Promoting Political Ambition in an Experiential Classroom

Research suggests that women have lower political ambition than men (Fox and Lawless 2005). The origins of political ambition for men and women are different (Crowder-Meyer 2018; Carroll and Sanbonmatsu 2013), and the development of ambition is also different for women across racial categories (Holman and Schneider 2018; Fredrick 2013). Political ambition is shaped by structural factors including party recruitment strategies (Dittmar 2015), access to campaign resources and support (Crowder-Meyer 2018), and life experiences like occupational background and familial role responsibilities (Carroll and Sanbonmatsu 2013). The political ambition gap is evident among young women as well, with their political participation in student government actually decreasing from high school to college (Lawless and Fox 2013). Political ambition and leadership skills are not innate, however, and can be learned. Research suggests that a number of engaged pedagogical methods may increase undergraduate students political engagement (Beaumont, Colby, Ehrlich, and Torney-Puerta 2006; Duchatelet, et al. 2018; Hunter and Brisbin 2003; Levac 2019; McCartney, Bennion, and Simpson 2013), however, knowing the gender differences in gendered political behavior, ambition, and participation, further research is necessary to understand effective interventions in closing these gaps (For a few examples, see Doherty 2011; Greenlee, Holman, and Vansickle-Ward 2014; O’Connor and Yanus 2009). Experiential learning has potential challenges and should always be conducted with critical analysis. Community partners do not work on the academic calendar and that can lead to fraught expectations and disappointments. Students entering communities unlike their own must also do so with knowledge and empathy to avoid “white saviorism” among other transgressions. Even with substantial institutional support, this kind of course is extremely labor intensive. It requires skills not taught in graduate school, like relationship building and logistical execution. This kind of work is also not always valued by the discipline and is often categorized as subjective or biased. Likewise, this work is often done by marginalized scholars who have a deep commitment to community but are often not supported within their academic communities (Briscoe-Palmer and Mattocks 2021; Strum et al 2011). When this work is attributed to the larger institution, it can whitewash an institution’s reputation and obscure racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, and/or transphobic histories. In this paper, I propose a research design to test the effectiveness of experiential learning on undergraduate women’s political ambition, political knowledge self-perceptions, political career interest, and political habits. Utilizing pre and post surveys of students in mainstream political science courses, gender and politics courses, and courses that employ experiential learning, I plan to investigate the impact of instructor race/gender, course subject matter, and pedagogical methods on gendered political ambition and engagement. Finally, the paper will include a discussion of the ethics of this kind of pedagogy and the individual and institutional costs and benefits of its implementation.