Kenneth W. Foster • Concordia College This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s February 2008 issue. When I took up an assistant professor position in 2003 at the University of British Columbia (UBC—I left this past summer, as discussed below), I had received little training in pedagogy and was focused completely on doing…
Lanethea Mathews-Gardner • Muhlenberg College This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s April 2007 issue. This essay explores several important pedagogical lessons that emerged from a multiple-semester service learning partnership between students in introductory American National Government classes at Muhlenberg College and fifth graders at Jefferson Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The partnership…
John Ishiyama • Truman State University This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s April 2007 edition. “Active learning” is a buzzword in higher education. There is good reason to believe that it promotes student learning better than “passive” approaches (Shellman and Turan, 2006). Active learning leads to deeper learning of abstract concepts. Brock…
Nancy E. Wright • Long Island University – Brooklyn This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s December 2006 edition. American university students typically have two paths by which to take courses in public administration—through a department or school awarding degrees in public administration or through a political science department. The former offers the…
Mark Sachleben • Shippensburg University This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s December 2006 edition. As Scott Erb pointed out in a previous issue of this publication, students often become angry with themselves for being ignorant of international situations. I also have found that students are bemused and embarrassed by the lack of…
Henrike Lehnguth • University of Maryland, College Park Jenny Wüstenberg • University of Maryland, College Park This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s December 2006 edition. Ask any college teacher about the global awareness and knowledge displayed by his or her undergraduates and you will likely receive a response rife with frustration. A…
Maria Rost Rublee • University of Tampa This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s December 2006 edition. My upper-level political science classes are focused on reading, discussion, writing, and presentations. I want students to grapple with material on their own, analyze it to produce their own insights, and come to class prepared to…
Gus Jones, Jr. • Miami University Michelle G. Briscoe • Miami University This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s April 2006 edition. Census reports reveal that the U.S. is increasingly becoming a multi-cultural, multi-lingual and a multi-racial society. Aware of these demographic trends, colleges and universities are scrambling to formulate and implement curricula…
Jeffrey Bernstein • Eastern Michigan University John Ishiyama • Truman State University This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s April 2006 edition. During the 2006 American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conference, we were pleased to do a workshop that introduced colleagues to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) and offered…
Emmanuel C. Nwagboso • Jackson State University This essay originally appeared in the Political Science Educator’s April 2006 edition. “Probabilities Pondering” is a method of teaching that allows the professor to vigorously probe the students in the classroom through the discussion of assigned materials to ascertain their comprehension, thinking and reasoning abilities. Generally, if applied…