This article explores the work of the UK Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Specialist Group in promoting the development of teaching and learning. It was prompted by the invitation to take part in a panel on ‘Advancing Political Science Education in Europe’ at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 6th General Conference held in Reykjavik in August 2011. It begins with a brief overview of scholarship relating to political studies teaching, before turning to consider the activities of the Teaching and Learning Group. The article sets the work of the Group within the context of other bodies that promote learning and teaching such as the Higher Education Academy, before presenting some concluding observations on the potential for future collaboration at a European level.

This article advances the argument that when weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the Bologna Process it is necessary to incorporate the perspective of academics, and to discuss whether and how the Bologna Process can be supportive of academics as they adjust to changing notions of academic autonomy in knowledge societies.

Western lecturers visiting social science departments in the former Soviet Union find themselves immersed in a social micro-system that often functions differently from comparable departments in the West. Having been isolated from international developments and abused as instruments of indoctrination for decades, post-Soviet social sciences are plagued by a number of pathologies in administration, teaching, and studying. While posing considerable challenges for visiting professors, these defects make the continued presence of Western visiting lecturer programmes in the former USSR all the more necessary.

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.

After several decades of institutionalization of political science as a scholarly discipline in Russia, its quantitative output is quite impressive. This article offers a critical reconsideration of its substantive impact on scholarship in political science – and considers why that output has not been so impressive in terms of increasing knowledge about politics, both in Russia and beyond. It presents an overview of the state of Russian political science, with an emphasis on its major theoretical, methodological, and empirical shortcomings. It also considers the role of historical, institutional, and political factors for its developmental trajectory, and offers some suggestions for overcoming them.

Currently, we are facing a challenge in quality citizen participation from populism, which is bringing not renewal of democracy, but corrosion—and potentially its dismantling—from the inside. Many people are being misled by nationalist entrepreneurs who are not committed to democracy or solving the problems which the average person faces, but to their own power and personal egos. Whether the challenges come from the political left or right, democracy needs consistent and quality participation by all of its citizens. As a significant part of the citizenry fails to fight for democracy, factual evidence, and the rights of all of the people, I argue that political scientists must re-examine what we are doing inside and outside of the classroom to foster students’ and communities’ growth in political knowledge, democratic skills, and democratic values and habits. This essay explores three points—content, quality of information, and context—to demonstrate how we can improve teaching and learning in civic education. Collegiate-level educators can ensure that we are positively contributing to the preservation and advancement of our democracies and battling the forces that seek to undermine our democracies.

The Bologna Process is advancing at full speed, although the unintended effects it is causing are complained about everywhere. Yet, we do not witness unintended effects alone, but a fundamental societal change that embraces more than is widely recognised. This change is geared to replacing the occupational professional model of mediation between education and employment with the market model. Against the backdrop of the traditional German focus on occupations, that change appears as particularly radical.

Docents often claim to face problems in teaching exchange students. This article focuses on tackling such problems in a comparable course concerning ‘politics and public space’. The concept of public space allows discussions concerning subjects of political science as power, democracy, segregation, privatisation and citizenship. On the other hand, the contributions from different academic fields (sociology, social history, arts) and the use of multiple teachings methods make the course attractive for students of other disciplines. The assignments show that students' eyes were opened not only to Dutch and Finnish spaces but also to those in their home countries.

Increasingly, simulation-based teaching and learning is finding a place within politics and international relations (IR) programmes. The majority of literature on this style of teaching and learning has positioned it as both an aid to content delivery and as a response to the many challenges facing contemporary higher education. Little guidance is given, however, to the practical considerations of using simulations as a component of assessment or as informing assessed tasks. This article draws upon the experience of the authors in adapting the well-established Model United Nations (MUN) simulation programme for delivery as an assessed module at a British university. This has involved balancing institutional teaching, assessment and validation requirements with the successful simulation of diplomatic practice. The article introduces the MUN simulation and explores the extant pedagogic literature encouraging the use of simulation-based learning in IR curricula, before moving on to provide an overview of the rationale for the various decisions the authors have made in adapting the simulation for delivery as an assessed curriculum component. The article asserts the value of introducing assessed simulations within IR coursework and provides guidance on how student performance in pedagogic simulations might best be assessed.

Current research struggles to illuminate significant learning outcomes of role-play simulations, such as Model European Union (MEU) and Model United Nations (MUN). In this study, we introduce a model for measuring simulation effects, distinguishing between cognitive, affective and regulative learning outcomes. In particular, we introduce the MISS-model (Motivation, Interest and Self-efficacy in Simulations), which enables measuring affective learning outcomes more in depth and connects these with other learning outcomes. To get more insight in how students vary with respect to affective learning outcomes, we apply the MISS-model in a cross-continental simulation context. Study participants included 133 students. Students’ differences were explored using independent t tests, one-way ANOVA and ANCOVA. Results show student variation for all affective learning outcomes and thus support for applying the MISS-model to measure affective learning outcomes of simulations more in depth. Findings are discussed with regard to simulation practice and future research on simulation effects.

One of the presumptions of a well-functioning, viable democracy is that citizens participate in the life of their communities and nation. The role of higher education in forming actively engaged citizens has long been the focus of scholarly research, but recently an active debate has emerged concerning the role of service as a third core function of institutions of higher learning. Service learning (SL), a teaching approach that extends student learning beyond the classroom, is increasingly seen as a vehicle to realize this third core function. By aligning educational objectives with community partners’ needs, community service is meant to enhance, among other objectives, reciprocal learning. Although the term and its associated activities originated in the United States (US), theoretical debates linking civic engagement and education extend far beyond the US context. Nevertheless, research on SL as a distinctive pedagogical approach remains a nascent field. A significant gap exists in the literature about what this pedagogical approach seeks to achieve (in nature and in outcomes) and how it is construed in non-western contexts. Using a comparative analysis across three widely different contexts, this article explores the extent to which these differences are merely differences in degree or whether the differences are substantive enough to demand qualitatively different models for strengthening the relationship between higher education and civil society.

Women are grossly underrepresented in the German political science profession, but some progress in breaking the glass ceiling has been made in the last 20 years. This article outlines women’s entry and advancement in the German academic community. We examine the particulars of obtaining a German doctorate and the nature of how postdocs prepare for their qualifications to receive a tenured professorship. We also analyse the gendered nature of the German academic institution and measures for promoting equal opportunity. Our findings show that gender inequalities are visible in the number of women in the profession and in their rank, although some progress has been made in closing this gap. Equal opportunity measures and some changes in German academic institutions, such as in the German Political Science Association (DVPW), have benefited women. Problems remain, however, in German universities’ inability to provide postdoc level job security and (in many cases) adequate pay in the postdoc phase. More permanent lecturer positions are needed in Germany.

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.

Over the last 20 years, the notion of relevance vis-à-vis political science became not only a subject of academic debates but also a domain of practice, largely due to the developments in the research funding, increasingly referred to as the 'impact agenda'. In this article, we explore how the growing focus on socio-economic impact as the assessment criterion of research funding shapes the discipline of political science itself—its knowledge production, dissemination and the emergent forms of accountability of political scientists. The article presents the results of a major international study that has examined the emergence of ‘impact agendas’ across 33 countries. We report on the changing idea of relevance of political science through the lens of its strategic ambiguity and historical evolution. We then explore these broader trends through an in-depth analysis of the UK as an ‘extreme case’ and a blueprint for funding system reforms. These developments, we argue, are not a mere funding policy innovation but rather a paradigm-level change, reshaping the position of political science in society as well as the types of scholarship that are possible and incentivised.

The concept of internationalisation, when referring to the work of social scientists within academic institutions, takes on different meanings and involves different activities. This contribution aims to shed light on the international activities of political scientists across Europe and to investigate the various meanings and practices of internationalisation. The analysis relies on the PROSEPS survey, involving some 1,800 political scientists across 37 European countries. We identify three distinct profiles of international scholars: the networked researcher, the editorial manager, and the traveller. These profiles differ according to 1) the building of international research networks, 2) the involvement in the activities of the international publishing industry, 3) the research and teaching exchanges with foreign academic institutions. Determinants, such as gender, family status, career stage, availability of institutional and financial support, and geographical location, are considered as potential drivers or inhibitors of internationalisation. Our analysis shows that the internationalisation of academic practices follows contrasting paths according to the type of international profile.

The article explores the development and institutionalisation of political science in Romania after 1989. It argues that, despite a rapid process of expansion and institutionalisation, the emergence of political science as an internationally competitive discipline has been fundamentally affected by two types of factors: communist legacies and systemic under-investment in teaching and research.

This case study of Rural Haitian University highlights the complexities and consequences that may arise from a combination of unpredictable streams of international funding, financial vulnerability of communities, and the strategies that civic leaders employ to mobilize resources. We argue that the encounter sketched here of local vulnerability following protracted social conflict and a major natural disaster with the international aid machinery has fostered a cycle of dependence/survival strategies in the higher education institution we examine and undermined its ability to achieve its core mission. More generally, we contend that in situations of extreme poverty and heavy international donor influence, “local ownership” may become synonymous with “local survival” unless predicated on the availability of local capacities and site-specific distribution of international resources. We propose one modest initiative to reduce the university’s dependence on international funding through the development of a sustainable tourism enterprise as a way to nurture local ownership and social capital.

As the term ‘soft power’ in international relations (IR) has been coined by Joseph Nye a quarter of a century ago it has gained a great response and initiated numerous debates. A high quality education sector is one of the important factors that contributes to a country’s soft power. Despite that, as shown in the article, education has not been adequately covered in the existing IR literature. The article addresses this lacuna by offering an attempt to conceptualise and operationalise the educational aspect of soft power. First, with cases from the People’s Republic of China and Finland, it provides various examples of growing internationalisation of education, and analyses possible soft power gains from education. Second, the article provides a theoretical conceptualization of educational soft power, and presents three mechanisms that it can work through: as a carrier of genuine values, as a resource that countries possess, and as a tool in achieving certain goals. All three mechanisms also show how increasing internationalisation brings more direct connections between education, international relations, and foreign policy.

This article considers the transformation of higher education in Europe and the challenges it has to face in particular in the field of research. The article argues that national systems have developed from very different traditions but that they are now confronted with similar issues and problems. There is an ongoing process of Europeanisation from the bottom (networks, benchmarking) and from the top (Bologna process, European Commission). But the challenge of the future is the need to play at a ‘global’ level and to compete worldwide with the best university systems.

The current study followed the need for more research concerning the understanding of the relationship between simulation design and self-efficacy in negotiating development within role-play simulations of political decision-making. More specifically, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of social persuasion as a source for self-efficacy in negotiating with simulation design elements. The research was conducted in a three-day simulation about the EU decision-making process. By means of daily diaries and semi-structured interviews, critical incidents about the emergence of social persuasion influencing self-efficacy development were defined. Data were analysed by applying thematic content analysis. Findings show that social persuasion was largely facilitated by the simulation design that offered possibilities for informal contact.