The articles published in this issue of the Journal of Political Science Education make it clear that teacher-scholar political scientists’ teaching agendas extend far beyond conveying substantive knowledge produced by research in our subfields. Rather, in addition to the substantive knowledge we help to produce, our learning objectives encompass honing applied skills and shaping civic attitudes, as we prepare students for their roles as professionals, political leaders, and citizens. This collection of articles demonstrates that such teaching is dynamic, as we cultivate the abilities and attitudes our students will need to succeed in rapidly changing workplaces and political environments.
Contributions to this issue highlight successful efforts to teach professional skills. Franco, for example, demonstrates that social science research and those policy analysis are complementary skills sets that can be successfully integrated into a single course. Meanwhile, Becker draws readers’ attention to doctoral students, offering detailed insights into how the Security and Political Economy Lab at the University of Southern California was purposefully designed to better prepare graduate students for the teaching and mentoring tasks they will be expected to perform as successful academics.
Other articles highlight efforts to transform undergraduate students into engaged and effective citizens. This learning objective is perhaps most directly and normatively prioritized in Bhattacharya’s review of the 30th anniversary edition of Paulo Freire’s classic work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Yet an emphasis on empowering students also clearly underpins Lenoir’s account of a semester long issue advocacy course, where students not only gain in-depth insight into public issues of concern, but the advocacy skills required to directly influence political outcomes. It is also the outcome most valued by Reilly, in his book review of an American government textbook, American Difference: A Guide to American Politics in Comparative Perspective. He highlights the importance of cultivating students’ civic capacity, when he argues that learning about American politics through a comparative lens can help instructors to cut through ideological tensions and to facilitate in-class discussion that would otherwise be difficult to sustain in a polarized political environment.
Contributions by Barankowski and by Makara and Carson, meanwhile, explore how teaching affects attitudes correlated with civic engagement. Barankowski’s research, for example, questions whether the spike in knowledge students gain from watching television programing like The Dailey Show is worth it, given that it also increases their cynicism and mistrust of government. Makara and Carson demonstrate that well-designed study abroad experiences, far from being merely a vacation, can more effectively disrupt students’ stereotypes about other regions of the world than traditional coursework—thus increasing students’ capacity for global citizenship. A similar focus on the skills, rather than the attitudes, students need to perform as global citizens characterize both Black’s argument in Teaching Deterrence, and Orr’s International Negotiations and State Interests: A Green Climate Fund Simulation. Black argues students will be better prepared to maintain civilian control of the military as citizens if they have an in-depth understanding of the security strategy of deterrence, particularly if this insight extends beyond deterrence’s nuclear twentieth century roots to today’s more complicated international relations. Orr provides in-depth details about a simulation that purposefully hones collaborative decision-making skills that will enable future leaders to resolve issues requiring international cooperation. Vassal, meanwhile, reminds readers that no understanding of comparative political behavior can be complete without taking citizens’ varying access to digital activism into account.
As Purcell notes in her contribution, Teaching PSC to Gen Z, the current cohort of college students are far more eager to learn when knowledge is grounded in real world application and in how new information can be used to achieve desired outcomes. Hence these approaches to political science education, which clearly connect substantive knowledge to the roles students are stepping into as professionals and citizens, will continue to be important as our discipline evolves to meet our student needs.