Embracing our normative origins

For the past several decades, a small subset of political scientists has called on their discipline to reprioritize civic engagement at the core of our teaching and research agenda (Strachan Reference Strachan, Ishiyama, Miller and Simon2015). Those who respond to this call must be willing to recall and embrace our discipline’s normative origins—in much the same way that Maria Popova’s 2024 ECPR plenary address relied on political science research insights to adopt a normative stance on the war in Ukraine (Popova 2024).

Yet the fact that public statements such as Popova’s are unusual enough to be notable indicates that political science has come a long way from our normative origins. Indeed, political science was founded by those who were overtly normative on behalf of democracy. Our discipline emerged from other humanities and social sciences disciplines because early political scientists wanted to explicitly pursue this goal. Indeed, those who broke away from other disciplines to launch our fledgling discipline as a distinct endeavor initially pursued being objective and “scientific” so that normative recommendations to policymakers and elected officials, grounded in the desire to improve democratic governance, would be taken seriously. Eventually, however, the means to being taken seriously—objective social science research—became the discipline’s end goal, as mainstream political science has come to prioritize establishing status within the academy over advising policymakers (Gunnell Reference Gunnell2006).

Teaching for democracy

This transition represents a serious loss to our discipline. But the place where it has the most profound consequences is in the classroom. Collectively, political scientists know so much about the type of robust political socialization that leads to the creation of public-spirited citizens who can sustain democracy (for just one prominent example, recall Verba et al Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995). And yet, most of our colleagues spend their time in the classroom teaching students to become junior colleagues, political scientists capable of undertaking scholarly research, instead of honing their democratic capacity as public-spirited citizens. Fortunately, there is considerable overlap between these two goals, of being scholarly and being public spirited, that some of what political scientists teach students—critical thinking, public speaking, data analysis, organizing projects, the ability to identify misinformation, and so on—are also civic skills that facilitate civic and political participation. Indeed, the interdisciplinary nature of political science, which includes everything from political theory and historical case studies to statistical analysis and hypothesis testing, arguably provides students with the widest array of relevant civic skills of any discipline on campus. Despite these attributes, our students are ill-prepared to meet current challenges to democracy, including escalating partisan polarization, backsliding democracy, and rising authoritarianism (International Idea 2023). A growing number of established and new democracies have experienced eroding democratic quality, backsliding, or actual breakdown (Diamond Reference Diamond2021; Lührmann and Lindberg Reference Lührmann and Lindberg2019; Wiebrecht et al. Reference Wiebrecht, Sato, Sato, Lundstedt, Angiolillo and Lindberg2022). This pattern is accompanied by autocratic hardening in previously partial or “soft” authoritarian regimes. Given these trends, it is clear that traditional political science pedagogy simply has not produced adequate numbers of civic and political leaders or public-spirited citizens capable of helping to sustain democracy in such challenging times.

As a result, it is time to be inspired by academic colleagues who teach in women and gender studies programs, as feminist pedagogy holds professors to a different standard. Feminist pedagogy expects those who use disciplinary knowledge to teach students that there are problems in this world to also provide them with the tools they need to fix it (Hassel and Nelson Reference Hassel and Nelson2014; Hooks Reference Hooks2014). Given the dire circumstances currently facing established and aspiring democracies around the globe, political science may have finally reached a similar tipping point. Perhaps, many are now willing to acknowledge that it is irresponsible to teach political science majors about the serious problems of democratic backsliding and the rising authoritarianism facing established and emerging democracies worldwide without also teaching them the skills that they will need to respond.

Hence, one of the most important things political scientists can do to make the discipline relevant in these trying times is to embrace not only a traditional political science pedagogy, but also the pedagogy of civic engagement. In addition to ensuring students know about substantive political science work along with the skills required to produce and present scholarly findings, civic engagement pedagogy focuses on ensuring that students have not only the knowledge, but also the skills and dispositions required to fully participate as public-spirited citizens in a democracy (McCartney et al. Reference McCartney, Millet and Bennion2013).

Higher Ed’s civic engagement movement

The civic engagement movement in higher education, this push to encourage professors to teach for citizenship in addition to disciplinary knowledge, is not new. It first emerged largely in the US in the 1980s, when reformers noticed college students and young Americans pulling back from public life. This reform movement gained traction in the US in part because many US academics were very worried about students’ declining sense of civic duty and obligations, but also because responsibility for cultivating public-spirited citizens is linked to many US higher education institutions’ origins and are explicitly included in their mission statements. Many American institutions, for example, are land-grant institutions. These were established when the federal government essentially set aside land and resources to ensure all the states could establish universities to make higher education accessible to average people—with the explicit goal of training future civic and political leaders required to sustain democratic governance (Gavazzi and Gee Reference Gavazzi and Gee2018). Responding to the call to hold their institutions accountable to this founding mission, professors associated with the civic engagement movement began not only incorporating civic learning objectives into courses but also relying on social science research methods to identify effective teaching practices (see Strachan Reference Strachan, Ishiyama, Miller and Simon2015 for an overview of this movement).

For example, a foundational multi-campus study, the Political Engagement Project (PEP), was undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) in the early 2000s. Those familiar with theorist John Dewey’s work will not be surprised to learn that the best practices for promoting political engagement are experiential. The best civic learning experiences do not involve simply reading and writing but involve requiring students to practice performing as citizens who put civic knowledge and skills to use. Hence, ideal civic learning experiences encourage students to participate in politically active communities, where they can hone civic and political skills and engage in discussion of public affairs in racially and ethnically diverse settings (Colby et al Reference Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich and Corngold2007).

There are so many ways for faculties to incorporate these broad recommendations into their courses, from in-class simulations and activities to semester-long projects with community partners. As numerous pedagogy-focused publications in the decades since the PEP project was undertaken indicate, as long as faculties are being thoughtful about incorporating these foundational insights, there are many ways to hone students’ civic skill and to cultivate their civic identity.Footnote ¹

Programming sponsored by the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at The University of Akron, which is explicitly charged with promoting civic and political participation through experiential learning, provides one concrete example of such work. Recently, the Institute has embedded deliberative discussion sessions into Introduction to American Government classes. For these sessions, graduate student moderators meet with small groups of undergraduates throughout the semester. During these sessions, the undergraduates review a controversial political issue—most recently, the recent US Supreme Court decision rejecting affirmative action in college admission decisions—to reach consensus on a policy recommendation and advocacy plan. The students are not graded on the substance of their policy recommendation and plan, but on their ability to maintain a civil, deliberative process. Discussing a controversial political issue and developing a feasible plan to influence public officials provides the opportunity to practice important civic skills. More importantly, however, research reveals that classroom deliberation is one of the most effective ways to cultivate intrinsic identity, especially when assignments shape peer expectations. If classmates expect one another to be the type of person who pays attention to public affairs, processes political information, and engages in reason-giving to identify preferred solutions—perhaps even if they initially hold one another accountable for this behavior to earn a grade—they will internalize this identity and be much more likely to participate in politics as adults (Campbell Reference Campbell2008). These experiences in an introductory class will provide a pool of trained moderators, which will allow the Institute to replicate similar deliberative discussion sessions focused on local issues with community members. Both of these initiatives relay a consistent message to students—which is that they should use these learning opportunities to hone civic skills, because they are expected to step into the role of civic leaders, not in some distant future after they have graduate, but now while they are still in college (Poloni-Staudinger and Strachan Reference Poloni-Staudinger and Cherie Strachan2020).

Of course, this is just one example of what civic engagement programming might entail. Those seeking further inspiration should review the American Political Science Association’s Teaching Civic Engagement edited collection series, along with pedagogy articles published in The Journal of Political Science Education, European Political Science, and the International Political Science Review. But civic engagement pedagogy, like our discipline, cannot remain static as we respond to changing times and an increasingly diverse student body. So what trajectories are on the horizon for the civic engagement movement?

Our pedagogy must be timely

First, political scientists have to ensure our pedagogy provides students with the ability to respond to the current political environment, and that environment is changing quickly. Just a few years ago, many civic engagement practitioners thought that it was enough to prepare US students for “rude” politics. To do so, students in courses like women and politics often practiced responding to sexist and racist ad hominem attacks with a tactic called Name-It, Shame-It, and Pivot (see Strachan et al Reference Strachan, Poloni-Staudinger, Jenkins and Ortbals2020). This activity requires students to practice this response with peers in the classroom until it becomes a “muscle memory,” allowing them to quickly call out inappropriate rhetoric, followed by a quick pivot to a message underscoring the theme of their own campaign or advocacy agenda. Yet the current US political environment has moved beyond rudeness and is now characterized by escalating threats and even violence (Kalmoe and Mason Reference Kalmoe and Mason2022). It is not fair to encourage students to actively participate in the political process without preparing them for what they may face after entering the fray. So, now, those who advocate for civic engagement pedagogy must consider how to prepare their students to respond not simply to rude interjections and name-calling, but to overt threats—as well as whether they should practice skills associated with nonviolent civil resistance in the face of violence and authoritarianism (Chenoweth Reference Chenoweth2021). Of course, political scientists must also consider how the effects of changes in propaganda, social media, artificial intelligence, polarization, and more will affect the range of new civic skills; our students will need to successfully establish and sustain democratic systems of governance going forward.

Our pedagogy must consider intersectional identities

In the spirit of giving students what they need, political scientists will also have to consider their intersectional identities. Teaching strategies that worked when our students—and our citizens—were primarily white men taught by professors who were white men simply will not work with a diverse student body. As our discipline seeks to prepare students for political participation, we must think about our students and what they need given their lived experiences. For example, the US colleges and universities increasingly enroll undocumented students. We cannot simply tell them to register and vote in elections—because they cannot. Even further, when developing deliberative forums, as described above, the rules of deliberation should be modified to make it possible for women and minoritized students to fully participate, so that they learn the same lessons about civic skills and identities as men students (Karpowitz and Mendelberg Reference Karpowitz and Mendelberg2014). Meanwhile, women students—especially women students of color—will experience higher levels of threats and harassment, which makes it all the more important to teach them tactics such as Name-It, Shame-It, and Pivot, described above.

Until recently, teacher-scholars affiliated with the civic engagement movement have focused on identifying universal best practices that would be effective for all students everywhere. Yet political scientists know that demographic groups will react differently to political phenomena, which includes political learning, precisely because we know that lived experiences matter. As a result, when scholars who publish political behavior research include a full array of demographic identities as controls because our discipline has taught us to expect that experiences based on race, ethnicity, sex orientation, religion, and so on, influence respondents’ reactions. Hence, the next step that those committed to civic engagement pedagogy must take is to craft more effective civic and political learning for all our students, and not just those already inclined or encouraged to participate in politics (Poloni-Staudinger and Strachan Reference Poloni-Staudinger and Cherie Strachan2020).

Our pedagogy must be internationalized

Finally, while the civic engagement movement and formal dedication to this pedagogy emerged in the US, it should not stay there. Democratic backsliding has occurred not only in the US, but also in countries around the globe. Rising authoritarianism is not occurring in isolation. Those dedicated to transforming political science’s pedagogy need partners across the globe, so that we can encourage all of our students to become the public-spirited citizens that democracies need. Efforts to broaden the reach of the civic engagement movement are under way. In 2021, for example, the American Political Science Association published the edited collection, Teaching Civic Engagement Globally (Matto et al. Reference Matto, McCarthy, Bennion, Sun and Whitehead2021). Meanwhile, the Journal of Political Science Education, where much of the work about civic engagement pedagogy is published, has internationalized its editorial team and editorial board, and efforts are under way to establish sections and committees dedicated to pedagogy and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at non-US and international political science associations. This work is important, as the US scholars have much to learn alongside colleagues around the world about how to prepare students to establish and sustain democracies and to embrace their roles as public-spirited citizens, civic leaders, and public servants.