Active learning is what we would like students to be doing in a lecture: thinking about and engaging with the content, rather than copying slides.
Interacting with content through active learning has some compelling advantages over ‘delivery mode’ lectures. It helps to maintain student concentration & deepens learning.
While pop culture is not without its problems, it offers differing, potentially more accessible insights on the international that are not found in standard IR textbooks.
A common mistake when teaching popular culture and world politics is to overestimate the skill set that students will bring with them into the course.
Pop Culture stages debates on complex topics associated with the history of imperialism, geopolitical thinking and the relationship between territory, space and power.
IR students are rarely taught to apply reflexive perspectives to world politics – nor are they sensitized to non-American, non-Western, and female scholars’ perspectives.
Trusting the student voice (with a tiny bit of steering) and trying new things has paid off in multiple ways for me, and hopefully for the students in my classes too.
College teaching is much like any other profession in that there is a skill set that one must develop. Universities and colleges can and should do more to help early career academics become better teachers.
Teaching politics in China is going to be a different experience. The prospect makes one pause and recall the sorts of freedoms we enjoy in the West and the way professors do sometimes take them for granted.
Through taking part in the devised Crisis Simulations, the POL 210 students have emerged with a settlement as planned and hopefully a greater appreciation for the complexities of international politics.
Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.
E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated. Many thanks!
Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below.
