UCL - Seminar on Sociological Research Practice

[SOC2000]

[45h] 7 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Jean-Michel Chaumont, Bernard Fusulier, Christian Maroy, Jacques Marquet

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The fundamental objective of the seminar is to contribute in the training of sociologists able to engage in a re-search and reflect on what they do when they engage in it. The aim is thus :
1) to develop/reinforce the following skills, through practice and/or reflexivity on that practice
" Construct an issue and locate it in its theoretical and social environment
" Design a research strategy that is relevant for the studied issue and adapted to the (material, institu-tional, social) resources and constraints that one will encounter conducting the research.
" Put selected data collection or data analysis techniques in practice
" Present the results to a relevant public (b.o. in a research report)
2) to develop a critical reflexivity on the meaning and social uses of sociological research, mainly starting from research practices used in the seminar.

Main themes

On the grounds of previous or on-going research, the seminar will allow the student to participate to the produc-tion of an on-going research, or to reflect critically on a previous research through its continuation. The research may be qualitative or quantitative. Several options will be offered, according to the resources and opportunities of the teachers and the skills of the students:
- Option 1 Participation to an on-going research : the teacher in charge will introduce a seminar for the problematization from which a research question will be identified. He will propose books, reports or articles on this issue, that will be subject to a critical examination. The question will be made opera-tional, a process that will imply theoretical, epistemological and methodological choices. The analysis that will follow will lean on existing data that will be re-exploited in the context of the seminar, or on a clearly circumscribed collection of new data. A research report will be written.
- Option 2 Re-visit an existing research : through a documentation, as exhaustive as possible, on a research of his choice, the teacher will critically review the steps of its realisation, together with the students : origin of the project, steps taken for obtaining the necessary means for its realisation, steps for its reali-sation, its finalisation and the different modalities for its popularization.

Content and teaching methods

The summary needs to be specified in function of the teachers that will be chosen for this seminar. This sum-mary may thus vary and will privilege one or the other options proposed in this document.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Evaluation of oral presentations and papers produced for the seminar.