Direct and Indirect Assessment

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Strategies for Direct and Indirect Assessment of Student Learning Mary J. Allen, SACS-COC Summer Institute July 28, 2008 Two Basic Ways to Assess Student Learning: 1. Direct – The assessment is based on an analysis of student behaviors or products in which they demonstrate how well they have mastered learning outcomes. 2. Indirect – The assessment is based on an analysis of reported perceptions about student mastery of learning outcomes.

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Differentials in Deviance: Race, Class, Gender and Age
Nancy A. Heitzeg. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
St. Catherine University
naheitzeg@stkate.edu

“The story of deviance and social control is a battle story…Deviants never exist except in
relation to those who attempt to control them. Deviants exist in opposition to those whom they
threaten and those who have enough power control against such threats”
(Pfohl 1994:3)

Social structure is central to the sociological endeavor; indeed, the analysis of structured
inequality is the essence of the “sociological imagination” (Mills 1959). Race, class, gender and
age -those cornerstones of stratification - shape access to social opportunity, demarcate social
inequality, inform identity, and provide common ground for social movements and resistance. So
too they shape our understanding of deviance. Race, class, gender and age create the contours of
that battle story of deviant response and societal reaction.
Despite their centrality to sociology, the treatment of these statuses in the literature on deviance
has been varied, and occasionally confounding. Race, class, gender and age have been
simultaneously at the margins and the center of the sociology of deviance. At times, they have
been the unspoken, unexamined subtext of analyses of particular deviant behaviors, lurking
unnamed and unattended. Conversely, race, class, gender and age have also been the central
focus of scholarship on deviance, the very variables held as crucial to an understanding of both
behaviors and labeling. Race, class, gender and age have been addressed singularly as separate
influences with class and age have been the primary focal points. Still others have called for
their examination as intersecting variables whose relationship to deviance must be understood as
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part of an interlocking system of oppression, an approach resulting in amongst the most profound
research. Finally race, class, gender and age are alternately seen as direct contributors to deviant
behavior, as stigmatized statuses that are targets for deviant labeling, and as sources of power to
exert that very same social control.
This latter point is perhaps the most fruitful framework for a discussion of the role of race, class,
gender and age in the deviance literature. The sociology of deviance has attempted to variously
explain both the deviant and the ensuing societal reaction. In both the classic and contemporary
literature, these variables have largely been examined through one lens or the other, that is, as
either differential shapers of deviant behavior or as precursors to differential social control.
Race, Class, Gender and Age: Differentials in Deviant Behavior
“When alienation becomes so entrenched, an oppositional culture can develop and flourish. This
culture, especially among the young can gain strength and legitimacy by opposing dominant
society and its’ agents.”(Andersen 1999: 216)

From the outset, race, class gender and age have been cited as variables that contribute to deviant
behavior. The prevailing question of the field early on was “Why are people deviant?” One set of
answers involved a look at the structural conditions that impelled deviance, that is, a look at race,
class, gender and age as primary factors. The initial interpretation of the role of these variables
was decidedly deterministic, and partly limited by a reliance on official statistics that over-
represented the poor, the young, people of color and men. This flaw was further compounded by
an acceptance of official statistics on crime, arrest and mental illness as comprehensive accounts
that captured the universe all deviants in their measures.
thThe “deviants’ who were the subjects of study through much of the 20 century were poor, they
were young “delinquents, they were racial/ethnic minorities and they were often male. The
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deviance they were engaged in was street crime, mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and
gang membership. Discussion of female deviance was largely ignored or limited to issues of
sexual activity or sexually stereotyped mental disorders and was later explained by the influence
of either men or feminism. Of course, these “deviants” could largely be found in inner city
urban areas and so attributes of those areas and their inhabitants became the locus of
explanations for deviance. The question - “Why are people deviant?” became – “Why are the
poor, people of color, urban youth and women deviant?”
Two early explanations emerged to explain the role of race, class, gender and age in deviant
behavior– cultural deviance and strain theories. Both held social class as central variable in
shaping either values or access to opportunities. According to cultural deviance, structural
position and location produced subcultural interactions that gave rise to deviant values (Cohen
1955). Strain theory argued that these variables, particularly class, lead to blocked opportunities
in achieving the shared “American Dream” which then fostered deviant alternatives for
economic success (Cloward and Ohlin 1960). Later, a third approach, differential association,
offered additional insight into how deviance was learned in interaction with others (Sutherland
and Cressey 1960). These theories persist to date in less deterministic versions, and related
research has offered insight into the complex relationships between these statuses and deviant
behavior.
Race, class gender and age are statuses that do shape access to the opportunity structure, and may
give rise to values that legitimate deviance. Certain types of deviant activities do require
knowledge, skills, rationales, and avenues for engagement. Class continues to be the primary
consideration, and to the extent that it interacts with race, gender and age, these variables are
often implied if not explicitly addressed. Until recently, the focus has been on poverty as a
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contributor to deviance, and yes, some types of deviance are more available to the poor, often not
by choice but by access to institutional means. Poverty may increase the inclination of people to
commit economic crimes such as theft, burglary, armed robbery, and street-level drug dealing
and prostitution (Merton 1997). Other deviance requires positions of wealth, power, and prestige,
a point finally elucidated in the literature with the acknowledgment of “white-collar” crime and
later “elite deviance” (Simon 2003; Sutherland 1983). The decision to illegally dump toxic
waste, pollute, expose employees to hazardous work conditions, embezzle, engage in insider
trading on Wall Street, or participate in elaborate cybercrimes necessarily is dependent on
socioeconomic status and occupational/organizational position. It is the middle-class or the rich
– in other words, mostly white, male and middle-aged - who can commit these “crimes of the
suite”, often while rationalizing their activity with an array of techniques of neutralization
(Simon 2003; Coleman 1998)
Age is also a variable that continues to be linked with deviant behavior in this literature. Scholars
and the public remain fascinated with the propensity of youth to become deviants. A plethora of
literature addresses informal, medical and formal deviance: youth subcultures of style, teen
suicide, youth crime and violence ranging from gangs to school-shootings, teen drug use and
sexual activity, and dire predictions of a generation of “super-predators” (Wilson 1995; Males
1996; Hancock 2001).
Recent work has amore complex accounting of race and gender differentials in deviant behavior.
General strain theory argues that race and gender discrimination are negative strains that may
pressure youth into delinquency. Initial studies verify this; discrimination gives rise to a sense of
injustice, which in turn is positively correlated with delinquency (Agnew 2001; Eitle 2002;
Moon et al 2009) The most fruitful research clarifies how the intersection of race, class, gender
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and age creates a complex impetus for deviance. Analysis of youth gangs, “cool pose” and “the
code of street” (Shihadeh 2003; Majors and Bilson 1992; Anderson 1999; Stewart and Simons
2009) reveal how these variables combine to produce subcultural norms and collective
responses that encourage violence, teen pregnancies, stringent norms of respect and a rejection of
the mainstream values of work and conformity. Being young, poor and black in the context of
institutionalized racism and isolated neighborhoods may contribute to the adoption of an
alternative set of norms and standards for respect; this may, in turn, be correlated with
involvement in gangs and/or violence.
The relationship between race, class, gender, age and deviance is a complicated one. The best
thinking on how these variables contribute to deviance now indicates that it is insufficient to
choose one of these variables alone as the primary focal point; they are inter-twined with both
social structure and social identity. Further, race, class, gender and age cannot be isolated from
consideration of the role of systems of oppression in fueling alienation and deviant response.
That is, the experience of racism or sexism or classism or ageism may contribute to the rejection
of dominant societal norms and subsequently b