What Have We Been Writing About?: Patterns and Trends in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Political Science

Abstract

It is more than 10 years since Kehl (2002) identified the increasing number of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) papers being produced by political scientists. As noted by Hamann et al. (2009) and Whitman and Richlin (2007), this trend has developed further with increasing levels of research and publishing activity in political science education being observed in a number of national contexts. This is reflected in the content of the International Political Education Database (IPED), hosted by the UK Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Group, which includes over a thousand journal articles on teaching and learning political science. This article aims to provide an up-to-date survey of the scope of this literature and to identify the key themes that have emerged as the focus of study. It argues that, while this now constitutes an impressive body of academic literature, there remain areas that require further development. These include the need for further consideration of the distinctive characteristics of teaching and learning in political science, continued development of research quality within the field, and a greater degree of scholarly debate within the literature. Attention to these issues, it is argued, will support the further development of this field in future years.

Keywords:

• disciplinary pedagogy
• publications analysis
• scholarship of teaching and learning