Monday, April 30, 2007
How to Succeed in Your Social Science Degree
After a fairly long and sometimes rather vexed gestation period, this book (written by myself and Dr Hilary Arksey of York University) finally appeared on April 18th, published by Sage. Sage were brilliant as usual and have given it a nice cover and a lot of publicity.
Briefly, the book tries to use some social science insights to amend the usual study skills material (often based on pretty dubious psychology, recycled materials, and techniques abstracted from FE practice). The argument is that students are studying research techniques and methods, say, and that they might as well use these approaches to try to understand what the Academy means by things like 'critical discussion', or why it values things like 'detachment' and loathes things like plagiarism. These suggestions emerged partly from my own work with SPDC01 students doing study skills, and, further, from a paper Hilary and I wrote for the BSA Annual Conference 2005.
We'll see how it goes. Any feedback from colleagues would be very welcome.
Dave Harris
Briefly, the book tries to use some social science insights to amend the usual study skills material (often based on pretty dubious psychology, recycled materials, and techniques abstracted from FE practice). The argument is that students are studying research techniques and methods, say, and that they might as well use these approaches to try to understand what the Academy means by things like 'critical discussion', or why it values things like 'detachment' and loathes things like plagiarism. These suggestions emerged partly from my own work with SPDC01 students doing study skills, and, further, from a paper Hilary and I wrote for the BSA Annual Conference 2005.
We'll see how it goes. Any feedback from colleagues would be very welcome.
Dave Harris
# posted by A Sociologist : 7:44 AM
