Creating Student-Scholar-Activists: Discourse Instruction and Social Justice in Political Science Classrooms

This article advocates the use of discourse instruction as a means of integrating issues of social justice into the classroom and transcending the debate over politicization in academia. The field of political science is at an uncomfortable juncture; it is faced with an obligation to ourselves and our communities to critically engage and push back against the more toxic components of the political moment, staying relevant and accurate and providing students with the tools they need to process the political world; while, also resisting the dual pressures to either stay apolitical/non-partisan, or to become a current events class, ceding class time to deciphering the day’s political events. We argue that discourse instruction can be used to teach the skills of social justice in political science classrooms. In addition, the infusion of diversity into the classroom through discourse instruction is both a means of enhancing student learning by engaging in high-impact practices of teaching and learning and political activism.