General description

We study the national employment systems as social constructions and as a wider phenomenon as labour markets. On the other hand the employment system concept will be used as an analytical tool for comparative studies on employment. The argument is that for the time being the employment systems have been developing as national constructions but there are internal and external reasons, which will bring about pressures to develop these systems towards the conditions of globalised and more integrated European employment model.

Learning outcomes

The basic aim of the course is to create discussion on the structure and development of European employment systems and help students to understand the reasons of disparities, variations and path dependences in the development of European labour markets and employment systems.

Contents

The development of national systems of employment are looked from different angles according to the weekly topics mentioned below. All together 7 topics to be discussed:
• Introduction to Employment Systems concept, national models and variation
• New space and geography of work and trends of population
• Changing boundaries of formal and informal work
• Regulation of work and industrial relations
• Work and gender relations
• Transitional spaces of work
• Towards a model of European employment system
Every topic will be divided into three work-packages: virtual lecture, reading two articles related to the lecture, active participation into the evaluation of the lecture and articles.

Teaching methods

The course will be organized as a virtual, Intranet based, course using software called the Moodle learning environment. All the students will be introduced to use it. The lecturing takes place in the Moodle (Intranet) and follows the following logic
- Lecturer opens every weeks Tuesday a new topic using Power point presentation in the Moodle. The discussion on the lecture will opened in the forum each Thursday and continues until next Tuesday.
- After each introduction the participants are requested to read 2 articles from the proposed alternatives. All the articles will be delivered to the participants as .pdf or .doc files.
- After each topic we have a lively discussion (virtual seminar) in the Moodle about the issues related the lecture.
- All the discussions and arguments will be saved in to the folder of the Moodle.
In the use and development of online learning methods the university of Tampere and lecturer have a long experience. Teachers are qualified for online learning.

Teaching language

English

Evaluation and evaluation criteria

Numeric 1-5.
The activity (participation in the discussion) is a criteria for passing the course. In addition students are requested to write an essay on one topic related the issues of the course.

Study materials

Reading list: 14 articles, published in a scientific Journal

Belongs to following study modules