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| Detailinformationen |
| Quellcurriculum |
Masterstudium Joint Master's Degree Programme in Comparative Social Policy and Welfare 2024W |
| Ziele |
(*)The class develops an understanding of the quality criteria of empirical studies in the field of comparative welfare state research. The goal is to strengthen students‘ ability to distinguish a persuasive theoretical argument from a weak one, strong empirical support from feeble descriptive illustration, and generalization with some claim to validity from random empirical observation. By the end of the class, students will be able to
- … demonstrate an understanding of how to use comparison as a tool to support knowledge claims, based on their reading of some of the key programmatic and methodological statements on the comparative method,
- … show that they can analyze how empirical information about similarities and differences across place and time speaks to theoretical arguments in examples of empirical studies of welfare state development,
- … have the capacity to judge the quality of comparative evidence and distinguish persuasive theoretical arguments with strong empirical support from tenuous and unwarranted contentions based on arbitrary illustration or sweeping generalities,
- … appreciate the potential of comparative analysis for policy learning and institutional innovation and, if they wish to undertake international comparative research projects themselves, prove competent to design and organize such projects; and
- … exercise great care and responsibility in obtaining and utilizing comparative data, information, and arguments derived from the texts written by other authors or generated by AI tools.
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| Lehrinhalte |
(*)This class is about social science arguments: the concepts that form their principal building blocks, the structural relationships among those building blocks, and the substantive ideas that give life to concepts and knowledge claims. And it is about evidence: the observations, rationales, and trains of thought that scholars mobilize to substantiate their knowledge claims. But it is not a methods class. Instead, it is about how arguments are made (in our field of comparative welfare state analysis) and how they are made plausible, even compelling. The class focuses on the crucial interface between theory-building and concept formation on the one hand and (comparative) empirical inquiry on the other. It engages with the following questions: What is the rationale of theory building, concept-formation, and empirical inquiry in different variants of comparative research? How do comparative welfare state researchers produce theoretical and empirical knowledge about the various welfare states? How do they arrive at generalization about welfare state development, and, how do they establish the connection between theoretical arguments and empirical case studies?
In analyzing examples for comparative welfare state research, we will explore the conceptual and methodological decisions that lie beneath the comparativists’ theoretical claims and empirical findings. Examples will also help us explore different variants of comparative analysis as well as the fields in which comparative reasoning reaches its limits. In analyzing examples and developing their own comparative project design, students will develop an understanding of quality criteria and the functions of the different components of theoretically-oriented empirical studies in the comparative welfare state literature (such as the literature review, the theoretical argument, and its justification, commentary on research design and methodology, presentation of the empirical material, and the conclusions).
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| Beurteilungskriterien |
(*)Active participation during the Intensive Program and, depending on the teaching methods, a combination of individual written assignments and/or exams and teamwork and/or interactive tasks.
In the retake-option evaluation is based on a written or oral exam.
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| Lehrmethoden |
(*)Class discussion and presentations during the Intensive Program at the beginning of the semester; during the long-distance learning phase students will read methodological texts and examples of the different kinds of comparative inquiry and interrogate the theory-empirics-interface in each of them.
The retake option consists of an independent study of a reading list provided by the instructor.
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| Abhaltungssprache |
Englisch |
| Literatur |
(*)Readings and Assignments are provided by the instructor.
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| Lehrinhalte wechselnd? |
Nein |
| Sonstige Informationen |
(*)Students who have received a failing grade, or who wish to retake the course to improve their grade, must declare their intention to retake the course before the next semester so that a retake opportunity can be offered. They will then repeat the course through independent study, studying the literature independently from a specially prepared reading list, and demonstrating their competence in a written or oral examination at the end of the semester. The retake option is not a substitute for the regular course. It is only offered to students who have received a grade in the regular course.
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