choose one setting from your own life (a team, a job, a class, a family meal, or a group chat). Observe it for about 20 minutes, or recall a recent first week somewhere, and log three moments in the observation table: what you observed, which agent or concept it shows, and so what. Check: Three rows are complete, each with an agent or concept from this week.
6. Answer the six analysis questions in your document, then do the critique step with an approved chatbot or the equivalent route. Check: Every answer rests on the log, your own tables, or this week's definitions.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet is available.

Work the same steps by hand. Tally each agent by making a mark beside its name for every entry in the log, count the Yes entries for looking-glass moments, and turn each tally into a share by dividing by 10 and multiplying by 100. Write every division in your document so it can be checked, complete every scaffold table, answer every analysis question, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

This is the workshop's illustrative one-week observation log, kept by an unnamed first-year student in a new city; read every entry before you tally it.

Student scaffold table 1

Entry	What happened (illustrative)	Who did the teaching	What was learned	Looking-glass moment? (Yes or No)	Your note on this entry
1	A parent on a video call reminds the student to raise a problem with the landlord politely before complaining	Family	How to raise a problem respectfully	No
2	A grandparent mails a recipe card and says it is how the family makes the dish	Family	Family traditions are worth keeping	No
3	New roommates explain the apartment's quiet-hours rule	Peers	Shared household norms	No
4	A study-group partner frowns when the student interrupts; the student pictures looking rude, imagines the group judging them, and feels embarrassed	Peers	Wait your turn to speak in the group	Yes
5	Regulars at a pickup soccer game teach the unwritten rule of calling your own fouls	Peers	Honesty among equals on the field	No
6	In the first lecture, everyone stays seated until the class is dismissed, and the student does the same	School	Wait for permission from the person in charge	No
7	A feed of day-in-my-life posts shows what a productive first week looks like; the student imagines how their own week would look posted and feels behind	Media	What a successful week is supposed to look like	Yes
8	A budgeting podcast suggests tracking every purchase for a month	Media	Keep a careful eye on money	No
9	At a new place of worship, a greeter explains when the congregation stands and sits	Religion	The community's rituals	No
10	At a café job orientation, the student watches a shift lead calm an upset customer, practices the same words, pictures how they will look at the register, and imagines the lead approving	Workplace	How to handle a complaint before doing it alone	Yes

Tally the log by agent so you can see which teachers show up most in this one week, then turn each tally into a share of the 10 entries.

Student scaffold table 2

Agent	Entries in the log	Share of the 10 entries (%)
Family
Peers
School
Media
Religion
Workplace
Looking-glass moments (any agent)

Place three entries in this week's concepts so every label rests on evidence from the log.

Student scaffold table 3

Entry	Concept it shows	Evidence from the entry	Theorist and year, if any
4
6
10

Record your own structured observation here, using the same what I observed, which concept, so what steps.

Student scaffold table 4

What I observed	Which agent or concept it shows	So what: what it taught and why it matters

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report each agent's tally and its share of the 10 entries, and the share of entries that are looking-glass moments. Show one division you used.
2. Which agent appears most often in this log, and which appear least? Say in one or two sentences what the tally does and does not tell you about which agent matters most in this student's life.
3. Walk entry 4 or entry 7 through Cooley's three steps in order (imagined appearance, imagined judgment, self-feeling), and name the theorist and the year. Then say which idea from this week entry 10 also shows, and why.
4. Run entry 6 through the three perspectives, one sentence each, naming the level of analysis for each: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Say which hidden-curriculum lesson the entry teaches.
5. Name two limits of this log, such as that it covers one illustrative person for one week, that a diary records what the writer noticed rather than everything that happened, or that a tally counts moments rather than how deeply each one mattered, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude.
6. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) from your own observation table, which agent did the most teaching in the setting you observed, and what would you need to observe next to be more confident? (b) which moment in your own observation is a looking-glass moment, and how would you walk it through Cooley's three steps?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. An illustrative first-year student in a new city kept a one-week log of 10 moments when someone taught them how to act. By who did the teaching, the log has Family 2 entries, Peers 3, School 1, Media 2, Religion 1, and Workplace 1. Three of the 10 entries are looking-glass moments, where the student pictured how they looked to others, imagined being judged, and felt something about it. Please do six things. First, give each agent's share of the 10 entries as a percent. Second, say which sociologist named the looking-glass self and in what year. Third, tell me what this log shows about how first-year students in general are socialized. Fourth, explain whether entry 7, where a feed of day-in-my-life posts made the student feel behind, shows that social media causes low self-esteem. Fifth, if a pooled set of many students' logs showed peers as the most common agent, what would that say about one particular student in the set? Sixth, add any research findings that would help me interpret the log.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often add an outside figure or study to 'help', such as a claim that young adults spend a stated number of hours a day on social media or that a named study proved peers matter most, with no source.
• Chatbots often credit the looking-glass self to George Herbert Mead or call it part of Mead's game stage.
• Chatbots often turn one illustrative student's log into a claim about all first-year students, such as saying first-year students are shaped mostly by peers and barely by family.
• Chatbots often say entry 7 shows that social media causes low self-esteem.
• Chatbots often say that if peers were the most common agent across many students' logs, then each student in the set is shaped most by peers.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two sentences it got wrong, and correct each one with evidence from your tables or this week's definitions.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 3 (analyze culture and socialization — values, beliefs, norms, symbols, and language; ethnocentrism and cultural relativism; the agents of socialization; and the social development of the self in Cooley's and Mead's accounts) and Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "Peers make up 30% of the log, so first-year students are shaped mostly by their friends and hardly at all by family. A well-known national study found that students spend six hours a day on social media, which explains entry 7. Entry 7 proves that social media causes low self-esteem. Mead's looking-glass self explains entries 4, 7, and 10. If peers were the most common agent across a class's logs, then every student in that class is shaped most by peers. Staying seated until class is dismissed is only good manners, so the three perspectives have nothing to say about it." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with evidence from your tables or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All four completed scaffold tables, including your own observation table
• Written answers to all six analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Sociology in Action Workshop report on one illustrative week of lessons: four completed tables (the 10-entry log tallied by agent with each share of the 10 entries and the share of looking-glass moments, three entries placed in this week's concepts, and three moments from your own structured observation), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's answers to the same questions, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. 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. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled diagram of the agents and their shares with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Tallying the log and computing the shares	All six agent tallies, their shares of the 10 entries, and the looking-glass share are computed from the log with a division shown, and the agent shares add to 100.	Most tallies and shares are computed, but one is missing or wrong, or no division is shown.	No tallies or shares are reported, or the values are invented rather than counted.
Placing moments in the week's concepts	Entries 4, 6, and 10 are each placed in a fitting concept with evidence from the entry; the looking-glass self is credited to Cooley (1902) and walked in order; the hidden-curriculum lesson and the anticipatory socialization in entry 10 are named.	Concepts are named for the entries, but one placement lacks evidence, the steps are out of order, or the theorist is missing.	No concepts are placed, or the looking-glass self is credited to Mead.
Three perspectives at their levels	Entry 6 is read through all three perspectives in one sentence each, each with its level named, and no perspective is declared correct.	Two perspectives are applied well, or all three appear but a level is missing or wrong.	No perspective is applied, or one perspective is declared the only correct reading.
Critique and correction	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the tables or this week's definitions; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis names an error but corrects it without evidence, or corrects only one; both routes earn this band equally.	No chatbot critique report or marked-up flawed analysis is submitted, or the output is pasted without any check; both routes are scored the same way.
Limits, observation, and reflection	Two real limits are named with their effect on the conclusion, the own-observation table has three complete moments, and the chosen reflection option is answered with a reason.	One limit is named, the observation table is incomplete, or the reflection gives no reason.	No limit, observation, or reflection is given.

Quality Gate

• Every tally and share in your tables comes from your own formulas or your own hand count of the workshop's log, never from memory or a chatbot.
• The looking-glass self is credited to Cooley (1902), and Mead's ideas are kept to the stages and the generalized other.
• Each perspective sentence names its level of analysis, and no perspective is declared the correct one.
• No claim about first-year students as a group, and no claim about one person from a group pattern, is drawn from the log.
• No statistic, study, or source is invented anywhere in the submission.
• Your own observation describes what you saw or recalled and names no one who did not agree to be described.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.