Editorial 17-2 Introduction

Abstract

Recently, the editorial team discussed what we thought were the trends in our manuscript queue regarding the topics that pedagogy scholars are writing about. The two most common are simulations and civic engagement/civic education. This issue of the Journal of Political Science Education is illustrative of our anecdotal evidence with five of eleven pedagogy articles on some aspect of simulations, three on civic education/engagement, and two on active learning more broadly. There are also three excellent reviews that should be helpful to faculty at all levels of the discipline but especially new faculty. We are now looking at the data to get a real sense of where pedagogy research is and where it might be headed. We also hope that by identifying these trends, we can encourage submissions in areas that seem underrepresented. The simulations literature in political science is broad and extremely varied, but there are two general complaints about the pedagogy. First, there is far less systematic assessment than any of us would like. Two of the articles in this volume attempt to address this in different ways. Andrew Robinson and Michelle Goodridge offer an important and significant contribution to the assessment mechanisms for simulations. Building off of earlier work by Carolyn Shaw (2006), the authors incorporate both qualitative (via content analysis of open ended pre-/posttest questions) and quantitative (using a turnover analysis) methods. The result is a study that both addresses learning specifically and outlines a potential pitfall for open ended pre-/posttest analysis. Lucy West and Dan Halvorson, in contrast, offer a especially robust qualitative examination of how to encourage deep learning for students participating in a simulation. Everyone who uses simulations wants to deepen the learning that students experience (though, to be fair, so do instructors engaging in different pedagogical practices). The findings are interesting both in terms of content and in terms of metacognitive learning. For me, it is the metacognitive that is most important because their measures reinforce my own observations—that is, emotional connections increase metacognitive learning. The second broad complaint is that creating simulations is difficult and it is hard to know where to begin. This issue includes three articles that should make it easier for faculty to create complex and meaningful simulations. Erin Baumann and John FitzGibbon provide the insights of instructional designers who happen to be political scientists (or vice versa). Using a Design-Implementation-Evaluation model (DImE), the authors provide clear, useful guidance on developing, employing, and assessing simulations. The structure that the authors provide allows simulation designers a mechanism for repeatable and informed design and implementation. In contrast, the article by Tanya Kempston and Nicholas Thomas offers a truly unique perspective on simulation design using realia (incorporating objects from the real world into classroom simulations). Realia is a pedagogical tool more common in theater or literary studies but offers tangible benefits to simulations in politics and international relations. The authors demonstrate that realia is an effective means of providing concrete and measurable links to learning outcomes. Finally, Ludwig Gelot’s article provides a rich and interesting examination of how a large-scale multinational training platform (that few will have access to) can be adapted to run a smaller-scale yet still complex simulation. The goal is to use the platform (or its adapted cousin) to develop specific