This article aims to share a private worry with a larger audience: the erosion of teaching qualitative social research in higher education. Our worry originates in our own experience as social scientists working and teaching at Dutch universities
Playing with Teaching Techniques
Gamelan as a Learning Tool Amongst Children with Learning Impairments in Northern Ireland
Jonathan McIntosh
This article examines gamelan as a community musical tool in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. In particular, the article demonstrates how traditional pedagogic practices are changed in order to suit the needs of those who learn gamelan. A gamelan is an orchestra that includes metallophones (large glockenspiel-like instruments), gongs and drums. Originating from Southeast Asia, particularly from the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, gamelan ensembles have long been used in the teaching of ethnomusicology in academic institutions and for purposes of applied ethnomusicology, as a musical tool, in the wider community. In these contexts, a gamelan instructor acts as a 'mediator' (Naughton 1996: 16) in the transmission of gamelan knowledge; mediating not only between the music and the learners, but also between the role of gamelan in its original sociocultural context and its newly adopted milieu. Drawing upon my experiences as a gamelan instructor, in particular, teaching children with visual and hearing impairments, I demonstrate how traditional teaching techniques are adapted to facilitate the learning of gamelan in the Northern Irish context.
Teaching internationalisation?
Surveying the lack of pedagogical and theoretical diversity in American International Relations
Christopher R. Cook
field of Education this discussion has only just begun in political science and international relations (IR) specifically. For Education Studies internationalising the classroom has often meant teaching students to confront and understand the diversity
Sam Pryke
type. It is likely that its predominant use is in high schools in the United States, but it is now a fairly common aid in university level teaching internationally. But is Socrative effective? In as much as Socrative simply provides the teacher with a
Anxiety and learning
Cultural polarisation in social science courses
Jose Leonardo Santos
Teaching globalisation one day, I linked global processes to projected local economic and demographic changes. Cities would continue to grow; towns and farms to stagnate. Growth among immigrants and communities of colour would outpace white
Alexandra Howson
This article reports on the incorporation of visual material as a tool for learning sociology and discusses a poster assignment introduced as a means of assessment in an academic context committed to innovative learning strategies and to teaching and learning enhancement. The article draws on an evaluation of using the poster assignment to assess student learning and argues that visual images can provide valid and insightful ways of 'telling about society' which challenge the reliance on text as a means of teaching and learning sociology. The article explores the context in which visual materials are used in teaching and learning sociology and their impact on and significance for assessment and learning.
Ethan Lowenstein
This article seeks to build on current and emerging conceptions of teacher expertise as they relate to education for civic engagement and social awareness in the university classroom context. I explore the notion of teaching tensions between vulnerability and authority, authenticity and distance, safety and challenge, disclosure and neutrality, and social transformation as against individual agency. I argue that these tensions and the teacher decision-making processes involved in their navigation can add to university instructors' capacity to reflect on and evaluate curriculum design decisions when aiming to impact student social and civic identity development. I examine teaching tensions and their dynamic interaction through a self-study of my own teaching and of involving the students in a structured academic service-learning partnership with school pupils in a social studies methods course for pre-service teachers in the United States.
Redefining Censorship
Lessons Learned from Teaching The Merchant of Venice in Israel
Esther B. Schupak
study of revered canonical works. However, after completing a research project that entailed teaching the play to two groups of Israeli students, I am forced to concede that those who oppose teaching it may have a cogent argument, and this play – even
Inside the global teaching machine
MOOCs, academic labour and the future of the university
Michael A. Peters
and digitalisation of higher education and pedagogy ( Peters 2002a , 2002b , 2003 , 2006 ). In this context it is useful to make the distinction between xMOOCs and cMOOCs. As Tony Bates (2014) notes: xMOOCs … primarily use a teaching model
Nancy L. Thomas
Across the U.S.A, everyday citizens, civic leaders, policy makers, and educators are experimenting with inclusive, deliberative approaches to addressing social, economic, and political issues. Some academics and civic leaders describe this renewal in citizen engagement as a movement, a significant, transformative shift in the way we interact with each other to solve public problems, strengthen communities and 'do' democracy. Colleges and universities need to take stock of the movement towards a more deliberative democracy and adapt their programmes and activities to fit what democratic societies need today. Many campuses already offer programmes in inclusive dialogue, deliberative public reasoning, justice and other Constitutional values, democratic leadership and conflict management. Many faculty members use democratic teaching methods. These can serve as helpful models. For all colleges and universities, the challenge is to get to scale, to teach all students - not just a few in particular disciplines or co-curricular activities - to serve as effective citizens in an increasingly diverse, deliberative democracy.