Teaching politics with technology- between driving forces and challenges

Online and blended learning have become more and more common in the past decades, as the educational process evolved towards a more flexible and open paradigm. Learning is no longer confined to the classroom and no longer revolves around the all-knowledgeable teacher. The new, student-centered learning paradigm calls for a rethinking of the teaching approach, as the use of technology needs to be grounded in sound and suitable pedagogical concepts. In political science, the transition to technology-enhanced teaching and learning appears to be slower than in other disciplines. This cautious attitude can be explained by looking at the nature of the discipline and the type of knowledge involved: the nature of the content in social sciences is rather subjective and thus is giving rise to a constant discussion departing from the factual level. This requires a flexible teaching approach, based on continuous and meaningful interaction. Moreover, given the fact that a large part of the content is of a theoretical and conceptual nature, the use of technology-enhanced tools cannot replicate one-on-one the face-to-face teaching experience and thus the teachers need to reassess and remodel the content through the perspective of the new medium used. This paper looks into the various factors that influence technology adoption amongst political science professors and aims to analyse the hierarchy and the interactions between these factors. At the crossroad between political science and educational science, the paper uses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model as a theoretical framework to explain what are the drivers behind the adoption, as well as the greatest obstacles that prevent it. The research was conducted through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. A survey was distributed among political science professors throughout Europe addressing the pedagogical practice in this discipline and more specifically the use of technology in teaching. Focus groups were later organised in order to complement and further explain some of the survey findings and to offer a clearer and more complete picture of the factors influencing technology adoption within our target group. This paper aims to fill a gap in the current literature both by providing a broad overview of the state of the art regarding teaching politics with technology and by bringing an educational theory angle to shed light on the driving forces that lead professors to adopt of reject technology.