Political Science Educator: Volume 30, Issue 1
Reviews
This book[i] offers some of the most comprehensive teaching advice that new faculty might receive in an extensive professional development seminar. How should you choose your readings? How much should your students read? How should you lecture? How should your lectures correspond to your readings? How can faculty maintain civil classroom environments with controversial ideas? How should you write multiple choice questions? How should you relate to your students socially? These are just a few of the questions addressed in this book without jargon and grounded in real-world examples. Hershey builds on decades of teaching experience at Indiana University and on previous editions of this book. Anyone teaching political science courses would benefit from reading this book.
Though, as any faculty members with a wealth of perspective, there are limits to Hershey’s experience, analysis, and advice. First, the book misses an opportunity to explain Open Educational Resources, especially ironic given that the book contains CC-BY NC SA 4.0 license. With the book’s discussion of textbook prices limiting reading amounts, it might be useful to address OERs and practical advice on where to find them and how to use them in an introductory course. It might be good to know how to engage a meaningful political of knowledge and political economy of the academy with undergraduate students that does not alienate with the opacity of some of the literature, especially in an introductory class with many non-majors. Second, Hershey takes a certain approach to texts that limits her perspective. She is right to complain about dumping high-level texts on undergraduates. On the other hand, carefully structured reading of the canon might prove helpful to developing reading, analytic, intersubjective role-taking, and other skills. It seems that Hershey wants to move the reader into an investment of institutionalism, where abstract concepts get clearly applied without great opacity of emotion, rhetoric, values, or pluralism in the text. Reading key texts in a field fail for many different reasons. Though, it might be helpful to consider humanism, and the struggle of making it through a text in all its multiplicity. Third, while free speech and academic freedom get mentioned, they are woefully underdeveloped. Within her discussion, it would be best to define and explain academic freedom for faculty and students in a few paragraphs and then point the reader to external resources from the AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom[ii], the Academic Freedom Encyclopedia[iii], and the FIRE campus guides[iv] to extend her practical advice grounded in action.
— Matt Evans (mevans8@nwacc.edu), PSE Editor
[i] . https://educate.apsanet.org/how-to-teach-american-politics-and-other-subjects-effectively
[ii] https://www.aaup.org/about/programs/protecting-academic-freedom/center-defense-academic-freedom
[iii] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/encyclopedia/
[iv] https://www.fire.org/research-learn?_page=1&keywords=&_limit=6&resource_type=1561
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. As part of APSA’s mission to support political science education across the discipline, APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Please visit APSA Educate’s Political Science Educator digital collection.
Editor: Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Assistant Editor: Colin Brown (Northeastern University)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
