The purpose of this presentation is twofold: (1) Conceptual - demonstrate the risks and benefits of comparative approach in teaching especially to international student body; (2) Pedagogic - demonstrate interactive methods of engaging students in overcoming the hurdles of cultural idiosyncrasies.
Political science academic discourse potentially evolves around universal concepts, yet when we enter the classroom with an intention to EXPLAIN various political systems and have students UNDERSTAND them we run into risks stemming from cultural diversity. Students, especially less advanced, will naturally process the incoming knowledge through the pre-existing cognitive filters. Teaching must take into account this “comparative intuition” of the audience.
“Teaching” American politics in more than 15 countries (USA, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Georgia, Israel, Turkey, and many European countries) on three continents has taught me to always be prepared for the audience misunderstanding my arguments because of cultural idiosyncrasies. Such absolutely basic concepts as power, government, representation, liberal, party - the list is much longer, become hurdles to proper understanding of American politics to international student audience. We run into even greater hurdles when we engage students with evaluative concepts such as populism, lobbying, localism or propaganda for instance. Exposing the differences to the audience makes them leave the safety of previously learned semantic cocoons and engages them to use their brains in a more open minded and creative way (I always hope). This presentation is devoted to sharing my experience in dealing with those hurdles when teaching international student bodies (abroad or Erasmus students at home). My presentation may include some practical exercises which I use to alert the students to the existing diversity. Teaching a culturally diverse body of students like a class for Erasmus visitors, offers a unique opportunity to use cultural diversity as a starting point to recover the universal character of basic concepts of political analyses. Students learn from one another (in group tasks for instance) how to discuss and present their different views and experience. So one could conclude that my presentation is about how to respect and make use of cultural diversity without undermining the universal nature of political phenomena and thinking.
