The idea for the blog grew out of the C-SAP funded project ‘Politics after Leitch: What can we learn from Foundation Degrees’. The project consisted of a web-based survey of Foundation Degrees based on politics subject content and a series of follow-up interviews to identify examples of good and innovative practice (click here to see the survey results)
In the course of undertaking this project, we generated a range of materials for dissemination relating to FDs based in the area of politics. One option was simply to set-up a website, but this seemed too static an approach for a topic that continues to move forward and which gives rise to such a large amount of discussion and debate. In addition to this, during the project it became clear to me that some of the issues that were being raised would be of interest not just to colleagues teaching politics, government and public management/administration– but also to those in other areas of social science, such as sociology, criminology, social policy and anthropology.
My solution to this - set-up SocSciHi.
On it I will post:
- On-going project outputs, including examples of good and innovative practice relating to the higher skills agenda (HSA) and focusing on courses within the social sciences.
- Commentary on on-going policy development relating to the implementation of HSA. Since I am a politics academic – this interests me because I both work in HE and like to study how governments work.
- Links to and reviews of books, articles and reports that use social science approaches to analyse and critique the HAS.
No doubt, as things unfold, this list will grow and develop.
I welcome your comments, ideas and suggestions and offer the deal that if you follow the blog and join the conversation, I will to post to it at least once a month.
John
