CHANDIGARH: 14 December 2011: The Department of Sociology organized a one day workshop
on ‘Teaching of Sociology: Contemporary Challenges and Strategies’ at ICSSR Complex,
P.U. Campus here today.
All the University and college teachers teaching Sociology at the Undergraduate and
Postgraduate levels in various colleges affiliated to Panjab University participated
in the workshop.
Prof. Rajesh Gill, Coordinator of the workshop and Chairperson, Department of
Sociology, Panjab University started the 1st Technical Session by welcoming the
guests. She introduced the theme of the workshop and said there is a need to seriously
ponder over the question as to how to combine quality teaching meaningfully with
quality research so that the subject of Sociology keeps growing.
Prof. S.L. Sharma, retired Professor of Sociology mentioned three ways/approaches;
Academics, Pedagogic and Programmatic, to look at the problems of teaching Sociology.
He said that Contemporary Sociology has to be in dialogue with the social reality of
the past and dialogue with the future. Unfortunately Contemporary Sociology has
nothing to deliver for the future.
Ms. Neena Dhawan, Head of Department of Sociology at MCMDAV College shared her
experiences of teaching Sociology and referred to a few academic and administrative
problems faced by them.
Second Session of the workshop was chaired by Prof. Sherry Sabbarwal, Professor of
Sociology, Panjab University. In this session, Prof. Kiranpreet Kaur, Ms. Rupinder
Chatha, Dr. Kumool Abbi, Dr. Rani Mehta were the speakers. All the speakers shared
their experiences and problems of teaching Sociology. Some of the problems mentioned
by them included non availability of Reading material, use of new IT related
techniques in class rooms and almost every participant of the workshop endorsed the
importance of field work in teaching of Sociology. The next session was chaired by
Prof. Madhurima Verma in which presentations were made by various speakers. The last
two sessions were chaired by Dr. Ranjay Vardhan and Ms. Kamini Tayal. While conducting
the workshop, Prof. Rajesh Gill underlined the fact that there is an urgent need to
make the teaching of Sociology more socially and market relevant. The pedagogy to
teach the subject needs to be dialogic so that students take back something tangible
from the classroom. With the introduction of post-graduate course in sociology in
various colleges and semester system, the syllabi needs to be revised regularly, with
the induction of current topics so that the discipline gets rejuvenated, Prof. Rajesh
Gill informed.  
Press Note No.501
      MMK/PS
PRESS RELEASE-3