Why Don't More Political Science Programs Teach How To Teach?

• In Event: Teaching Political Science: A Closer Look at Faculty

Abstract

Over 40 years ago, Gerald Benjamin observed a long pattern of warnings that the political science discipline lacked adequate teacher training for faculty and graduate students (Benjamin 1971). Since that publication, research has demonstrated a growing interest in pedagogical training methods as evidenced in numerous publications, a journal of political science education, and a dedicated discipline-wide conference. Add to this that most political science doctoral graduates and practicing political scientists will teach. Yet, at best, surveys demonstrate that half of graduate programs offer training (Ishiyama et al. 2010; Ishiyama et al. 2014) and little is known about training for tenure-track and tenured faculty.

The underlying question of this paper is simply, why? Why don’t more political science programs provide teacher training programs? We offer two hypothesis for the lack of opportunities, one resource-driven and the other, culturally driven.

This paper presents data from a three-part project to answer this question. First, with the cooperation of the American Political Science Association, we included five questions about pedagogical training in a survey of Teaching and Learning Conference attendees and another survey of APSA-wide membership members in 2018. While this is a modest set of questions, it will be complemented with an upcoming 15-20 question survey of a regional association membership which we hope to report on at APSA in 2019.

Authors

• David L. Trowbridge, Middle Tennessee State University

• Jennifer Woodward, Middle Tennessee State University