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Changing Students’ Perceptions of Inequality?

Budget exercises are frequently used in introductory and social problems courses to facilitate student understanding of income inequality. But do these exercises actually lead to greater sociological understanding? To explore this issue, the authors studied undergraduate students enrolled in introductory sociology courses during the 2008-2009 academic year. Using a unique pretest-pretest-posttest design, the authors captured student perceptions of issues of socioeconomic inequality at the beginning of the course, after completion of a traditional unit on stratification, and after participation in a budget exercise. The unique study design allows the authors to examine if and how students make gains in understanding inequality sociologically. They also consider other learning objectives, including fostering an appreciation of obstacles to social mobility and increasing general knowledge about inequality. The results suggest that both budget exercises and a traditional pedagogical unit of lecture, reading, and discussion play limited roles in fostering at least short-term sociological understanding as related to these goals.