Advances in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

This Section’s purpose is to allow participants to discuss and share their pedagogic research and responsibilities as scholars of political science. The Section also encourages the participants to reflect on how their experience and results of research can be used to enrich and improve teaching practices and the student learning experience and vice versa. It will allow participants to identify the challenges, which may hinder desired practice, together with proposing ways of overcoming these barriers. We will showcase examples of good practice with the benefit of providing inspiration and encouragement to all scholars for improving existing ways of teaching and learning. It is the relevance of this Section across all of the sub-fields of political science, and therefore to all scholars, that makes it a vital one to support. Our Panels will be devoted to discussing both new and more traditional ways of teaching political science for the benefit of student learning. We will invite contributions that analyse experiences with using new media, online teaching, blended courses and similar methods that facilitate teaching large groups of students and catering to the needs of less traditional student groups, including students with families, disabled students, distanced learners and professionals already advanced in their careers. One Panel will moreover invite contributions focusing on what can be learned from other cognisant disciplines, and those less frequently used learning activities and methods. We will particularly encourage the contributions that discuss the topics such as assessment of/for student learning and that speak to issues that go beyond the practice in one course or at one institution. We hope that attendees in our Section will enable participants to return to their departments and discuss a variety of pedagogies and their outcomes, alongside different approaches to teaching and learning in political science. Equally, we will focus upon a range of important issues facing Higher Education in the 21st century, including quality assessment and internationalisation. Building upon our group’s successful sponsorship of previous Sections at ECPR conferences (2013-2016, including 4 very well attended Panels in Prague), we will offer an opportunity for colleagues across and beyond Europe to discuss important issues of teaching, learning, assessment and teacher development.