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Contemporary liberal democracies face complex and disruptive challenges, such as toxic populism, culture wars, political polarization, religious fundamentalism, the climate emergency, global conflicts, and the influence of powerful social media platforms. This is the disconcerting world that young people are growing up in and need support in understanding and mediating. This paper critically analyses the Australian Civics and Citizenship education curricular response using the theoretical insights of Basil Bernstein to understand the types of citizens it aims to nurture. Through analysing the language of the Australian Curriculum, the processes and intellectual influences behind its creation, and specific curricular content descriptors, the paper illuminates the social and ideological assumptions embedded in its vision of educating for democratic citizenship. We argue that political education remains a domain that Australian curriculum framers, schools, and teachers have approached cautiously. The paper highlights the curriculum's inadequacy in addressing early twenty-first-century political imperatives related to democratic deconsolidation, falling short of Bernsteinian ideals.

Students' readiness to learn politics is an important thing to consider nowadays. By encouraging positive emotions and good intrinsic learning motivation, students can prepare themselves well to learn this discipline. This study examines how self-regulated learning, competence, autonomy, relatedness, positive emotion, and intrinsic learning motivation affect political learning preparation in students. Additionally, information literacy is explored as a moderating variable on the association between positive emotion and political learning readiness, as well as intrinsic learning motivation and political learning readiness. Data were collected from 422 university politics students. Researchers first utilized SPSS to see the distribution of good data, then the SEM model and SmartPLS version 4. The study found no correlation between autonomy and intrinsic learning readiness. Other hypotheses in this study were tested and shown to be beneficial. Testing the interaction model shows that information literacy boosts positive emotions and learning motivation on political learning readiness.

This qualitative case study examined 11 teaching assistants' (TAs) awareness of the need to infuse culturally responsive pedagogy into undergraduate level courses. The TAs represented the fields of political science, history, English, psychology, world languages, and kinesiology at one public university. One-on-one interviews were conducted, audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed utilizing six phase thematic analysis. Interactive analysis and coding provided a system to examine the data, generate initial codes, and subsequently review, define, and report on the themes that emerged. Results suggest the TAs interviewed had not been adequately prepared to infuse culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) with instruction.

Mandated under Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, the decennial census determines the distribution of power and resources based upon population counts. College students are a hard-to-count population with limited knowledge about why the census matters and how to complete it. Politics and the global health pandemic made the 2020 Census exceptionally challenging. A university's center for civic engagement and students in a political science class collaborated with local, state, and national partners to develop and implement a campuswide 2020 Census Education and Engagement Program. Assessments of 2020 Census knowledge were administered to almost 2,000 students on a required university-wide Assessment Day. Subsequent data collection indicated knowledge about the 2020 Census is malleable, as evidenced by sizable gains over time as well as a positive relationship between census completion and participation in the 2020 Census Education and Engagement Program.

This paper explores the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on Russia's academic sector, relying on the limited evidence available. The invasion has triggered an academic exodus from Russia, with both immediate and far-reaching consequences. These consequences range from the interruption of ongoing research projects and the termination of international collaborations to the emergence of an intellectual void, raising concerns about the future of academic pursuits in Russia. Conventional models for understanding academic mobility, which primarily focus on professional and economic incentives, prove inadequate in accounting for the complexities introduced by geopolitical strife, international sanctions, and curtailed academic freedoms. This paper calls for an interdisciplinary approach incorporating perspectives from political science, sociology, and international relations for a richer understanding of academic migration in conflict-affected settings. The Russia-Ukraine war serves as an important case study, shedding light on the vulnerabilities of academic sectors, even in the aggressor country where the physical conflict is not occurring, and offering broader insights for the field of academic mobility.

This article analyzes the Know Your Rights Camp's "Speaking Out Against the Violence of Policing and Oppression: A Political Education Curriculum" from the campaign founded by Colin Kaepernick. The article evaluates the curriculum with a multifaceted perspective, specifically, the approach to inform learners about their foundational rights and lessons to politicize and empower them for social change through human rights education. A significant portion of this assessment is dedicated to examining the curriculum's inclusivity, ensuring the educational content is accessible. The analysis explores the curriculum's role in promoting learner agency and resistance, crucial for empowering students to navigate and challenge systemic inequities. This article contributes to the broader discourse on the importance of politically engaged educational practices, human rights awareness, and empowering Black and Brown learners in the fight against systemic oppression.

The field of communication has been working to reconcile its historic omission of race from research (Chakravartty et al., 2018) and pedagogy (Chakravartty & Jackson, 2020). The subfield of political communication has begun this process in its research (Freelon et al., 2023) but has yet to consider the implications of race missing from pedagogy. This essay offers an argument for including race in the political communication course, in the form of more focus on race in course content and more work by scholars of color. We offer reasons for these inclusions, ways for instructors to begin this incorporation, and what considerations instructors must be mindful of throughout the process.

Engaged learning seeks to cultivate integrative approaches that require students to use multiple points of view or approaches in their coursework. Similarly, civically engaged courses ask students to consider public problems that involve multiple stakeholders, institutions, and policies. We are interested in whether courses designed to meet civic engagement goals might also improve student self-assessment of integrative learning at our institution and could serve as a developmental step toward more holistic strategies. To test our hypothesis that student participation in civic engagement would improve student self-assessment of integrative learning, we compared summative student survey scores from students enrolled in similar courses with and without a civic engagement component (n = 275). Boxplot and statistical analysis (unpaired two-sample Wilcoxon test) were used to determine if civic engagement pedagogy made any meaningful impact on integrative learning. Our results show strong overall improvement in survey scores after civic engagement courses.

Hands-off data-driven learning is a data-based, student-oriented learning model characterized by inquiry and discovery. English context vocabulary teaching is the key to English teaching in colleges and an important indicator to evaluate the quality and level of college English teaching, which is a language teaching paradigm focusing on the language environment. Combining the two approaches can give students a more realistic, practical, and meaningful language learning experience. This paper analyzes the vocabulary learning level of two non-English major undergraduate classes at Southwest University of Political Science and Law before and after the application of the context experiment. The positive effect of context vocabulary teaching in the control groups is verified by comparing and analyzing the influence of context teaching based on hands-off data-driven learning on their scores and learning results between the experimental and control groups. It shows that the combination of context in English vocabulary teaching with hands-off data-driven learning can help to improve students' ability to understand, absorb, and apply English vocabulary.

To what degree is explicit care/work policy taught in family courses in Canada's leading research-intensive universities? We analyze family courses in sociology departments and in political studies and women's/gender studies programs in Canada's 15 R1 universities to make a contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This national scan marks a methodological innovation from curriculum studies that generally adopt a single-program or single-site focus. From a Canadian universe of 74 family courses, we identify 15 whose formal course calendar description explicitly addresses care/work family policy (measures to reconcile caring for young children with employment, through early learning and childcare, parental leaves, and child benefits). Sociology predominates among courses where family policy is taught, yet care/work policy content is not common. Given growing concerns about the care crisis and the care deficit in Canada, the low profile of care/work family policy content in family courses is significant. This study sheds light on the value of national postsecondary education curricular reviews and suggests that family curriculum renewal is warranted.

Public administration has a long tradition of close connections to the field of political science. As the field of public administration evolved from a basic politics administration dichotomy, it became evident that the distinction between politics and administration was nebulous at best. As such, public affairs students need exposure to, and knowledge of, the founding documents and basic principles that underpin American government. This article explores the reasons for including American government instruction in introductory public affairs courses, student knowledge and preparation in American government, and strategies for enhancing the coverage of the principles of American government in public affairs programs.

This article examines attitudes of the Croatian final grade high school students towards the burdensome legacy of the Second World War and Croatian war for independence (1991-1995). Following the theoretical framework of memory studies, and implementing the concept of postmemory, we have developed a structural model connecting ideology and legacy of the wars. In addition, we have further modelled postmemory and its reliance on democratic values, namely political attitudes, trust in state institutions and political knowledge. Individualised predictors offered more nuanced analysis away from the binary understanding of pro-collaborationist and anti-fascist divide, in line with wider European trends and political culture(s).

This article examines the contribution of Slovak political science to international academic discussions by analysing publications by faculty members of Slovak political science departments. Based on an analysis of 2660 publications, our results indicate that while Slovak political scientists publish only small numbers of articles in journals indexed in international databases and few monographs with prestigious publishing houses, they are very productive when it comes to other types of publications, especially articles in non-indexed journals and conference proceedings. However, in both cases, most of their publications outside the national context are limited to regional journals and publishing houses. Although there are significant differences between individual Slovak political science departments in this regard, the predominant focus on regional (and domestic) publication outlets limits the contribution of Slovak political science to main discussions within the discipline. We call this publication strategy, seen as the flip side of internationalisation, which contributes to discussions at the global level, 'pseudo-internationalisation'. We argue that this is a pragmatic approach adopted by employees of public universities who are expected to publish internationally, but, due to a lack of academic contacts outside their (immediate) neighbourhood, focus on this geographic area.

Political education is a loaded expression, and even more so when it is suggested that state authorities should be in charge of it. The main claim from the author in this article is that, in contexts of sufficient political pluralism, political education should more firmly be taken in charge by primary and secondary schools. In the first section, the authors explains why political education is an important and demanding collective good. In the second, why the spontaneous political education occurring within families and other spaces of socialization is unlikely to deliver appropriate political education. It may seem odd to compare schools and families with respect to some educational goals. Yet given that families play an important role in shaping the political judgments of children and that some parents see political education as their prerogative, the capacity of families to deliver this collective good is worth questioning. In the third section, the author explains why the school environment--and classrooms in particular--have more potential for the development of considered political judgments. In the fourth, the author deals with the main objection to such a project, which is grounded in the legitimate fear of political indoctrination. And in the fifth the author gives a broad idea of what a citizen-empowering political education aiming at a form of impartiality could look like, to deflate the fear of indoctrination.

The scholarship of teaching and learning is primarily concerned with improving student learning. Of course, we want our students to learn our disciplines, we want them to become critical thinkers, and we want them learn to write. But this study looks at how learning impacts a student's optimism or pessimism. We believe that it is an important topic in today's world and provides an important new topic in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This study is co-authored by two team-teachers and three honors students. Using an Introduction to Politics course as case material, the study provides a pre and post-test measuring student optimism versus pessimism on a wide variety of political issues facing Generation Z students. Then we provide a content analysis of honors essays which were collected during the semester and interviews with our three honor student co-authors. We draw initial conclusions about optimism versus pessimism in teaching and argue that a larger research agenda around this topic would benefit the scholarship of teaching and learning literature.

The creation of educational audio-visual materials has recently become popular. It is an innovative and entertaining practice, which can reach millions of people through social networks and YouTube. For this reason, this specific was designed for students enrolled in the following three modules: The Spanish political system, public administration in Spain, and institutions and decision-making structures in both the of joint degrees in law and political science and in public management and economic sciences, as well as degrees in public management and degrees in political science. Educational audio-visual materials were co-designed and co-created to define a Municipal Council, its workings and its organization. This was a three phased experiment. In the first, under the supervision of teachers, students developed five videos showing how Municipal Councils work. This allowed university students to become involved in a collaborative learning activity through which they acquired a series of important skills for future use, in addition to reinforcing their learning by participating in creation of digital teaching material, and also establishing a new teaching methodology consisting of learning-by-doing. In the second, professors and students attended CEIP Severo Ochoa Primary School in Madrid showing videos and playing two practical games, thus promoting knowledge transfer. In the third, the teachers evaluated the impact of this activity and the degree of satisfaction of university and primary school students. The result was positive, because not only was an educational innovation successfully implemented, but also a large part of objectives were achieved.

Conversations about controversial political issues within the public-school classroom are necessary for the whole development of students as they prepare to participate fully in democracy, part of their role as conscious social reproducers of the American political regime. Effective educators train students to critically understand and analyze political conflicts pluralistically through contemporary and historical lenses. However, teachers are caught amid a conflict within the public discourse about the appropriateness of engaging in political and controversial classroom discussions. As a result, state legislatures and local school districts are defining their stances on such issues, sometimes leading to barriers in the path of educators having productive political discussions within their classrooms. This paper provides a rationale for engaging in political conversations within U.S. classrooms by understanding the legal structure and how to use state standards to examine such issues philosophically. Finally, this article provides several perspectives and methods teachers can use to have productive political dialogue within their classrooms aligned to the identified legal structure.

This work aims to advance on the systematization of teaching experiences in the formulation of evaluation activities, mediated by ICT, for academic and professional training in the field of Political Science. It explores the usefulness of student podcasting as a didactic strategy for theoretical-active learning in digital university environments during COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the design of an assessment questionnaire and a nonprobabilistic convenience sampling strategy, a survey has been administered to N=40 students from two theoretical undergraduate courses of the School of Political Science at the University of Costa Rica, taught during two semesters in 2020. The article reviews the related results according to the degree of satisfaction with podcasting as a way of evaluating the appropriation of theoretical content. It is concluded by arguing that this teaching-learning methodology helps to facilitate among students' new ways of "putting theory into practice", this through the exercise of creative, reflective skills and theoreticalconceptual argumentation according to the creation of student-made podcasts, based on work on theoretical lines and conceptual proposals of relevance to Political Science.

The article aims to determine the correspondence of the value orientations of students and teachers to the pragmatic and civilizational goals of political education in the process of introducing digital information and communication technologies for sustainable development. The study involved 92 students of the School of Marxism, TongJi University, who are receiving political education at the master's level in the speciality "Political Science" using digital mobile and cloud information and communication educational technologies, and 83 teachers of political disciplines of this university. The authors used the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). The accumulation, sorting and visualization of information in the course of the study were carried out in the Microsoft Excel program. The statistical significance and significance of the results of the study were assessed based on the Student's t-test, which was calculated using the online calculator Social Science Statistics. Statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences between the motivational educational values of students and teachers have revealed: the teachers expressed conformity largely than the students (4.6 ± 0.2 and 3.4 ± 0.1 points, respectively) and the importance of traditions (4.9 ± 0.1 and 3.5 ± 0.3 points), and the students - independence (4.5 ± 0.2 vs. 3.3 ± 0.1 points). According to the neuroticism scale, the indicators of the teachers (15.6 ± 2.4) are at the upper limit of the norm and statistically significantly (p < 0.05) exceed the hands of the students (10.2 ± 1.0). The difference in the hierarchy of values of students receiving political education using digital information and communication technologies and teachers of political disciplines was revealed, reflecting the presence of a conflict between the pragmatic and civilizational goals of political education in the process of introducing digital information and communication technologies, primarily about the opposition of traditions and universalism, conformism and the desire for power and achievement.

The purpose of this article is to study the impact of the use of digital interactive information technologies in Chinese political education on the civic participation of Chinese and foreign students. The study involved 347 Chinese and 298 foreign students China University of Political Science and Law University, School of Marxism (Shanghai); East China University of Political Science and Law (Shanghai); China Youth University of Political Studies (Beijing), who studied using digital interactive information technologies (experimental group 2); the control group consisted of 285 Chinese and foreign students who, during the experiment, studied political disciplines without the use of digital interactive information technologies. To investigate the students' civic participation, the authors used a special semi-structured questionnaire, as well as the method "Diagnostics of the socio-psychological attitudes of a person in the motivational-need sphere" by O. Potemkina and the method "Motivation of professional activity" by K. Zamfir modified by A. A. Rean. Both Chinese and foreign students who received political education using digital interactive information technologies during the experiment turned out to be significantly more active in civilian life than those who studied without using these technologies.

While 'interactive' and 'student-centered teaching' are becoming buzzwords when promoting international English Medium Instruction (EMI) tertiary programmes in non-Anglophone countries, studies found that fewer lecturers possessed the competencies needed to teach content subjects interactively. This longitudinal case study looked beyond content lecturers' language proficiency, instead, addressing their interactional competencies based on the framework of 'Quality Interaction in Pedagogy'. The objectives were (1) to explore the interaction-related problems and behavioural triggers experienced by an untrained EMI lecturer of political science, and (2) to empirically assess the framework by observing classroom interactions before and after teacher training. The main participant was a non-native English-speaking lecturer (n = 1) teaching undergraduate students (n = 62) enrolled in three separate courses at Japanese universities. The study found that the framework was useful for measuring the effectiveness of classroom interactions after teacher training. The results also suggested that its systematic application done by extending Initiation-Response-Feedback sequences or broadening teacher language functions could enhance the quality of teacher-student interactions in tertiary contexts. These measures make a conceptually robust framework to help bridge applied linguists and content specialists on the issue of interactivity in EMI.

Urban universities with a predominantly commuting student population face distinct challenges in fostering social connections. Commuting students spend less time on campus and have fewer opportunities for organized and spontaneous social interactions with other students. The campus experience for commuter students tends to center around the classroom. Social connection is vital to various outcomes, such as persistence and well-being, and thus instructors need to find ways to promote different forms of interaction. This study uses focus groups and a survey instrument to examine student perceptions of the social benefits of collaborative active learning activities in a first-year introductory political science course. The data indicate that students positively assess their experiences with collaborative learning, highlighting its benefits on social connection and well-being.

To what extent does educational gaming add value to more traditional instructional models in learning core concepts of national security and warfighting? This paper presents the results from a quasi-experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal study of students taking two standardized courses in the Joint Military Operations department at the US Naval War College. Split into wargaming and non-wargaming sections by instructor preference, subject learning is measured through self-reported and objective measures at three points: prior to the start of the content block on "Operational Art"; after the case study of the WW2 battle of Leyte Gulf but prior to any wargaming; and for subjects in wargaming course sections, after participating in the Leyte Gulf scenario of the "War at Sea" wargame. The results support the hypotheses that wargaming increases learning and alter student preferences in favor of learning through gaming but fail to find evidence that students recognize the value of the debriefing phase of educational gaming. This article adds to existing studies by focusing on an understudied practitioner population--graduate-level career military officers at a professional military education (PME) institution--and mitigating several of the methodological challenges facing many scholarly projects in the study of educational gaming in political science.

Decades of scholarship on teaching and learning affirm the benefits of public service internships on student learning outcomes. Studies emphasize how hands-on fieldwork can increase students' substantive knowledge, political efficacy, trust in government, and civic participation, among other factors. However, most articles treat internships equally without accounting for the variation in the institutionalization of experiential-learning programs within and across universities. We theorize that more structured internship programs (e.g., more student credits, intentionally designed curricula, additional faculty guidance) yield larger impacts on learning objectives centered on civic culture and education. We test this theory by analyzing three years of student data from two public universities' fieldwork programs. We compare pretest and posttest survey results from undergraduates (1) participating in structured public service internship programs run in a state capital, (2) participating in internships pursued independently, and (3) majoring in a social science degree but having yet to complete an internship. We find that students pursuing a solo internship or via a structured program begin and end with higher political knowledge, efficacy, civic engagement, and related attitudes than the control group. We also find the more systematized an internship experience, the bigger the effect on key student learning outcomes. These results underscore how political science departments can fortify civic culture through more structured public service internship programs.

This paper introduces a new pedagogic approach to the teaching of political science. In engineering education, the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) pedagogy provides an active, experiential learning experience, structuring learning around four key phases in product development. Applied to the undergraduate Politics and International Relations (IR) classroom, this pedagogical innovation in learning, teaching and assessment is adapted to policy development. This design-build-test pedagogical approach has been highly successful in engineering education, supporting students to be "industry-ready engineers" on graduation. Results across 3 cohorts suggest that this pedagogical innovation is also highly successful when transferred to Politics and IR, supporting political science students develop "society-ready" attitudes, attributes and skills, greatly enhancing the student experience and increasing their attainment, engagement, inclusion and wider graduate outcomes. Civic engagement and the ability to understand and respond to a range of stakeholders are also improved. This paper presents the pedagogy and the module to which it was applied as a case study, before highlighting opportunities for political science educators to transfer the pedagogy to their own teaching context.

How can information literacy (IL) skills be improved during one semester? The proliferation of information disorders - fabricated stories, misleading content, clickbait - requires skills beyond using a fake-news checklist. Students in an introductory political science course were asked to analyze a news story every week as a course objective to increase IL. Thirty sections of American Government & Politics were given versions of an assignment eventually named "News Analysis." Class averages did not improve over time; instead, most semesters saw a negative correlation between the number of iterations of the assignment and the average class score. The instructor changed tactics multiple times to address these shortcomings, but deficiencies in IL reflected both instructor failure and systemic problems in higher education.

In 2018, we sought to understand the difference in pedagogical training opportunities and demand within political science departments across the U.S. through surveys of political scientists. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic forced faculty to rethink the way they do assessment and lectures resulting in stress and burnout. To measure attitudes, resources, and opportunities for teaching and teacher-training in this new environment, we once again surveyed American Political Science Association (APSA) members. Using APSA membership provides a large pool of political scientists, however as a sample it may skew toward more tenure and tenure-track faculty at larger universities. With that caveat, almost all APSA members in our 2021 survey reported that their in-person courses were converted to a remote, hybrid, or web assisted format in the 2020 to 2021 period. While morale and confidence in teaching declined during the pandemic, interest in offering alternative forms of teaching like synchronous remote courses increased. Respondents found pedagogy training more important following the pandemic, despite a decline in participation. Furthermore, interest in this training remained stable between prepandemic and postpandemic periods. These findings suggest that declining participation in these activities is more reflective of a lack of time and institutional rewards rather than less interest in training opportunities. These shifting attitudes call for increased opportunities for pedagogy training. As with prior findings, incentives would encourage political scientists to increase their participation in pedagogy training as many do not feel rewarded for their teaching efforts.

In a highly polarized political environment, political discourse on divisive topics is all the more important. Heeding the many calls for higher education to teach political discourse skills, this study investigates the impact of political discourse lessons in a college-level, political science classroom. Further, it explores the effectiveness of student-peers as teachers. The study finds peers, compared to faculty, are better able to relate to students, and this strength is ideal for teaching subjects that require social connections such as the active listening and perspective taking techniques. Discussion of sensitive political topics can easily lead to discomfort and uneasiness. Our findings suggest that student learners may be more receptive to peer-leaders than to instructors when it comes to such situations. Further peer-teachers experienced increased comfort levels when involved in controversial political discussions and increased ability to engage in political dialogue.

In this article, I argue that critical junctures -- defined as sudden turning points in the historic trajectory of countries, institutions, and other units of analysis -- provide a propitious lens to teach the war in Ukraine. By analyzing the influence of this war on energy security in Europe and the world, its impact on public opinion on NATO membership in nonaligned countries, or the war's potential to change great power politics, to name a few examples, students of political science can determine themselves, if the war amounts to a critical juncture. In doing so, they not only learn how to apply a rather complex theory to a real-world scenario, they also learn how the discipline of political science operates.

In this article I discuss an approach to teaching about the Russian war in Ukraine that uses the war as a focal point for teaching about topics in comparative politics and international relations. I discuss the pedagogical advantages for political science teaching, including meeting the interests of students, introducing students to theories in political science, and re-centering courses on the region away from Russia. I then discuss how the various political science topics and research questions are related to the war, and I conclude with a section on assignments and methods for student engagement that work well with this type of course.

The rise in populism and movements that threaten trust in science and expertise has been labeled a post-truth world. What challenges does this environment present for higher education, and how should it respond? This article examines the characteristics of a post-truth world and how that challenges the fundamental purposes of higher education. It then examines how higher education might respond, what risks come with that response, and how effectively it might resist attempts to attack and undermine its different purposes. These movements undermine possibilities for truth or objective knowledge, presenting a clear threat to higher education. Its response focuses around improving research and communication with the public, but the nature of cognitive processes in a polarized world leads people to discount information that does not fit with their existing worldviews and values. Simply providing better research will not solve the problem, and actively engaging with these movements can make higher education seem more partisan, further reducing trust. In the face of such intractable problems, it is important for higher education to also nurture communities with its students that foster trust and "critical loyalty" to knowledge and truth over falsehoods and conspiracy.

What makes a useful textbook, and can the use of textbooks boost active learning and student satisfaction in political science higher education? Drawing on the author's own experience of writing a textbook and a student survey, this article articulates some propositions on effective textbook-assisted teaching practice. In seeking to develop a theory of effective textbook use, the article explores the features of textbooks and textbook-supported teaching that work to promote student engagement and the achievement of course-specific learning outcomes. A three-dimensional theory of effective textbook-supported teaching in political science is outlined, contributing to the wider literature on higher education pedagogy. The article shows why textbooks are valuable for teaching and learning, elucidating how they can be used effectively to support student learning. The article concludes that common perceptions of textbooks as "dumbing down" or "lowest common denominator" teaching are misplaced. Rather, textbooks can work as useful primers that leverage student learning and facilitate learners' access into advanced, specialist scholarship in the field of political science.

Events of recent years both in the United States and around the globe have highlighted the fragility of democracy. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has prompted educators to seek evidence-based civic engagement methods for helping students understand the invasion and its implications. This paper offers a set of recommendations on how to teach the war in Ukraine through the lens of civic engagement education. Over the years, a sizeable body of scholarship has developed addressing the critical role civic education plays in safeguarding democracy and producing effective pedagogical approaches for instilling democratic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Using this scholarship as a starting point, this paper offers recommendations on how educators in a variety of settings and across disciplines might modify these civic learning models to address the war in Ukraine. Based on my experience as a scholar-practitioner-educator at an institute of politics focused primarily on American democracy, I also offer suggestions on how to integrate teaching the war in Ukraine using these practices to enhance appreciation of civic engagement and the role of the citizen.

Students entering contemporary higher education have the question of employability at the forefront of their minds, both when deciding which institution to study at and which subject to study. However, the notion of the "employability agenda" is not often welcomed by academics. Focusing on teaching and learning in the UK, this article draws on Daubney's (2022) concept of "extracted employability" to ask what students of Politics and International Relations can expect in terms of employability outcomes from their degree and how that employability value can best be communicated. Highlighting resistance from academics and students to integrating employability into a demanding curriculum, this article, referencing the 2023 QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Politics and International Relations, offers a subject-specific employability proposal. This suggestion could enhance Politics and International Relations degrees and be incorporated into institution-wide curricula and student recruitment activities. The Subject Benchmark Statement is utilized as a common understanding of the nature and standards of study in a subject area; one that can be applied in the delivery and promotion of degrees to help answer the call for those delivering Politics and International Relations teaching and learning to be more confident in their articulation of the employability value of a degree in the field.

This article presents a teaching case study of a semester-long progression of engaged learning activities in an introductory American politics course. The method enhances a traditional democratic participation assignment with authentic social network engagement. Students in the course selected democratic actions from a menu. Actions involved collaboration or conversation with family members, friends, or other contacts beyond the class roster. Students reported deep engagement with course material and enhanced efficacy and motivation to participate in democratic life in the future. Furthermore, there were sizable spillover effects within student social networks. This method is a simple and effective way to give students authentic democratic learning opportunities, empower them to mobilize others, and affect a broader group of community members.

Since first airing on HBO in 2011, "Game of Thrones" (GOT) has proven to be a fruitful text for teaching and studying politics. In 2022 the prequal to GOT-House of The Dragon (HOTD) debuted on HBO. This paper conducts discourse analysis on the entire first season with two goals in mind. First, we demonstrate how pop culture is impacted by real world politics by examining the change in gender and racial representation in HOTD compared to GOT and argue that this change was a product of cultural backlash that GOT received and a result of changing political attitudes over the time of both shows airing. Second, we use the show's content as text to teach American and Comparative politics concepts. In the appendix we provide three examples of low, mid, and high-stake assignments that use show content in teaching political science courses.

This paper analyses faculty experiences tackling global knowledge asymmetries by examining the decolonisation of higher education in Africa in the aftermath of the 2015 'Rhodes Must Fall' student uprising. An overview of the literature reveals a rich debate on defining 'decolonisation', starting from a critique of Eurocentrism to propositions of alternate epistemologies. These debates are dominated by the Global North and South Africa and their experiences of curriculum reform. Our focus is on the experiences of political scientists in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. These countries share the same Anglophone political science traditions but represent different political trajectories that constitute a significant condition for the discipline. The 26 political scientists we interviewed acted toward increasing local content and perspectives in their teaching, as promoted in the official strategies of the universities. They noted that what was happening in lecture halls was most important. The academic decolonisation debate appeared overambitious or even as patronising to them in their own political context. National politics affected the thematic focus of the discipline both as far as research topics and students' employment opportunities were concerned. Although university bureaucracies were slow to respond to proposed curricula changes, new programmes were approved if there was a market-based demand for them. International programs tended to be approved fastest. Political economy of higher education plays a role: dependency on foreign funding, limited national resources to conduct research and produce publications vis-à-vis international competition, and national quality assurance standards appeared to be most critical constraints for decolonising the curriculum.

Middle East studies, and in particular the study of the politics of the Middle East stands at a crossroads pedagogically a decade after the Arab Spring. This study observed an experimental pre- or partial Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) engagement between Political Science students in New Zealand and the Sultanate of Oman to investigate whether COIL-based approaches, couched in decolonizing pedagogical theory and new digital communication technologies, could offer a useful tool for instructors and students in the field to begin to address enduring western (un)conscious paradigms of "The Middle East."

Decades of research suggest that interactive classrooms enhance student engagement and improve comprehension. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an educational strategy used first in medical settings and business schools and then expanded to social sciences and humanities that emphasizes small-group, active-learning, where most classroom time is devoted to group problem-solving. In a previous study, we showed in the political science classroom that TBL enhanced student appreciation for working in teams. Positive experiences with teamwork develop interpersonal skills that help our students get into the door in a competitive job market where entry positions demand skills for effective collaboration and communication. In this study, I determine the effect of the pandemic-induced requirement to use TBL in a virtual environment on student appreciation for working in teams. Due to the duration of the pandemic, this study includes data from multiple semesters. This study confirms that TBL is effective at improving student attitudes toward working in teams during in-person semesters, but data from online semesters does not demonstrate a significant impact on positive attitudes toward teams. I explore three possible explanations for this finding. I conclude that to capture the benefits of online team-based learning, we must consider new strategies to ensure all key elements of TBL are applied.

This paper pilots a method of testing the learning effects of a role-playing simulation of negotiations over the Nile basin. Players negotiate how to apply general principles from international law, such as sharing water equitably and avoiding significant harm, to specific circumstances of the river basin. Students are presented with a set of factual statements about the basin and surveyed before and after play as to which facts will be (were) most important in negotiations. Surveys of 75 participating graduate students show interesting patterns: (1) a shift from emphasis on managing risks to exploiting cooperative opportunities; (2) change in the value orientation of the statements students consider most important, with development-oriented values increasing and environment-oriented values decreasing; and (3) change in the dimensions of power students consider most salient, including an increased appreciation for the institutional and knowledge-related elements of power and a de-emphasis on the structural aspects of power. Before-and-after surveying offers an alternative to the more common methods of learning assessment, based on knowledge acquisition or student satisfaction, while discussion of the survey results with students allows for a richer, more reflective learning experience.

Responding to student concerns about the market value of an undergraduate degree in Political Science, many departments offer students the opportunity to earn credits toward their degree by completing relevant internships. This raises two important questions: what sort of internship experiences should qualify as a Political Science internship and how can faculty ensure that internships contribute to students' professional and academic development? I contend that the criteria for granting Political Science credits for an internship experience should emphasize the likelihood that the internship experience will help the student achieve some of the specific learning objectives that Political Science departments typically set forth for their students rather than focusing on the nature of the organization where they complete their internship. I also argue that designing complementary academic assignments that require students to utilize the research, analytic, and communication skills we expect our students to develop during their undergraduate career is the best way we can ensure that a Political Science internship not only enhances our students' marketability but also contributes to students' achievement of discipline-specific learning objectives.

The intervention of modern teaching media in classroom teaching activities has greatly extended the time and space of teaching practice, and new teaching methods, teaching models, and teaching designs have emerged one after another. Improving pertinence and effectiveness and cultivating high-quality talents with solid theoretical foundations provide something that many schools and related teachers have been exploring and researching. Multimedia teaching courseware has its excellent advantages and effects. However, when we enjoy the convenience brought by multimedia to basis of the existing teaching behavior analysis technology, it combines research methods such as residual calculation (residual calculation) and support vector machine (SVM), aiming at both teachers and students. It becomes intuitive, visualized, concrete, and contagious, which keeps students' attention, emotion, interest, and other psychological factors in the learning process in a good state.

Political Science is a relatively new subject in the Mauritian academic context. As a small island developing state located in the Indian Ocean, it has many interesting features from which to draw to teach the discipline. These features include the ethnic and cultural diversity of its population; the island's political stability in a geographical region known for recurrent political violence; its curious power-sharing model and its strategic location in the Indian Ocean magnified by the vastness of its Exclusive Economic Zone and contested territories. All these provide a uniquely stimulating intellectual context for teaching and researching about politics. However, teaching Political Science in Mauritius involves grappling with several complexities such as developing students' critical thinking skills and limited academic exchanges with international scholars due to the remoteness of the island itself. Moreover, as other African universities, the question of decolonizing the curriculum is relevant in the Mauritian context as the discipline remains highly western centric.

Since the establishment of the "Journal of Political Science Education" (JPSE) in 2004, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become more rigorous and data-based, thanks in large part to the efforts of editors, peer-reviewers, and submitters to the journal. Where does the field go from here? I argue that our greatest strengths lie in multimethod approaches. To best understand how to improve teaching and learning in political science, we need to use all of our methodological tools. To illustrate these tools, I provide examples of some of the most-cited pieces in JPSE over the past 20 years, including ones using large-n statistical, experimental, case study, student self-report, qualitative evaluation, and reflective methodologies. I also provide examples of multimethod SoTL work and argue that the best way to move the field forward is to use multiple methodological tools together. Multimethod approaches help us better understand both the teaching problems that are facing the field of political science today and how best to respond to them. For instance, big data can help us understand overall trends, but may hide the individual experiences of students; experiments may reveal causal relationships, but surveys can help us understand how they function in practice. By bringing multiple methodological approaches together, we can get better answers to important questions. The widespread adoption of multimethod SoTL approaches in the future will require rethinking graduate school training, thoughtful research design, and providing intentional collaboration opportunities through conferences and infrastructure.

There has been a massive shift in teaching quantitative political research since the "Journal of Political Science Education" was launched in 2004. Smartphones were an anomaly, and it was uncommon to have laptops in the classroom. Statistical calculations were sometimes done by "statisticians", i.e., professional staff who did calculations for faculty members. Today, it is rare to see students without electronics. Through that transition we experienced ubiquitous Wi-Fi and smartphones, statistical computing on personal computers, the end of the academic staff statistician, an explosion in open-source statistical software and tutorials, and an unexpected mass transition to online learning during COVID. We experienced a similar revolution in teaching statistics. Increases in computational power and data availability make quantitative and qualitative research different than 20 years ago. Computation is rarely a limiting factor, and we find ourselves spending more time on statistical assumptions, correct methods, data integrity, and replicability. We are now entering an era of assistive technology and will need to transition to teaching students how to use artificial intelligence tools to assist them with quantitative work. In this article, we consider these changes and what they mean for teaching political science in the next 20 years.

Although research methodology is a staple and essential requirement of many undergraduate political science programmes worldwide, there are still many intense and ongoing debates among teachers and students on the series of effective learning and teaching approaches and strategies for this subject matter that involve theoretical understanding, procedural knowledge, practical skills, and reflective mindsets. By undergoing a thematic analysis of the course syllabi of the undergraduate political science research methodology courses offered by seven publicly funded universities in Hong Kong, this study aims to first illustrate how individual teachers structure and sequence their courses, followed by highlighting the underlying educational implications. This qualitative study primarily focuses on seven distinct yet interrelated aspects of course design, namely course title, course description, intended learning outcomes, course topics and content, readings and references, assessment tasks, and course format. All these empirical findings can contribute to scholarship by offering greater clarity and consistency in understanding the learning and teaching of research methodology in the context of undergraduate political science education. These findings can also inform future practices in terms of course design, pedagogical best practices, lesson preparation, and assessment development among educators and practitioners.

Some in our discipline have recently voiced the opinion that political science is a data science. What follows from this argument is that we as instructors are training the next generation of data scientists, especially professionals and researchers who will work with big data. This paper explores the implications for political science education, arguing that we are uniquely suited to make students critical consumers of big data--a goal we can achieve by creating dialogue with work in critical data studies. I offer three suggestions about how to integrate lessons from critical data studies in the classroom. These include ideas about diversifying the research methods curriculum, using data work for service learning, and modeling best practices in our own engagement with students. Though the discussion in this piece is theoretical, the takeaways include a call to action to create more meaningful dialogue with critical data studies.

The impact of the feminist movement has resonated in the field of Higher Education, giving rise to an increasingly large body of research that is sensitive to the gender perspective. Since Political Science educates future professionals, it is desirable to carry out research into the effect of gender biases on the learning process of Political Science students. For this reason, this article aims to show the findings of a study carried out at the University of the Basque Country with the purpose of contributing to the identification and understanding of gender inequalities in Political Science classrooms. The conclusions not only suggest that admitting the existence of a sex-gender system is a central factor in understanding the persistence of gender inequalities, but also reveal that a transformation in academia which involves training a feminist awareness of both professors and students could contribute to reducing gender inequalities.

The advent of artificial intelligence and concerns over academic integrity have put instructors from every discipline on notice regarding the kinds of coursework we are assigning. But this is also a moment to deliver content in a manner that is clearer and more dynamic, use more active forms of learning, and improve the academic and professional outcomes of our students. This article surveys the most common themes and approaches from the pages of the journal and offers some suggestions for how AI and generative technologies can augment our teaching and allow instructors to focus on higher-level learning outcomes.