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About the Open Education Sociology Dictionary

The OESD is written primarily by Kenton Bell, who teaches both sociology and education subjects at the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney.

If you have any questions or comments about the dictionary, please contact Kenton Bell using the Contact Page.

The project began at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, under the tutelage of the Sociology and Anthropology department, with special thanks to Dr. Heidi Kelly and Dr. Volker Frank.

The dictionary is primarily composed of original research but also cited work from other authors (e.g., McDonaldization). These works are used in the dictionary under scholarly fair use. For more information, refer to the copyright page.

The Open Education Sociology Dictionary (OESD) is part of the open access and open education movement and seeks to create an entry level resource for sociology students, educators, and the curious.

Originally, the dictionary was largely composed of definitions from open resources such as OpenStax, Wikitionary, and WordNet. These have been replaced over time with original definitions to harmonize word usage and to codify the content under one license.

The original set of “core terms” was based on meta-analysis of the following introductory sociology texts:

Comparison of definitions based on the following traditional and well respected Sociology dictionaries:

Comparison of definitions based on the following general dictionaries:

 

 

Citing the OESD: Please see the front page for general citation information or any definition for specific citation information.