Dissertations

Exists in some European schools, especially French, a method for students to investigate and bring into play their critical skills. In this procedure the students have to defend their views from a statement made. For example, the teacher may ask a student team to develop the following statement: "Politicians can never tell the truth." Other examples of utterances are "Mexico should not participate in the FTA" (Free Trade Agreement) or, "The Indians of Mexico should be inserted in the nation like any other citizen who suffers shortcomings". Given these assertions, and after enough research, students have three options: to defend the thesis, the thesis contradicts or qualifies the thesis and conditioning it. This is prior learning phases which are basically those described below:

1. Submit a model of what could be the dissertation. This can be used in-depth articles from newspapers or magazines that are comprehensive and well structured. These can be discussed in class.

2. Rigorously analyze the validity of the arguments of some examples or cases, for it must be taken into account:

A. The assumptions and validity of them.

B. The premises and conclusions.

C. The relevance of the information provided on the premises.

D. The validity of inferences.

E. The fallacies or biases that may exist around the thesis defended (which may be in the article or be expressed by the students).

F. The existence of contrary arguments to anticipate major objections.

3. Once you are clear to students the dynamics of the process, students should ask questions about the thesis that they have to develop. For example, for the first argument could be made ​​as follows: Always tell the truth? When does it not? What does it say about morality? What is the end of politics? What happens in reality with the speeches of politicians?

4. Having done this, students should find the relevant information in books and articles that answer those questions or that relate to best dissertation writing service in general and authors who lectured on the subject, in which case they should be analyzed according to the suggestion in point 2. Professor in turn, can provide some basic bibliography.

5. With the information obtained and the students' personal criteria , they should sit down and discuss the direction of his defense.

6. Students write their dissertation in an orderly manner, taking into account all the elements of section 2.

After work, students deserting before the group and subjected to questions and criticisms of all. As can be seen, with this approach, students develop skills such as researching on your own, know and discover sophistry to argue, and learn teamwork, usefully discuss and anticipate objections (which is the basis of self-criticism). 

Its use is widespread in the social sciences and even in some topics of the "hard" sciences. Moreover, if the dissertation topics are relevant and are monitored prepared questions about the students, the procedure will require the participant to study various topics mentioned in the syllabus. The quality criteria should be fixed and known in advance to assess the work.