APSA welcomes a robust collection of attendees and sponsor and exhibiting partners to the 2015 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference in Washington, DC on January 16–18, 2015. The program committee, chaired by Mark Johnson, Minnesota State Community and Technical College, has organized a dynamic educational program with 12 tracks and 12 interactive, practical workshops to supplement the attendees’ experience. The workshops create an intensive learning environment well-suited for adult learning principles. the conference kicks off with the Keynote Address on Friday, January 16.
ABOUT THE MEETING
The APSA Teaching and Learning Conference was established in 2004 to encourage discipline-wide research, discourse, and attention to the importance of teaching and learning in political science. It uses a working group format, which allows small groups of scholars the opportunity to interact intensively and on a sustained basis on a common pedagogical theme. To facilitate this interaction, all participants attend one of the following tracks for the duration of the three days.
Civic Engagement
This theme will assess and evaluate the active learning techniques that are aimed at enmeshing students into their local and global communities. What is the impact of these techniques upon civic participation, class participation, or political knowledge and student learning? Examples of paper topics include examination of service learning courses, interning and externing programs, and experiential learning requirements.
Conflict and Conflict Resolution
Conflict is an enduring theme in the study of politics. Whether the conflict takes place on the national or international stage, or exists between cultures, nations, interest groups, or individuals, political scientists study and analyze the dynamics, causation, and effects of political conflict and the strategies used to resolve that conflict. Ultimately, this track is dedicated to a critical examination of teaching conflict studies, innovations for the classroom and the curriculum, and assessment and refinement of these methods for the discipline.
Core Curriculum/General Education
Political science course offerings are often a part of an institution’s core curriculum requirements. How does political science contribute to and enhance undergraduate general education curriculum? Papers in this theme will evaluate such topics as assessing the impact of political science courses in developing reasoning and communication skills, and exploring techniques for teaching non-majors effectively.
Curricular and Program Assessment
The Program Assessment track seeks to enhance our understanding of program assessment and its connection to the curricular design and outcomes objectives of political science programs. Papers should address the following types of questions: What are the challenges to departments creating effective assessment systems? Which methods and practices of outcomes assessment have proven most successful? How can departments and individual faculty members effectively integrate program-level assessment into departmental courses? And ultimately, how can political scientists enhance the use of assessment to refine goals, improve programs, and demonstrate program successes to both internal and external audiences?
Distance Learning: The Virtual Political Science Classroom
Distance learning education involves an instructional process during which the student and faculty member are separated by space, time, or both for some portion of the course or program. Distance learning provides important opportunities and also challenges for instructors, such as the challenge of virtual connections a well as the differences created by synchronous and asynchronous teaching strategies. Track proposals will focus on assessing and evaluating different approaches to distant learning and best practices for active learning when teaching political science in a distance learning or hybrid format. Special Note: This track may be conducted in part or entirely online using web conferencing technology.
Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Equality
This theme will focus on issues of difference, diversity, and equality as they relate to pedagogical, classroom, department, and institution-wide matters from multiple perspectives. Topics cover issues such as incorporating diversity topics into a political science curriculum and course content; the ongoing changes in the demographics of students on campus; and challenges faced by faculty in teaching diversity and accessibility in political science classrooms.
Graduate Education: Teaching and Advising Graduate Students
This theme explores the unique challenges that face faculty guiding the development of graduate students and building and sustaining excellence in graduate programs. Paper topics include an analysis of program structures and pedagogical approaches, the effectiveness of comprehensive examinations, teaching preparation, and the function of subfield reading lists in the curriculum. Additionally, papers in this theme address professional development topics such as how to best mentor and advise students on post-graduate education, dissertation preparation, and portfolio construction.
Integrating Technology in the Classroom
The use of technology has increasingly permeated the political science classroom. This track addresses the challenges and opportunities of incorporating all forms of technology into the political science curriculum and the classroom. These include, but are not limited to, online teaching, clickers, podcasts, blogs, wikis, videocasting, and narrated PowerPoints in all aspects of the political science curriculum.
Internationalizing the Curriculum
Considering the trend toward increasing globalization, this track will focus on fostering students’ capacities to understand, engage, and learn from cultures, ideologies, religions, and political systems from around the world. As departments and faculty work to internationalize curricula and programs, this track explores the role of international affairs in the political science curriculum as well as the role of programs such as study abroad courses.
Simulations and Role Play
Simulations and role-play exercises help political scientists and students model the decision-making processes of real-world political actors. Examples of these teaching techniques and strategies include Model United Nations, Model European Union, in-class self-designed simulations, and online role playing exercises. Papers in this track will address topics such as the following: In what way can simulations and role-play expand student learning opportunities in political science? Which formats are most effective? How do we measure the effectiveness of simulations?
Teaching Research Methods
Political science research methods courses are an increasingly common component of the political science curriculum, not only in graduate programs, but also undergraduate programs. This track will address how political science faculty encourage the learning of research methods.
Teaching Political Theory and Theories
Political science is unique among the social sciences in maintaining the interdependence of the study of political theory/philosophy and the empirical/historical study of political life. Yet, oftentimes theories of all types are treated separately in the political science curriculum, suggesting that teaching political philosophy and theories of political science pose different challenges for both teachers and students in the discipline.
The conference concludes on Sunday, January 18, with a closing session summarizing track highlights and addressing hot topics in the field. Conference moderators and participants will put forth their suggestions for enhancing teaching and learning throughout the discipline and within their own academic communities and departments.
Track summaries of the 2015 Teaching and Learning Conference will be available in the July 2015 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics. For more information on the 2015 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference please visit apsanet.org/tlc.
2015 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference Program Committee
Mark Johnson, Minnesota State Community and Technical College (chair)
Kimberley Cowell-Meyers, American University
Audrey Haynes, University of Georgia
Steven Rathgeb Smith, APSA
Cameron Thies, Arizona State University
Sherri Wallace, University of Louisville
DA-RT Workshop Offered
In September 2014, APSA, the Center for Political Studies and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan, and the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry and its Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University, sponsored a workshop on data access and research transparency (DA-RT) at the University of Michigan. An aspirational goal of the workshop was for journal editors to commit to enhancing their journals’ requirements for research transparency over time with the objective of encouraging scholars to be more open about their data collection and analytic methods.
While finances limited the number of stake-holders who could be included, more than 30 journal editors, domain repository officers, representatives from publishing houses, and topic practitioners (in addition to APSA staff) attended the two-day meeting. Participants discussed a range of openness issues, including research transparency, preregistration of research designs, journal management software, incentives for replication, and data sharing.
BACKGROUND
Since 2011, APSA has been engaged in a multilayered dialogue on DA-RT. As part of this conversation, APSA Council approved the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee on Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) to discuss openness in political science. This wide-ranging discussion has included dozens of scholars from every sub-field in the discipline. DA-RT materials have been reviewed and discussed by members of multiple APSA committees, including the APSA Council and the APSR Editorial Board. Substantial progress on DA-RT is reflected in APSA’s Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms promulgation of new transparency guidelines that in turn catalyzed revisions to APSA’s Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science updating the discipline’s general expectations for openness. Various members of DA-RT’s working committees have also offered presentations about research transparency at national and regional conferences and led short courses at the APSA Annual Meeting.
A recent product of these efforts was the January 2014 symposium on DA-RT in PS: Political Science and Politics, which includes essays from journal editors and leaders of the discipline’s data-management infrastructure. The introduction to that symposium includes draft guidelines offering practical advice for putting DA-RT’s principles into practice in the qualitative and quantitative research traditions. Also in 2014, the editorial team of the American Political Science Review commenced amending the APSR’s submission guidelines to help authors meet those expectations.
In August 2014, as part of the APSA Annual Meeting, DA-RT presentations were to be featured at the annual journal editors’ breakfast. When that event was cancelled due to unexpected events at the meeting site, APSA distributed to journal editors the materials that the DA-RT committee had prepared for the meeting.
WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS
The September 2014 workshop at the University of Michigan sought to provide stakeholders in the transparency project an opportunity to discuss next steps. As journal editors and repository officers can provide powerful incentives and opportunities to improve transparency, their needs, knowledge, and perspectives were the workshop’s primary focus.
The workshop began with a series of opening presentations. These presentations focused on:
• The use of persistent identifiers and their role in developing better citation practices;
• The preregistration of experimental and observational research designs;
• The incorporation of transparency standards into journal workflow, in particular through recent developments in editorial software;
• The use of active citation (digitally enhanced citations) to achieve research transparency in qualitative scholarship; and
• The use of “badges for open practices” developed by the Center for Open Science.
Subsequent breakout sessions posed key questions facing journal editors and leaders of domain repositories including:
1. The purposes for which data are shared (replication/transparency, secondary analysis, and/or teaching), and what authors need to provide in order for data serve those purposes. For example, for replication, what do authors need to do to achieve both production transparency and analytic transparency?
2. The timing of sharing data and supporting materials. Possible triggers include manuscript submission, requests by reviewers, acceptance for publication, electronic publication, paper publication, and a specified time after publication. Can/should reviewers have access to data and related documentation during the review process?
3. How should journals guide scholars to satisfy openness standards when the data they use are under ethical or proprietary constraint?
4. Strategies for incentivizing data sharing, including insisting on appropriate citation and increasing disciplinary credit for data sharing as a value-adding practice.
5. How journals can help to ensure that the discipline offers adequate training to prepare scholars to engage in data management.
6. How journals can address the concerns of qualitative researchers regarding the potential implications of data transparency for their work including the issues of confidentiality and data access.
More information about the September workshop and the materials presented can be found at http://datacommunity.icpsr.umich.edu/da-rt-workshop.
An important outcome of the workshop was a proposal from the floor to develop a joint statement of support for, and commitment to, increasing openness and transparency. The journal editors in attendance wanted to word the statement in a way that was simultaneously strong and broadly inclusive, laying out a shared commitment to data access and research transparency. Workshop organizers were tasked with coordinating the writing and dissemination of the statement, and over the next month workshop participants produced and reviewed a series of drafts, and journal editors began to sign on. On October 31, 2014, the group posted the statement and supporting materials on a new website, dartstatement.org; updates are sent on a related twitter account @DARTsupporters. Within days of the statement’s release, a larger set of political science journal editors joined the discussion and the list of signers began to grow.
DA-RT is committed to a pluralist approach to openness and an inclusive dialogue. The group sees its role as one of coordinating an emerging consensus. It continues to work to developed networks of journal editors, publishers, repository officers, and others who can help increase transparency in the discipline.
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
In March 2015, APSA, the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan, and the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry and its Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University, will host a one-day workshop in Washington, DC on research transparency for disciplinary, region-specific, and topic-specific associations. The workshop will address the debate concerning research transparency, its benefits, and its implications and consider the role that such associations can play in supporting and encouraging research transparency. For details, contact [email protected].
To offer comments and suggestions on the joint journal editors’ statement or to learn more about other initiatives related to openness in political science research, please contact APSA Executive Director Steven Rathgeb Smith ([email protected]) and/or DA-RT Coordinators Colin Elman ([email protected]) and Arthur “Skip” Lupia ([email protected]).
Coming in the NEXT ISSUE
A preview of some of the articles in the January 2015 issue:
SYMPOSIA
Recap of the 2014 Midterm Elections, James E. Campbell, guest editor
Paul Pierson’s Dismantling the Welfare State: A 20th Anniversary Roundtable, Eric Patashnik, guest editor
The Scholarly Conference, Mark Rom, guest editor
FEATURES
Strategic Voting and the Role of Polls: Evidence From an Embedded Web Survey, Timothy Rich
The BDS Campaign against Israel: Lessons from South Africa, JosephyYi and Joe Phillips
THE PROFESSION
The Logic of the Promotion Decision: In Dubio Pro Patientia, Kurt Weyland
Peer Reviewing in Political Science: New Survey Results, Paul A. Djupe
THE TEACHER
Social Science Mechanics: A Graduate Training Module that “Looks under the Hood” at Innovative Research Designs, Katie A. Cahill, Michael R. Brownstein, Amanda E. Burke, Christopher Kulesza, and James A. McCann
The Dictatorship Game: Simulating a Transition to Democracy, Luis F. Jimenez
Political Theory Simulations in the Classroom: Simulating John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Derek Glasgow
ASSOCIATION NEWS
Dissertation List
2014 Report of the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms
Many APSA members will know of the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedom’s role as a forum for individual questions relating to tenure, discrimination, or misconduct. This report focuses on the committee’s broader role on a range of public matters, all of which have been increasing in recent years. From protecting scholars to data access and citation uses, these issues suggest a more proactive and, in some cases, preventative approach to addressing ethical questions in the discipline. Rather than waiting until problems arise, by promoting education, creating awareness, and providing tools for best practices, the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights and Freedoms supports an open, fair, responsible, and productive discipline.
The committee’s work on all the issues detailed here also provides unique insight into one of the most common questions regarding political science today: are we “engaged” in the “real world” enough? Contrary to conventional wisdom of the profession as cloistered, on the evidence of the ethical dilemmas and areas of activity outlined here, ours is a dynamic profession engaging in the real problems of the world.
This report outlines activities of the Ethics Committee on data access and research transparency, protecting the human rights of scholars abroad, engaging cognate science and social science disciplines, and providing graduate education on citation practices. At the end of the report, readers will find key resources available in print and on the web.
DATA ACCESS AND RESEARCH TRANSPARENCY
By now, many APSA members will be familiar with the work of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Data Access and Research Transparency which began in 2011. As part of that broader process, the Ethics Committee reviewed and updated the language on researchers’ obligations regarding providing access to their data and transparency in the way data is used.
But do those obligations constitute an ethical obligation, or are they merely representative of things we should do in ideal circumstances? In reviewing the APSA Ethics Guide as it existed in 2011, the association had long recognized the principle of sharing empirical research data and methods. However, where previous language had emphasized only sharing data when findings were contested, or suggesting that sharing data only applies to those using quantitative methods, the updated ethics guide recognizes that sharing data has become a much more common practice throughout the research process. The updated guide also recognizes that there may be multiple relevant reasons for sharing data (or not) and that those reasons may differ for various communities within the political science discipline. Most importantly, while there may be agreement on first principles, the hard work of translating those principles into workable standards and practices must be carried out by the political science research communities themselves. Thus, while the Ethics Committee concluded its work and adopted the new language at the end of 2012 after a period of member review, the data access and research transparency “torch” has now been passed to journal editors, researchers, and political scientists who continue the project.
PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF SCHOLARS ABROAD
While work on efforts such as data access constitute relatively discrete projects for the Ethics Committee, other activities are more ongoing. Recognizing the regular, if infrequent, threats to the human rights of scholars working outside the United States constitutes one such routine duty. In 2013–2014, the Ethics Committee was asked to recognize and speak on behalf of several scholars and, in one case, an entire department, whose ability to conduct empirical research was compromised. Starting with the most recent, here are four instances where the Committee enquired after particular developments internationally.
Alexander Sodiqov
On June 16, 2014 Mr. Sodiqov, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Toronto, was detained by the secret police in Khorog, Tajikistan, while conducting fieldwork on conflict and conflict resolution in the region Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. APSA joined with many other scholarly associations in requesting information, a fair enquiry, access to an attorney, and—barring any further information—immediate release of Mr. Sodiqov. The Tajik authorities released Mr. Sodiqov on bail in July 2014, though he was not allowed to leave the country until September 2014. He and his family are now safely back in Canada, though formal charges have not been dropped and his future ability to travel to the country remains in doubt.
Visa restrictions and Cuban scholars attending LASA world conference
For the most part, the Ethics Committee’s work on foreign scholars is addressed to governments of foreign countries. Occasionally we are asked to persuade our own government, particularly when scholars are denied visas to travel to the United States to participate in academic activities. Such was the case in April 2013, when then-president of the Latin American Studies Association Evelyne Huber asked for letters of support from a number of associations, including APSA, in addressing the difficulty relating to visas denied for Cuban scholars wishing to attend the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference. With the renewed opening of relations between Cuba and the United States under the Obama administration, LASA had decided to hold their world congress in the United States for the first time since 2004 in part based on an assessment that all LASA members would be able to attend. Many were able to travel, but in the run-up to the conference five Cubans were denied visas. In raising the issue with the US State Department, APSA noted that it had previously worked productively with the State Department to arrange visas for scholars from the USSR visiting Washington for the 1988 IPSA conference, and the long history academic exchanges had played in promoting free and open societies. In the end, the five scholars were not able to obtain visas for travel.
Pinar Selek
Also in April 2013 the committee responded to a request issued by Scholars at Risk for letters in support of Pinar Selek, a sociologist and doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Strasbourg who was sentenced in absentia in Turkey for her alleged role in the 1998 bombing of a market in Istanbul. A longtime advocate of rights for vulnerable communities in Turkey, including the Kurdish community, this was the fourth time Ms. Selek had been tried and convicted, with the previous three decisions overturned. In June 2014, Ms. Selek’s conviction was again overturned, this time by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals. However, as of that time Ms. Selek still needed to seek acquittal for all charges, and the matter continues to be monitored by Scholars at Risk.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Department of Political Science
Finally, in September 2012 APSA wrote a letter asking for more information regarding the decision by a sub-committee of the Israeli Council on Higher Education (CHE) to effectively close the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. At issue was whether the department had done enough to meet curricular and accreditation standards following an external review, or whether the actions were instead intended to chill enquiry which was deeply critical of the then-current government. At the time, the Ethics Committee expressed concern that the Council on Higher Education (CHE) not take action “which is either directly or inadvertently an assault on the ability of members of our profession to practice intellectual honesty or that would compromise the freedom of their inquiry and teaching.” While the committee never received a response to its enquiry, in February 2013 Haaretz newspaper reported that the CHE had reversed the subcommittee’s decision to close the department. As of this writing, the Department of Politics and Government continues to operate as a fully active part of the university and scholarly community.
ENGAGING THE NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES
A frequent trope in the popular press is “scholars disagree…” on one new research finding or another. But in the area of human rights, the scholarly community speaks with one voice: intellectual honesty and openness in research and teaching are fundamental to scholarship.
As the individual cases above illustrate, issues of academic freedom are never restricted to one discipline or another. In this respect, the committee’s work is complemented by and part of a broader natural, social, and behavioral science commitment to ensuring the welfare of scientists across the globe. Through the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms, APSA participates in two broad groups: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights coalition, and Scholars at Risk. The AAAS coalition is a network of scientific and engineering membership organizations that recognize a role for scientists and engineers in human rights. The coalition organizes a biannual conference, student engagement activities, and member education and provides expertise to UN advisory bodies on issues as diverse as the right to the benefits of science and the intersection of science with disability rights, access, and scientific engagement. There are also many opportunities to get involved at the individual, department, and university level, and the AAAS coalition website keeps an up-to-date list of activities and initiatives.
While the AAAS coalition approaches the questions science and human rights broadly, including the work of engineering, science, and social science professional activities within and outside the academy, Scholars at Risk (SAR) focuses more discretely on scholars, human rights, and higher education. For APSA, they serve as a first clearinghouse of information regarding individual cases, and a crucial node in the network for communicating threats to individual scholars. SAR’s work also goes beyond communicative needs: they help facilitate placements for scholars whose life or work is at risk in host institutions/countries, and recently, have begun a new project outlining how universities might adopt an ethical approach to work and education in countries where host government or other institutional support for academic freedom may be different from what US and European governments and institutions provide. While responding to individual threats to academic freedom will likely not end any time soon, by broadening their work SAR has started to tackle the more difficult, and larger impact, issue of national and international support for academic freedom that can be built before individual scholars are subject to threats and/or intellectual restrictions.
STEVEN SALAITA CASE
The committee also engaged around the Steven Salaita case and how APSA should involve itself in the debate surrounding the handling of this employment issues at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The committee explored several issues ranging from academic freedom to contract law to free speech to hate speech to “civility.” In the end, the committee concluded its deliberations with advice to the president and president-elect of the association on APSA’s letter of concern to Chancellor Wise. The letter is available on APSA’s public letters and statements web page.
LOOKING AHEAD: GRADUATE EDUCATION AND CITATIONS
As the discipline’s forum for deliberating about and addressing ethical issues, the committee is also concerned about creating ethical awareness among our graduate students, especially when it comes to publication of research findings. Toward that end, the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedom sponsored a panel on best practices relating to the citation and reference to existing scholarly work. It posed and addressed the following questions: How should we incorporate and cite our own previously published work? What are the best ways to acknowledge other work in formal modeling and quantitative studies? We are hopeful that this work will lay the foundation for other types of trainings and workshops aimed at nurturing the highest standards of ethical behavior among graduate students.
