Title: Credit Unit 1 Introduction
Course: SkillsCom HDFS 201 16.0 > Section: Credit Unit 1 Module 1 - Theoretical Perspectives

This credit unit forms the foundation of your learning process for the rest of this course. It will begin with essential terms and concepts: difference, power, and discrimination, determining your dominant identity, and critical thinking skills. These concepts constitute the lens through which you will examine issues important to today's families in the U.S. You will then move on to discussion of several of the more widely used theoretical perspectives for understanding and explaining families. After this groundwork is set, you will delve into some of the most prominent topics related to difference, power, and discrimination in the United States: race and ethnicity, social class, and gender and sexuality.

Course Outcomes:

- Use theoretical frameworks to interpret the role of the family within social process and institutions.
- Describe the nature, value, and limitations of the basic methods of studying individuals and families.
- Using historical and contemporary examples, describe how perceived differences, combined with unequal distribution of power across economic, social, and political institutions, result in inequity.
- Explain how difference is socially constructed.
- Analyze current social issues, including the impact of historical and environmental influences, on family development.
- Analyze ways in which the intersections of social categories such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and age, interact with the country’s institutions to contribute to difference, power, and discrimination amongst families.
- Synthesize multiple viewpoints and sources of evidence to generate reasonable conclusions.