Our current political situation and the demographic realities of our country require Political Science educators to be more intentional about integrating Asian Pacific American (APA) histories and experiences in the Political Science curriculum. By including the multifaceted ways in which APAs have and continue to participate in American civil…

This article employs "banality of evil" to explain the actions of insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. We discuss the responsibility teacher educators and professors of political science bear to teach students the role both have in preparing future teachers, political and government leaders, and all college graduates to be…

Social and political change is occurring in Aotearoa New Zealand and tikanga, matauranga, te reo Maori (the Maori language) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) are increasingly being recognised in diverse political and legal contexts. This article explores whether the political science discipline in Aotearoa New Zealand is keeping pace…

In recent decades, nationalism has emerged from the distant purview of history to become the primary driver of some of the world's biggest news. Given the prominence of nationalist conflict, students in political science increasingly study the subject with modern references in mind. This article describes the design for a timely undergraduate…

From 2012 to 2016, American news headlines were dominated at various times by the killing of black men either stopped by police or presumed to be engaging in suspicious activity, and protests that spread through the Internet social media hashtag #blacklivesmatter. In this piece, the author revisits his time in teaching at an historically black…

International relations professors have sought to incorporate current events into their curriculum through various mechanisms. A traditional way to incorporate the news into the classroom is to have students either subscribe and read a particular newspaper or watch the nightly news and hold them responsible for that information. However, with the…

Purpose: This article focuses on recent developments in the domain of civic education in the French education system, the new programme on "Enseignement moral et civique" (EMC), and the debate about the relevance of the basic values of the Republic which came up after the terror attacks in January 2015. Method: The study is based on a…

In this quasi-experimental design, I examine the impact of a political engagement program on students, looking at traditional measures of internal efficacy, as well as other areas of political engagement including levels of political knowledge, the development of political skills, and interest in media coverage of politics.

There is a debate in Political Science concerning how best to teach American Government courses. We investigate whether students learn more effectively with texts from the great tradition or from textbooks and other secondary sources. Which medium better guides students toward becoming better citizens? We examine how teaching "The Great…

Despite the growing availability and popularity of simulations and other active teaching techniques, many instructors may be deterred from using simulations because of the potentially high costs involved. Instructors could spend a preponderance of their time and resources developing and executing simulations, but such an approach is not necessary.…

In November 2007, I helped found a blog, "The Monkey Cage", with two of my colleagues, David Park and Lee Sigelman. This site joined a nascent political science blogosphere that is now composed of at least 80 blogs (Farrell and Sides 2010). The goals of "The Monkey Cage" are to publicize political science research and use this research to comment…

This case study highlights the use of the social bookmarking site "Delicious" on a Level 2 module "Governing the EU." The nature of politics as a discipline is that it is constantly evolving such that new developments and policies emerge almost every day. It is therefore imperative that the students keep on top of these…

This study employs the Solomon Four-Group Design to measure student knowledge of the United States government and student knowledge of current events at the beginning of a U.S. government course and at the end. In both areas, knowledge improves significantly. Regarding knowledge of the U.S. government, both males and females improve at similar…

Examines the increase in low intensity conflict (LIC) such as terrorism and subversion, since World War II and discusses the United States ability to deal with it. States that LICs continue to increase, making U.S. involvement inevitable. Describes necessary preparations and actions for meeting this challenge. (GEA)

Political scientists should use all the resources, trivia, of the real world of politics as teaching devices and relate them to the discipline's general knowledge and theory. (Author/ND)