I’m Miguel Centellas, a political science professor at Mount St. Mary’s University. Because of academic interests, I post frequently on Bolivian politics. I also occasionally discuss interesting books, pop culture, and daily life in Baltimore.
It’s on the back burner—sort of (is anything ever really “on the back burner”?)—but I just got two potential textbooks sent to me by Sage. Both are potential texts for my Spring 2008 semester methods course; both are written by John W. Cresswell (U of Nebraska).
I’m beginning to realize the challenge of teaching a methods course as a “comparativist” (one who studies politics outside the US). Usually, methods courses—if not taught by someone who is strictly a “methodologist” (e.g. Harvard’s Gary King, who’s so powerful he has his own subdomain)—are taught by “Americanists” (those who study American politics). The result is that methods courses (particularly at the undergraduate level) often focus on learning some basic econometrics (and w/ a strong emphasis on American political behavior). Clearly, I’ll spend about half the semester on such issues (they will learn the difference between a p-value & a beta coefficient). But I want to see how a comparativist approach to teaching methods can work at the undergraduate level. Hence my dilemma; any advice is welcome.
Of course, I’m definitely assigning the timeless The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking. The 5th edition served me well as an undergrad; I hope the 9th edition serves my students just as well.
This would be something we should have a chat about. I am currently negotiating with one univ here to teach a methods course next year and still need to select materials. And the dilemma here is similar - the methods course is part of the section in German politics and usually taught, in a rather abstract way, for such an audience.
Posted by
Melli
May 3, 2007 4:22 PM
Yes, teaching methods is a difficult thing to do. I currently teach comparative politics course as a “lite” methods course: We go over the difference between MSS (most similar systems) & MDS (most different systems) design; during the semester they have to write a research paper that requires them to specify their research design, their research question, and their hypothesis. I also require them to select two cases, but they must be from different regions of the world. Some do well w/ the assignment; some don’t.
I don’t know if you can get a copy of it sent to you in Germany (especially since I assume you’re teaching in German), but Congressional Quarterly Press also sent me a reader (Quantitative Methods in Practice: Readings from PS), which is all readings from PS: Politics & Society (so you can find all the articles on JSTOR). That might give you some ideas. The readings are from American politics, public administration, IR, and comparative politics. It might give you ideas for putting together your own reader (which is what I’m going to do); the premise is to help them learn how to read & understand academic works.
I also have some ideas for little projects, experiments, and data exercises. I might post about them, too. Or you can post some, and we can share ideas.
can I register for your class. I've been waking up lately from my problematic life and have discovered I forgot everything concerning polisci. Is this even possible? I don't even know what that p-thingy is anymore? So sad...
Posted by
Nenad
May 4, 2007 2:16 AM
I am a tiny bit bound by the requirements of the univ, which wants me to focus on the different methodologies of working with data (surveying, interviewing, content analysis and whatever). A further limitation is that, since I will teach first-2nd year students, I will be mainly bound by German language literature. So i am not sure how to go about using KKV (which I had in mind to use, at least parts) and Brady and Colliers "rethinking social inquiry". I just think this would be too far out. It would be like teaching KKV to a 105 class at Western, if you know what I mean, especially if I base the lit on English language lit. Actually, thinking in a framework of 105 might not be all that bad anyways, I think I'll actually use some of the basic stuff from 105 at the beginning of the course.
So far I have not had much time to think about the design for real and I will have to check out the German books first before making a draft for the course.
But I am certainly open to all suggestions for undergrad targeted books on methods that are in English. And I will check out the PS articles.
