Space Matters, Too!: Political Science SoTL and Active Learning Classrooms

• In Event: TLC at APSA: Simulations, Skills, and the Bigger Picture: Thinking about How and Why We Use Simulations

Abstract

Through the Active Learning in Political Science blog as well as the pages of the Journal of Political Science Education, International Studies Perspectives, and PS: Political Science and Politics, political scientists engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) have produced a robust literature on active learning in disciplinary context. Quantitative achievement analyses, instructor reflections, and student perception studies have all demonstrated the benefits of active learning strategies within the discipline. However, disciplinary SoTL has not kept pace with the broader active learning research agenda. Whereas a vast literature has been developed interrogating the value of flexible learning spaces specifically designed to facilitate active learning strategies and activities—called “active learning classrooms”—this same level of interest has all but dissipated within the disciplinary SoTL of political science. Despite many educational developers having taken political science courses in active learning classrooms as their research samples, only two articles have been published by political scientists on the subject of active learning classroom experiences. This article reviews the main trends in disciplinary SoTL on active learning, as well as the place of political science in the study of active learning classrooms. It is high time for disciplinary SoTL to attend to active learning classrooms both because of the contribution to the robust literature on active learning in political science education, as well as the benefit of bringing political scientists into the conversation around active learning classrooms. This broader literature on active learning classrooms emerged with high hopes, but has since 2013 become more modest in its claims about the effects of active learning classrooms on student learning outcomes. Because political science as a discipline involves the investigation of complex social situations from a plurality of methodological approaches, political scientists engaged in the SoTL of political science stand to impact the broader study of active learning classrooms. In conclusion, I call for a shift in attention within the SoTL of political science towards the purpose-built active learning classrooms.

Author

• Michael P. A. Murphy, University of Ottawa