Hands-on experience in university-level sociology training: role-plays of students under observation

Abstract

In this article, we study how students in their second year of a sociology degree experience the practice of observation, in the context of tutorial classes in a French university. This experience is analyzed at the light of their student condition. Firstly, the focus is on how the university teaching operates and on the academic trajectory of second-year Bachelor of sociology students. Secondly, we identify different tension at work in the students’ experience of these classes. Thirdly, we show that role plays demonstrate the variety of ways in which the students assimilate this practice of observation.