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Methodological Skills

  • You are used to preparing your lessons thoroughly. Part of gender- and diversity-conscious lesson planning is preparation oriented to both the learning goals and the audience: Who are the students who attend your course? What are their learning goals and motivations? What learning goals should be achieved in the course according to the program regulations? What methods can you use to be as aware of gender and diversity in your teaching as possible? How can you shape the communication in your seminar so that all students feel addressed? Under Methods, you will find a guide to reflecting on methods.
  • Although university-level teaching can be structured as non-hierarchically as possible, by nature it cannot be on equal terms: as the lecturer, you have to review and evaluate your students, not only teach them. Therefore, it is especially important to be aware of your role and the hierarchical relationships of teaching situations and to approach educational methods transparently. This includes transparently communicating to your students what you expect from them and what they may expect from you. But it also includes making clear what will be happening with students comments and the results of group work, what will be graded and what won’t – before you utilize a method.
  • You will find material to help you get started applying, reflecting on, and expanding your specialized and methodological skills in ways that pay attention to gender and diversity in Methods and Discipline-Specific Points of Entry. To develop your teaching practice over time, taking into account the current state of research into gender and diversity in your field, as well as participating in continuing training programs such as those offered by SUPPORT für die Lehre and the Berlin Center for Higher Education can be very helpful. Conferences on these topics, conversations with colleagues, mentorships, and peer advisory programs are further opportunities for you to consolidate your skill set. If your academic department does not yet offer any official programs along these lines, you and your department colleagues can launch them together or take initiative to facilitate their establishment.
  • By considering the findings of discipline-specific Gender and Diversity Studies, you can examine the issues and research methods that you work on and impart to students in light of their embeddedness in gender- and diversity-related power relations. For example, in the study of engineering, feminist technoscience has brought to light previously neglected premises and consequences of technological development. Many other fields of research are showing a growing interest in the social conditions of how knowledge is produced (link). You can systematically incorporate these findings into your research methodology.
  • To further your training, you need points of contact that allow you to reflect on your own educational practice – individually or in conversation with colleagues – and find support for tackling difficult situations. Some points of contact are listed under Resources. Beyond that, if you would like to arrange a more intensive discussion with your colleagues or seek more advice, speak up about this. To do so, you can contact the local gender equality officer of your department, for instance, or approach other institutions of Freie Universität Berlin with your requests and suggestions.

More under: Methods

Bibliography:

Aulenbacher, Brigitte, und Birgit Riegraf, Hrsg. 2009. Erkenntnis und Methode. Geschlechterforschung in Zeiten des Umbruchs. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Debus, Katharina. 2012. Methodenplanung und –auswertung. Portal Intersektionalität.

Kaschuba, Gerrit. 2004. Von der Wundertüte zum kontrollierten Einsatz? Anregungen zur prozessorientierten Entwicklung von Qualitätskriterien für Gender Trainings. In Geschlechterverhältnisse bewegen: Erfahrungen mit Gender Training, Hrsg. Netzwerk Gender-Training, 117–135. Königstein/Taunus: Helmer.

Freikamp, Ulrike et al. 2008. Kritik mit Methode? Forschungsmethoden und Gesellschaftskritik. Berlin.

Singer, Mona. 2010. Feministische Wissenschaftskritik und Epistemologie: Voraussetzungen, Positionen, Perspektiven. In Handbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung. Theorie, Methoden, Empirie, Hrsg. Ruth Becker und Beate Kortendiek, 292–301. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Wegner, Elisabeth, und Matthias Nückles. 2012. Mit Widersprüchen umgehen lernen: Reflektiertes Entscheiden als hochschuldidaktische Kompetenz. In Lernwelt Universität. Entwicklung von Lehrkompetenz in der Hochschullehre, vol. 9, Lernweltforschung, Hrsg. Marianne Merkt und Rudolf Egger, 61–81. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Version April 2017. Unless otherwise stated, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence.