The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the scoping workshop “Teaching Qualitative Social Research: Perspectives for the future” with 31,000 euros. The workshop, which was initiated under the lead of Tobias Boll together with the board of the “Methods of Qualitative Social Research” section of the German Sociological Association, aims to adress the teaching of qualitative methods as a central aspect of the adequate training of future generations of social scientists.

Recent and future social developments, such as digitalization or an erosion of trust in science, but also institutional and structural changes in higher education, make it necessary to intensively reflect on and reassess the current status and challenges for qualitative methodology teaching.

The workshop brings together experts from various fields of qualitative social research and methodology. Their aim is to jointly develop future scenarios for qualitative methodology teaching, identify necessary reorientations and think of ways to realize them. They do this in a moderated participatory process in which they develop perspectives across locations and paradigms. The results will be published in a position paper, which is intended to have an impact on the future discussion and realization of qualitative methodology as a document with a field-wide impact.