Prof. Heather Hofmeister and Team - Teaching, Exams, Final theses
Our Teaching Philosophy
Sociology with the specialty in Sociology of Work
"Our teaching philosophy"
We expect graduates of sociology to be able to understand, analyze, and explain complex social problems and challenges from a variety of perspectives and develop potential solutions. Sociology needs an international perspective. Even local phenomena are embedded in a global context. Graduates need a basic insight into the social complexity of the (global) society and their role in it.
Future graduates need the ability to learn and develop throughout their lives: some knowledge from today might be obsolete tomorrow. That’s why the most effective university teaching is not based on memorizing facts but rather is designed to develop learning competence in the students.
Successful learning is based on hands-on experiences, a finding confirmed in a multitude of research. To meet these high requirements, we design our academic teaching to be constructive and engaging.
Our teaching is based on active, problem-oriented teaching and learning. We support independent and autonomous learning.
In concrete terms, this means:
- Students in our seminars often work independently on topics in small study groups,
- Students introduce their own ideas and concepts into the seminars,
- Students develop and present individual units of the seminars,
- Students gain research experience by participating in research projects, and
- Students apply and enlarge upon their knowledge about specified research methods during the seminars by means of concrete case studies.
At the end of each term, we expect that our students
- are able to understand and critically evaluate the major concepts and argumentation of the respective topics,
- have developed an understanding of how the respective topic is connected to sociology as a whole,
- have learned different methods and techniques as to how sociology handles and researches the respective topic
