Towards a Coaching Style of Teaching - Insights from a Facilitated Study Project in Political Science

Course concepts in political science still focus on the communication of thematically arranged contents instead of competence development. Yet, many postgraduate students do not have sufficient methodological skills as well as social competencies to jointly conduct empirical research in political science. Despite numerous lectures on research methods and complementary lab sessions, students experience their methodological training as too abstract and detached from any practical use. Due to the separation into single course topics, students gain only limited insights into the research process as a whole. At first glance, it may come as a surprise that limited methodological competence does not hinder students to hold strong believes about “correct” and “wrong” methods. We believe that the lack of methodological proficiency leads to research dogmatism based on prevalent stereotypes (e.g. of qualitative research) and an overemphasis of single quality criteria (e.g. sample size). Research in political science is almost exclusively a collaborative undertaking that requires reflections on group processes and coordinated action. However, typical classes and examination forms do not encourage students to intensify teamwork during their studies. The students have little or no opportunity to acquire the social competencies required to master such a major task assignment The facilitated study project Concerning the challenges above, we designed a systemic learning approach including principles of action learning and coaching. Self-directed student-teams undergo a whole research process under supervision of experienced researchers and coaches. While teaching projects already have a long history, there are three distinct features of our concept worth mentioning. First, the teams had, apart from three compulsory weekend-events, extensive decision latitude to develop own research questions, to conduct and to report their empirical research. Still, they could attend the lecturers’ consultation hours any time to discuss scientific challenges. Second, during the compulsory events, students were interactively taught on a wide array of methodological aspects. Moreover, mutual learning was fostered e.g by practicing scientific forms of communication. The teams discussed intermediate results in a poster session and they presented their projects in a public student conference including conference paper and peer-discussants. Third and most important, we integrated a professional team-coaching by external coaches to facilitate self-reflections on group dynamics and tensions as well as constructive ways to solve them. At the end of the semester each student team submitted a project report on the conducted research as well as on the group processes and obstacles they have faced. Outlook Implemented for the first time in 2017, the course evaluation revealed a high satisfaction and rich learning experiences. A variety of interpersonal issues such as dissimilarity in conscientiousness or a lack in temporal consensus led to tensions or conflicts that required facilitating support. However, it turned out that coaching demand exceeded supply. This raises the questions in how far the use of process management tools or the implementation of work process like scrum could support the teams as well by internalizing the idea of coaching.