How much politics is there? Students’ understandings of the role of values in political science

• Political science is in its nature closely connected to values and normative questions and there has therefore been a long debate on whether these questions should, and can, be kept outside the discipline (e.g. Gormley-Heenan 2012). This characteristic poses a range of challenges for everyone involved in political science teaching. However, research in the intersection of teaching and learning, and political science, is yet underdeveloped (Craig 2014). Research on conceptual change in economics (Lundholm & Davies, 2013) show that the aspect of values has two dimensions; firstly it concerns students’ values and emotions, and therefore challenges learning, and secondly, research point to the value dimension within the social sciences that students need to handle. In January 2015, at the end of their first semester, students enrolled in political science at Stockholm University took part in a survey, which focused upon students’ knowledge, values, and attitudes to various environmental policy instruments in relation to climate change. Based on outcomes of the survey, open-ended interviews were conducted with students, in all 13, on their experiences of the existence of values in political science teaching. Students were asked to think-aloud on how they viewed the existence of values and ideologies within political science education (c.f. Bernstein 2010). The interviews were taped and transcribed and analysed thematically (Braun & Clarke 2006). The results show how students oscillate between different ways of making sense of values in teaching and use different - equally unproductive - strategies to handle the dilemma. These findings are important for advancing our understanding of learning political science, and in particular, in identifying specific learning challenges in this domain. By conducting empirical research in this area, the study also contributes to a wider discussion on the scholarship of teaching and learning political science (Craig 2014) in a fruitful way.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

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