TEACHING THEORETICAL CRIMINOLOGY TO UNDERGRADUATES* JAMES L. WILLIAMS DANIEL G. RODEHEAVER Texas Woman's University University ofNorth Texas RAJ SETHURAJU Texas Woman's University THEORY IS AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR THE analysis of society, and thus is an integral part of sociology courses. The effective use of theory is equally important to the success of classes on crime and deviance, to which students bring many preconceptions. Most still think about crime and deviance in terms of the individual psychology of offenders (Quinn, Holman, and Tobolowsky 1992). In addition, a number of students in these classes will seek employment in criminal justice fields. An effective understanding of crime and deviance theory can help chal- lenge students' preconceptions and help them understand how our theories of the causes of crimeand deviance influence our approaches to controlling this behavior. For these and other reasons, it is important that instructors of criminology, deviance, or de- linquency classesteach theories of crime and deviance effectively, whether as part of one of these classes or as a separate course. While we have been teaching these courses, we have had to repeatedly over- come a number of obstacles. In this paper we describe some of these obstacles and stateour objectives for teaching theoretical criminology. Finally, we describe several solutions that have helped us to increase students' interest in, and mastery of, these theories. RELATED RESEARCH Little hasbeen written about teaching crimi- nologicaltheory or social theory. A review of articles published since 1980 in Teaching Sociology identified only one article that was related specifically to teaching social theory. *This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1994 annual meetings of The Southwestern Social Science Association, held in San Antonio. In this article, Orum (1980) described a participatory approach, whichhe developed and implemented in his introductory social theory course. He assigned students primary responsibility for presenting introductions to a selectednumberof theorists over the course of the term, while he served mainly as a guide and commentator. Orum dis- cussed the benefits of thismethodaswell as the problems. We also found a few articles related to teaching criminological or devi- ance theory. Richard Levinson (1982), for example, related several strategies for teach- ing labelingtheory, which focused on the experience of illness attribution andtheabil- ity to sensitize studentsto the natureand impact of labeling. A more recent article by Norman Green- berg (1989) described an ongoing project in his classes in criminology, delinquency, and deviance. Students were required to conduct structured personal interviews with a local population of incarcerated juvenile delin- quents and adult offenders. Greenberg de- tailed the advantages of this "experiential" approach to learning aboutcrime and devi- ance, which included an increased ability to relate criminological concepts to students' own experiences. William Norman (1991) described a se- ries of classroom exercises that he devised for students in his criminology course. Students wrotea series of structured papers in which they wereto analyze and apply certain crime theories to specific types of crime. As Nor- man noted, this procedure is time-consum- ing for an instructor andwould be difficult to implement in classes of morethanabout 20 students. Most recently, Quinn et al. (1992) de- scribeda case study method for teaching theoretical criminology. They contended that criminology students respond best to practical examples that help illustrate the Teaching Sociology, 1995, Vol. 23 (October: 407-412) 407 This content downloaded from 129.120.178.130 on Sat, 14 Dec 2013 13:10:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions