Data Analysis and Data Visualization as Active Learning in Political Science

While data analysis and the related skills of data management and data visualization are important skills for undergraduates in the field of political science, the process of learning these skills can also be used to develop critical thinking, encourage active and collaborative learning, and to apply knowledge gained in the classroom. Drawing on our experiences using data work in upper-level courses in International Relations and American Politics, we discuss how data work and quantitative analysis can be incorporated into subject-based (i.e., nonmethods specific) courses, and how it can also enhance critical reasoning skills. An evaluation of this approach using direct and indirect assessment is included.     

Zimbabwe and Canada: Historical Struggle Meets Historical Vacuum

This article argues that a poverty of historical understanding of Canada’s relations with Zimbabwe has had a debilitating effect on Canadian government policy in southern Africa in recent years. More particularly, this vacuum of Canadian historical understanding has encouraged a profound scepticism on the part of African governments about the Canadian government’s motives for intervening in Zimbabwean affairs, and has helped to create an atmosphere of mutual incomprehension. The Canadian government’s approach generally fails to put rights-based criticisms in any sort of historical context, and leaves Mugabe’s historically-based propaganda largely unanswered. The article argues that there are structural reasons why Canadian government policy is pursued in an historical vacuum. These relate to the organisation of government and the academy in Canada; as well as to Canadian nationalist and ideological preconceptions, which impede a more clear-sighted understanding of the broader historical and British imperial context of Canada’s engagement with southern Africa.     

Special educational needs and the law: Some practical implications

This article focuses on the law relating to special educational needs. It discusses the impact which the growth in the area of parental rights has had on LEA administrative and executive functions. It highlights varying circumstances leading up to the processes of statutory assessment and statementing in which parents and the LEA may find themselves in a position of conflict and tension. This article provides an analysis of how one specific LEA has sought to respond to the burgeoning workload and associated pressures brought about by changes in educational legislation, regulations and case law and the general increase in the number of appeals lodged against it.