In this symposium, we invite political science instructors to consider reflection as a useful pedagogic resource for achieving complex long-term educational goals. The authors of this collection have found reflection to be a suitable response to different teaching challenges, such as helping students achieve a nuanced understanding of social processes and decision-making, transfer knowledge between courses and gain self-awareness as active participants in learning. The three papers composing this symposium focus on different formats of reflection: a learning diary; reflection accompanying board games used as a teaching exercise; and short reflective assignments about connections between courses in a study programme. We present and discuss the design and implementation of reflective activities in the undergraduate political science curriculum, expose the strengths and weaknesses of using reflection and provide advice to instructors interested in using this teaching tool.

This article investigates the combined effect of experiential and reflective learning on student learning in international politics. It proceeds from the premise that students need a more realistic view of decision-makers so as to understand the logic and context of foreign policy-making better. A board game was used to model the foreign policy decision-making environment, and written and oral reflections were utilised to link students’ personal experience to abstract concepts of foreign policy analysis. Using a quasi-experimental design, both qualitative and quantitative data were used to test the hypotheses about students’ altered views of decision-making and their interest in and learning about foreign policy analysis. Results show that, in comparison with the impact of traditional lecturing combined with discussions, the benefits of experiential and reflective learning are very small. The little support for the existence of such benefits that was uncovered comes from qualitative data and a few statistical measures based on student self-evaluation. Quantitative analyses based on objective measures provided little evidence for a difference between the two teaching approaches. The article concludes with a call for improving the effectiveness and evaluation of reflective learning methods and putting the theories of reflective learning into practice more profitably in international relations.

This study investigates whether reflective journals can stimulate students to reflect on their learning and ultimately to make a conceptual change in understanding international relations concepts and problems. The article reports on the experience of using journaling in two courses by triangulating data from analysis of student journals, assignments, feedback forms and a teacher’s journal. It details the documented benefits and drawbacks of journal-keeping for student learning, setting it into the framework of the existing literature on reflective learning and conceptual change. The article concludes with recommendations for how to make journals an effective learning tool.

A more flexible approach to structuring study programmes across European universities enables students to choose which courses to take, in which combination and order. This flexibility is a step towards fuller self-reliance for students as learners. However, it can also reduce the coherence of studies and fragment the learning experience into units (courses or modules). To prevent the fragmentation and encapsulation of knowledge, we devised a reflective writing exercise we called ‘Building Bridges’. It requires students to detect and present connections between courses in their study programme, relevant to their personal learning progress. We carried out the exercise in three courses in a highly flexible modular undergraduate study programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 54 submitted assignments, students on average identified 3.6 relevant connections per assignment of 700 words. Based on the responses, we identified six types of logical connections between courses: similarity, difference, development, challenge, application and contextualisation. Grading the assignment does not seem to influence the reflection. We conclude that, even with minimal guidance, students are able to build multiple connections between courses. Yet, students found it challenging to present connections between courses in the framework of their individual learning pathway, personal academic interests and goals. These tasks require more training and support.

This article analyses a case involving the dismissal of a tenured faculty member at Hiroshima City University of Japan. The university dismissed a Korean woman associate professor after filing a criminal complaint against her, leading to a house raid, her arrest and media coverage. After 11 days of detention, the Hiroshima Prosecutor’s Office decided not to indict her because they could not find criminal intent on her part. With the suspicion of the university’s fabrication of her criminality looming large, she was dismissed within a few hours of her release. The university’s attempt to purge a critical foreign faculty member from the university campus, faculty housing and the country of Japan was an almost complete success until the case became an international controversy with counter-media exposure and the formation of a transnational support network. This case reveals a volatile mixture of race- and gender-based discrimination, administrative incompetence and politicised financial subsidy as a backdrop to violations of human rights and academic freedom. The present article shows that the rights’ violations in this case are closely connected to rising nationalism, the politicisation of educational subsidy and ideological human agencies with a set of professional agendas.

The case of Prof. İştar Gözaydın is one of the most visible and tragicomic examples for academics who have been victimized in Turkey by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Gözaydın was not the first one and perhaps will not be the last because the authoritarian mindset that encapsulates the academics and scholars started long before the foundation of AKP, despite the fact that it was deepened and broadened by it. This article aims to explain the intense recrimination of academics by a repressive and hegemonic political power in Turkey in the second decade of the 2000s. It also tries to shed light on the essential weakness of the authoritarian strong state practices on the face of academic freedom.

Academic freedom is intrinsically linked to the rule of law and fundamental rights, most notably, the freedom of sciences and free speech in general. Academic freedom has been constitutionally embedded in Hungary since the democratic transition. After a series of laws and policies eliminating government criticism and effective checks on those in power for many years, on 4 April 2017 the Hungarian Parliament finally targeted academic freedom as well, and in this vein, adopted a modification to the Act on National Higher Education. The thinly veiled objective behind the legislation is to force Budapest-based and US-accredited Central European University (CEU) out of the country. CEU was founded by Mr George Soros, public enemy number one in the eyes of the rulers of today’s Hungary. The election campaign before the 2018 parliamentary elections is framed around a government initiative entitled “Stop Soros”, harassing organizations receiving Soros money. CEU and Soros-funded NGOs represent everything the government fights against or is suspicious of, such as the rule of law, fundamental rights, multiculturalism, tolerance, accountable government, transparency, justice, equality, liberal democracy, and open society. The modification of the Act on National Higher Education fits into a broader picture of a state in constitutional capture, where fundamental rights in general are in jeopardy. This article explains the broader problem of rule of law backsliding; it assesses the controversial law curbing academic freedom, highlights its bias nature targeting CEU and CEU only, and draws up future scenarios in light of possible national and international responses.

European far-right parties have enjoyed mixed success in the past few years. The primary elements in many of these parties’ policy platforms centre on security, terrorism, and foreign persons. Naturally, these platforms are designed to attract electoral support that these actors can parlay into governing positions. Our study offers an important test to ascertain how voters respond to terrorist attacks with respect to centre- and far-right parties. We contend that far-right parties are to likely benefit from terrorist attacks more than centre-right parties. The results from more than 30 European countries, spanning 1975–2013, affirm our hypothesis. The implications for partisanship, governance, and terrorism are explored in this paper as well.

This note introduces the Comparative Independent Fiscal Institutions Dataset which contains information on the institutional characteristics of forty-four independent expert bodies that are mandated to monitor fiscal policy and performance. Based on coding of legislative documents, it describes the institutional design of IFIs in mainly developed countries at different points in time. It comprises indicators and indices on formal political independence, expert proficiency and powers to intervene into the budget process. I report empirical variations between different models of IFIs such as Fiscal Councils and Parliamentary Budget Offices.

Group work is an essential aspect of our personal, educational and professional development, yet it is not a common method of assessment in Politics and International Relations departments at British Universities. This study explores how instructors can effectively engage students in assessed group work to help them develop an appropriate mix of skills by focusing on collaborative learning and scaffolding. It draws on primary sources collected from a final year Politics and International Relations module at a top-ranking British University. Group work assessment is discussed in relation to three points of comparison: cooperative and collaborative learning, formative and summative assessment, and individual and group achievement rates. The key findings suggest that (a) students have the ability to learn collaboratively with minimum “scaffolding” in place and prefer being empowered to self-manage their respective groups and arising problems and (b) formative group assignments and intermediary feedback are perceived by students as key in supporting group performance. The findings and proposed recommendations provide a guide for educators interested in diversifying their assessment methods and supporting students’ development.