As I enter my second year of leading the Political Science Education section, I hope everyone had a happy holiday and wish you a peaceful and joyous new year. It was so exciting to see so many of you in Los Angeles for the annual meeting.
In my column for this year, I want to do two things. First, I would like to congratulate each of the section award winners. This is always the most enjoyable part of the business meeting because we can celebrate the accomplishments of our friends and colleagues. Please join me in congratulating each of the following for their important work and service.
- The Craig T. Brians Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research & Mentoring went to Andrew Porwancher, Arizona State University (formerly University of Oklahoma)
- The Best APSA Conference Paper went to Chelsea Kaufman, Wingate University, for “From Global to Local: Service-Learning in a Comparative Politics Course.”
- The Distinguished Service Award went to Mitchell Brown, Auburn University.
- The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Terry Gilmour, Midlands College.
Many thanks to the award committees for their thoughtfulness and care in selecting the awardees.
Second, I want to take this column in a slightly new direction by asking the section to consider a problem, in the hopes of starting a dialogue. The problem is the rise of two trends in the undergraduate students we serve, which I think are interrelated. (It may also be affecting graduate students, but I am at a liberal arts institution without graduate students in my department.) At my institution, and my conversations with others suggest that my institution is not unique, the first trend that I see is that significantly more students are receiving accommodations from support services than before including new accommodations that seem unusual. The second trend is that students are far less prepared for the classroom than before.
In the first trend, I am seeing as many as one-fourth of my students with some sort of accommodations. Most are the typical support of extended time or using the testing center for exams, using a computer for notes, or having a snack available. However, for the first time, we are seeing accommodations that direct us not to ask the students questions in class, to call on them, or to require them to make presentations. I am concerned that by not requiring students to engage openly and publicly with peers, engage in quick, logical responses to questions, or to present their work to the class we will limit the students’ success later in the clichéd real world. Of course, I acknowledge that anxiety is real and is a powerful force for students. My own strategies for this have been to focus more on open-ended questions allowing students to self-select to answer and to use one-on-one presentations. Is there a better way to address the student needs? How can we work with students to meet their social and emotional needs while also providing them with the necessary skills to navigate jobs and careers in the future?
In the second trend, a recent article in Insider Higher Ed asks if “Generation P” is ready for college (Knox 2023). While this is an important question, I want to know if we are ready for Generation P. My colleagues and I are seeing that students are less prepared for class, often do not read the required material or do not read it critically, need more and more scaffolding of assignments, and do not want to engage in class by asking questions or working in small groups, among other similar problems. My own observations, corroborated by others (e.g., Sparks 2022), suggests that these problems relate to hybrid-learning during the pandemic. Students lost significant ground in reading, writing, science, and math. Equally important, students seem to know that they lost ground and are less prepared, so they are not as engaged. Students are facing decreased performance in courses where hands-on learning or in-person interaction. Moreover, online learning seems to have led to decreased engagement and motivation. Students are challenged by in-person interactions and active learning environments. Finally, students seem to be challenged more by time management, leading to missed deadlines and incomplete assignments.
To me, these two trends are related. COVID seems to have brought a significant change to students both academically and emotionally. Anxiety levels are high, and preparedness is low. How do we, as college professors, manage our expectations in class? How do we maintain the rigor in our classrooms? How do we create assignments, activities, or other learning opportunities with the challenges we are facing? How do we provide the resources to students to succeed? For my classes, I have always offered differentiated instruction incorporating different modalities (e.g., lectures, group work, flipped classroom, and active learning games or simulations) to keep students focused and learning. This has proved to be critical with the COVID slide though sometimes these strategies run into difficulties with student accommodations. I have also provided significantly more scaffolding of assignments with very explicit instructions for each component. Equally important, I have found that more frequent check-ins on prior learning is essential. Lastly, I have found that I need to also teach students metacognitive strategies for success including time management, note taking, organization, and study skills to help them manage their workload and learning effectively.
This is an important problem that we need to solve collectively. Where better to do the work in our discipline than in the Political Science Education section? The question now is, where and how do we have these conversations and learn from one another? I look forward to having these discussions over the next year. I think a virtual teaching and learning symposium coordinated by the PSE section and APSA Teaching and Learning on these issues may be useful.
Best Wishes,
Joseph W. Roberts
Roger Williams University
References
Knox, Liam. 2023. “Assessing College Readiness for the Pandemic Generation.” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2023/10/23/assessing-college-readiness-pandemic-generation.
Sparks, Sarah D. 2022. “The COVID Academic Slide Could Be Worse Than Expected.” Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-covid-academic-slide-could-be-worse-than-expected/2022/02.
Joseph W. Roberts is Chair and Professor of Politics and International Relations at Roger Williams University. He is also the president of the Political Science Education section of the American Political Science Association.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA’s Teaching Civic Engagement page.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Any questions or corrections to how the newsletter appears on Educate should be addressed to educate@apsanet.org
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