This article reports the results of an examination of 187 introductory political theory courses within political science departments across Canada from 2011 to 2016. While instructors and departments know what they are doing in their classrooms, this article provides a broad overview of the field of political philosophy in Canadian universities…

Instructors seeking to add active learning elements to their courses encounter an "evaluation challenge" when trying to assign grades to discussion-based activities that do not produce a final product. By creating a way to incorporate evaluation into hard-to-observe activities, the protocol presented here can help instructors make active…

In the Winter of 2020, my introductory Canadian politics class started to develop its own online, collaboratively-built, open-access, introductory "textbook" on Canadian politics. Drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy, the assignment engages students in group work to generate plain-language primers that can connect with an…

Many argue that critical thinking is a democratic necessity, a valuable career readiness skill, and a key learning outcome of political science education. Research suggests that critical thinking training is most effective when students are explicitly taught critical thinking skills and develop valuation of and self-efficacy in utilizing these…

To what degree is explicit care/work policy taught in family courses in Canada's leading research-intensive universities? We analyze family courses in sociology departments and in political studies and women's/gender studies programs in Canada's 15 R1 universities to make a contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This national…

There is widespread discussion about the need to develop and enhance the career prospects of PhD graduates, and many Canadian universities are seeking to provide professional development programs and mentorship specifically for doctoral students. This paper considers doctoral career preparation from the department level through an in-depth…

Competition among parties is a central feature of democratic politics, but extreme partisanship can undermine democratic practices and institutions. We report the results of a formative curricular intervention involving reflective discussions designed to avoid hyper-partisanship in a training program for anyone--including university students--with…

This paper addresses two crucial gaps in the scholarship on the design and execution Simulation-Based Education (SBE) -- the importance of scaffolding in constructing successful simulations for entry-level students and the associated value of social media tools. We examine these issues within three successive iterations of a role-play simulation…

Urban universities with a predominantly commuting student population face distinct challenges in fostering social connections. Commuting students spend less time on campus and have fewer opportunities for organized and spontaneous social interactions with other students. The campus experience for commuter students tends to center around the…

Literature on simulation games stresses both the need for objective assessment of pedagogical effectiveness and the concern that such assessment may not be happening because it is too difficult. This article speaks to both points by presenting an approach to objectively assess the effectiveness of a simulation called the Human Rights Foreign…

What do secondary school students in Ontario, Canada, need to know about the world in which they live in? How did a secondary school 'World Politics' course that emerged in Ontario in the 1960s address this question? The 'World Politics' course that emerged in the 1960s clearly came about as a result of societal and educational developments.…

This project is contextualized in Shijing Xu and Michael Connelly's (2013- 2020) SSHRC Partnership Grant Project, Canada-China Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education. The goal of the SSHRC Partnership Grant Project is to compare Canadian and Chinese education in such a way that the cultural narratives of each provide…

This paper expands the theoretical base of intergroup and intercultural communication by testing a new communication model of interdependence (CMII), defined in terms of the embedded nature of groups Giles, M., R. Pines, H. Giles, and A. Gardikiotis. 2018. "Towards a Communication Model of Intergroup Interdependence." Atlantic Journal of…

Building on prior research into active learning pedagogy in political science, I discuss the development of a new active learning strategy called the "thesis-building carousel," designed for use in political theory tutorials. This use of active learning pedagogy in a graduate student-led political theory tutorial represents the overlap…

Traditionally in Canada, attention to political or civic education has been at the primary- or secondary-school level. This study focuses on the place of civic engagement in introductory Canadian politics and government university courses in Canada by surveying instructors on their attitudes and approaches to civic engagement in the classroom.…