Suchergebnisse

The teaching of policy analysis typically focuses on complex analytical & conceptual skills. This approach, however, does not take adequate account of the need for policy analysts to communicate their results to decisionmakers who are not necessarily familiar with such skills. Problems can arise from the organizational context, the problem definition & research design, or the presentation of results. Exercises for teaching appropriate skills include preparing short written & oral summaries, preparing charts & transparencies for visual presentations, preparing multimedia reports, dejargonizing reports, explaining methodological issues in nontechnical terms, role playing the clarification of problems with decisionmakers, restructuring research designs to involve decisionmakers as participants, preparing `talking papers' for decisionmakers, drafting press releases, & role playing decisionmakers' & policy analysts' perceptions of one another's situations. W. H. Stoddard.

"Throughout most of the 19th century the most important course in the college curriculum was moral philosophy, taught usually by the college president and required of all senior students. The moral philosophy course was regarded as the capstone of the curriculum. It aimed to pull together, to integrate, and to give meaning and purpose to the student's entire college experience and course of study. In so doing it even more importantly sought to equip the graduating seniors with the ethical sensitivity and insight needed in order to put their newly acquired knowledge to use in ways that would benefit not only themselves and their own personal achievement, but the larger society as well." Douglas Sloan

To appreciate the analytic issues posed by ethnographic data, students must be taught to set those issues against the sociological approach within which the analysis is embedded, for sociology is a pluralistic discipline characterized by many different approaches and the meaning and importance of analytic techniques differ across approaches. Some of the approach-based differences in the analysis of ethnographic data are briefly described. Three different teaching methods and four different objectives in research methods courses are identified. Time constraints on postgraduate courses and the deficiencies of undergraduate research methods training strongly suggest that the teaching method most remote from real research be adopted in pursuit of the most limited objective. Yet, it is argued, this suggestion should be resisted in favour of the teaching method that actively engages students in, and thereby gives them the ability to do, independent research.