Teaching Students to Engage with Evidence: An Evaluation of Structured Writing and Classroom Discussion Strategies

In their transition to college, students often struggle to identify and make connections between the main arguments, evidence, and empirical findings of articles from academic journals commonly assigned on political science syllabi. Which active learning techniques are most effective for teaching students to recognize and evaluate social science evidence? To address this question, we conducted an experiment with students from two first-year writing seminars in political science. Students were randomly assigned to either an in-class writing activity or a group discussion, both of which required them to summarize an article’s use of evidence. We find limited evidence that group discussions are more effective for teaching students to engage with evidence.     

How to Teach Political Advice: Bringing the Daily Life of the Minister Into the Classroom

During four intensive summer weeks, 28 students were exposed to the daily life of top political leaders (ministers and city mayors), acting as their political advisors. Real-life assignments were planned in cooperation with liaisons from the personal offices of these political leaders. The cases brought the hectic, complicated and uncertain life of political leaders into the classroom, and exposed students to the real world to an extent that they had never before experienced in a classroom. They were highly stimulated, were forced to cooperate, learned a great deal, and were reactivated as committed students of political science.

The course was based on a mix of pedagogical elements to enhance student learning such as learning by doing, problem solving, critical reflection, student collaboration, prompt feedback, time on task and active learning and applies many of the recommendations of action-based and experiential learning theory.     

You All Made Dank Memes: Using Internet Memes to Promote Critical Thinking

In the time following the 2016 presidential election, much has been written about the spread of false information on social media websites. Given the potential influence false information has had on American politics, it is more important than ever for people to critically evaluate the content they view and share on social media. This article describes an activity that encourages students to develop evidence based arguments and think critically about content shared on social media. In the activity, students are asked to generate an internet meme related to U.S. politics and write a short essay defending the position they have taken in the meme. This article explains how the activity can promote critical thinking and includes suggestions for future implementation.     

论社会工程决策的协调思路

社会系统的运行是社会主体所制定的社会政策所支配的社会过程。协调分析是研究社会运行状态和社会政策之间的关系协调状态的重要方法。研究社会工程决策中的协调分析思路,对于理解社会工程活动的特征,建立社会工程理论具有重要意义。社会工程决策的协调分析思路有三个要点:首先,社会系统结构状况的研究是社会工程决策思维的基点;其次,社会政策设计的直接目的是解除社会约束,复次,社会工程决策研究中协调的核心是社会理想结构与现实结构之间的协调。     

Not So Scary: Using and Defusing Content Warnings in the Classroom

Content warnings — notices to students that class material may evoke their past traumas — have become entangled in (over)heated debates about the role of free speech on campus. Critics denounce content warnings as silencing tools intended to promote censorship, preclude discussion of difficult topics or punish professors who hold unpopular views. Supporters too often conflate content warnings with broader demands for classroom “safe space” that fail to recognize the distinct features of posttraumatic stress as a form of mental illness. In this article, I reconceptualize content warnings as a way to facilitate access to course material for students with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I then offer a set of concrete strategies for employing content warnings in political science courses. These strategies aim not only to support students struggling with trauma but also to de-escalate the controversy around content warnings by emphasizing how such warnings work to encourage engagement, access, and discussion.     

When the Party Comes to Town: Experiential Learning During a Presidential Nominating Convention

Winthrop University used its location in the Charlotte metropolitan area to develop a course that combined academic content with an experiential component during the Democratic National Convention. This article provides recommendations for planning logistics developing such a course for faculty who may wish to replicate this effort in future presidential election cycles.     

Using Active-Learning Pedagogy to Develop Essay-Writing Skills in Introductory Political Theory Tutorials

Building on prior research into active learning pedagogy in political science, I discuss the development of a new active learning strategy called the “thesis-building carousel,” designed for use in political theory tutorials. This use of active learning pedagogy in a graduate student-led political theory tutorial represents the overlap of several currents of political science education research. First, the graduate teaching assistant-led tutorial is a common complement to large lecture-based introductory courses in political theory. Second, where International Relations has led the expansion of active learning in political science, political theory has lagged behind other subfields (Archer &; Miller 2011 Archer, Candace C. and Melissa K. Miller. 2011. “Prioritizing Active Learning: An Exploration of Gateway Courses in Political Science.” PS: Political Science &; Politics 44(2): 429–434.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The thesis-building carousel is designed to develop skills necessary for political theory classes—essay writing and peer review. The article concludes with a discussion of how active learning activities designed for specialized spaces can be modified for use in traditional classroom settings, with the example of three forms of “summary carousels.”     

How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation

Britain’s political parties can be divided into two blocs: a ‘progressive bloc’ of parties on the left/centre‐left, and a ‘reactionary bloc’ of those on the right/centre‐right. In three of the last four general elections, the progressive bloc won an appreciably larger share of the popular vote than its reactionary rival. Yet its greater internal fragmentation has been repeatedly punished under first past the post, leading to what is now over a decade of Conservative‐led governments. This has prompted growing pressure to form a ‘progressive alliance’ between Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish nationalist competitors. This article sheds a historical and international light on these demands, examining the difficulties other similar efforts at progressive cooperation have faced across the world. It considers how progressive alliances have previously sought to overcome geographical, ideological, and social divides between their constituent members, and draws some salutary lessons for British progressives today.     

西方政治文明对我们的启示

政治文明是人们改造社会过程中所获得的积极的政治成果。中西方政治文明体系不存在优劣高低之分 ,应该相互学习和借鉴。在丰富和发展我们的社会主义政治文明的过程中 ,主要应向西方学习宪政、法治、民主和分权的精神与体制。     

中外合作办学思想政治教育工作路径选择与思考

中外合作办学作为新时期高校加强开放办学、国际交流与合作的重要窗口,应切实把创新学生教育管理模式作为推动大学生思想政治教育工作的内生动力。以山东农业大学中外合作办学为例,为创新中外合作办学思想政治教育工作作了积极实践与路径探索。     

英语教学中的合作学习和学习者的情感因素

合作学习是一种以学生为中心的教学理论与策略体系。文章通过对“合作学习”理论和学习过程中的情感因素的探讨，提出在英语教学中实施合作学习对学习者的情感因素有着明显的调整作用，并正面影响学习者的学习效果。     

SCAMPER and Creative Problem Solving in Political Science: Insights from Classroom Observation

This article describes the author’s experience using SCAMPER, a creativity-building technique, in a creative problem-solving session that was conducted in an environmental conflict course to generate ideas for managing postconflict stability. SCAMPER relies on cues to help students connect ideas from different domains of knowledge, explore random combinations between ideas in the same area and reduce mental blocks. Insights from classroom observation show SCAMPER’s utility in helping students formulate novel ideas and encourage divergent thinking and classroom participation. Combining SCAMPER with another session designed to evaluate the ideas’ logical connection to the problem is likely to maximize the students’ ability to deliver both original and relevant ideas. SCAMPER is a promising tool that instructors could use to develop their students’ creative problem-solving skills to tackle policy challenges across different subfields in political science.     

新时代一体推进不敢腐、不能腐、不想腐的理论思考

新时代一体推进不敢腐、不能腐、不想腐,是基于长期反腐败斗争正反两方面经验的深刻总结,是协调推进"四个全面"战略布局的客观要求,是夺取和巩固反腐败斗争压倒性胜利的行动遵循。当前,正确理解一体推进不敢腐、不能腐、不想腐的逻辑基础、内在关联、本质要义和正向效应,有助于明确新时代反腐败斗争的新策略。在一体推进不敢腐、不能腐、不想腐的实现路径上,要重在凝聚思想共识、构建三维机制、夯实政治基础。     

Mapping the production of political communications: a model to assist in understanding the relationships between the production and consumption of political messages

High public interest today in political communications such as ‘spin’ and in political participation such as electoral turnout suggests that there may be value in exploring the processes by which political messages are produced and consumed, and their inter‐relationship with participation. It may be that what citizen‐voters think of message production influences how they consume political news and publicity (through observing and evaluating), and that the propensity to political participation is subsequently affected. This paper offers a model which traces the production of political communications, starting at their origins in the political class, and flowing via traditional political journalism or controlled media and new media to citizen‐voters who both observe and evaluate them (ie consume them) before, during and after making any political choices. It is hypothesised that the observation and evaluation of message production and content by political consumers influences both their types and levels of participation. Research of this nature into political organisations is relatively rare. Similarly, there is little evidence of investigations into other aspects highlighted in the model: attitudes of the political class towards political communications, the production of political communications before they reach the media and how they are received by the media, and their consumption by citizen‐voters in relation to the propensity to participate in politics. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

如何满足中小学生在课堂教学中的心理需要

课堂教学是学校完成教育任务、实现教育目的的基本途径。在课堂教学中学生的心理需要能否得到满足，直接影响着学生参与课堂教学的积极性。学生在课堂上的心理需要主要有五种，分别是：情绪安全感；趣味性；自信心；归属感；权力和自由。我们的教学应进入学生的心理世界，让课堂不只是学习的场所，也成为人性养育的殿堂。     

国家创新:制度与观念的变革

建设创新型国家作为中国社会新时期的发展战略,其内涵不仅仅局限于技术和微观经济制度的创新层面,更需要一种全方位的社会制度的变革和观念的革新.要大力提升整个社会的自组织能力,推动整个社会的管理体制、生产和生活方式的变革;要适应时代的复杂性和不确定性,探索创新的内在规律,建立一种学习型战略,增进战略思维能力.     

Thinking with Flint: Racial Liberalism and the Roots of an American Water Tragedy

The lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s water is popularly framed as a case of “environmental racism” given that Flint’s population is mostly black and lower income. In this essay I argue that we see the environmental racism that underlies Flint’s water poisoning not as incidental to our political-economic order, nor even as stemming from racist intent, but as inseparable from liberalism, an organizing logic we take for granted in our modern age. I expand on the idea of “racial liberalism” here. While upholding the promise of individual freedoms and equality for all, racial liberalism—particularly as it was translated into urban renewal and property making in mid-20th-century urban America—drove dispossession. In Flint racialized property dispossession has been one major factor underlying the city’s financial duress, abandonment, and poisoned infrastructure. Yet, through austerity discourse, Flint is disciplined as if it were a financially reckless individual while the structural and historical causes of its duress are masked. Tracing the history of property making and taking in Flint and the effects of austerity urbanism on its water infrastructure, my central argument is that our understanding of Flint’s predicament—the disproportionate poisoning of young African-Americans—can be deepened if we read it as a case of racial liberalism’s illiberal legacies.     

The Involvement Process Through the Internet in the 2010 Italian Regional Elections

This paper explores Internet tools used for consensus building during the 2010 Italian regional elections, especially focusing on the use of the Internet to involve the electorate in a background of political disaffection. Previous experience from the United States and European countries suggests that the Internet is an interesting tool for the creation and development of consensus and shows an increasing use of Internet-based communication for elections. In this context, the research has two objectives. The first is to measure the degree of use of Internet tools by the main candidates to develop participation in several local areas, more limited than those traditionally investigated in the literature. To this end, we used the technique of analysis of site functionality, properly integrated to make it suitable for measuring the use of tools for participation, to compute for each candidate a reliable index of participation. Second, the work aims to understand how different contexts of electoral competition may encourage or lessen the inclination to use Internet communication tools in a participative sense. The analysis reveals a positive correlation between the affiliation of the candidate for the ruling party and the tendency for this candidate to use tools of participation more than the competitor.     

A Long Way to Go: The Final Report of the Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation

The Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation reported in January 2010. The report calls for a host of measures to improve the representativeness of the House of Commons and to revitalise political parties, as well as to enhance citizenship education, develop youth and community citizenship engagement programmes, and more generally to revitalise British democracy. Early responses indicate that the government and political parties will take the report seriously. The report is thoughtful, thorough and extensive, a treasure trove for policy makers, advocates and researchers. If it has a weakness, it is that it shows a better understanding of parliamentary reform than of party reform.