Navigating Diversity through Political Science Pedagogy in Flyover Country

• In Event: Exploring Questions of Diversity & Inclusion

Abstract

This article documents and analyzes the teaching strategies that political science faculty use to teach curriculum focused on diversity in the Midwest of the United States. Drawing on interviews with political science faculty in the Midwest, this article empirically documents how professors’ perceptions of ideological diversity in the classroom influence pedagogical choices. We argue that the relationship between the ideologies of the faculty, students, institution, and place create a shared environment of attention to issues of diversity.

The Midwest is often left out of conversations about diversity or assumed to lack all diversity; however, the Midwest is perhaps the region in the country where one is most likely to encounter ideological division between professors and students, and there is limited research that considers how faculty can capitalize on those ideological differences to facilitate student learning. In some ways, a Midwestern classroom more closely resembles the broader, ideologically rich communities our students are likely to enter after graduation. In the present political moment, strong assumptions are made about the ways in which political ideology translates into the work that political science faculty do in the classroom. Caricatures pit liberal faculty against conservative students drowning out dissenting voices. However, we find that professors often think seriously about how to engage students in a shared process of community building as students learn to engage with difference. This paper explores how that process of navigating difference takes place on a classroom level.

Authors

• Kelly Clancy, Nebraska Wesleyan University

• Kelly Bauer, Nebraska Wesleyan University