Module EDUC2191: PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Department: Education

EDUC2191: PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Prerequisites

• Normally, The Discipline of Social Science (EDUC1191).

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• The module aims to help students to develop a sophisticated understanding of the nature and distinctive procedures of the social sciences, and of some of the chief movements and schools of thought in this discipline.
• Emphasis will be placed throughout on: the reading of primary texts, as far as possible, and the problematising of their status as 'social science' texts.
• the issue of the ethical views and political stance of the social scientists.

Content

• Are ethical and political neutrality desirable goals in social science? Objectivity and subjectivity in the social sciences.
• Liberalism: should social science be neutral between different conceptions of the good? Human perfection and notions of development.
• Should social science be emancipatory? Communitarian perspectives on the practice of social science.
• Multiculturalism: social science and the celebration of cultural and social difference.

Learning Outcomes

• Acquired an understanding of many of the problems and issues that exercise social scientists, both as a matter of theory and practice;
• Acquired a more sophisticated understanding of key social science terms, e.g. methodological individualism, holism, perspectivism, communitarianism.

• Students are expected to have thought through and developed their own stance as a social scientist.

• Students are expected to have improved their skills in discussion and argument.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Interactive lectures, tutorials, seminars, including those in which students are responsible in turn for introducing topics, courses of guided reading, starting from an appropriate reading list, coupled with submission of essays for discussion with their tutor and feedback both oral and in writing, discussions via e-mail.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

1 essay in the first term (2000 words); no collections.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University