Teaching

Philosophy and pedagogy

My vocational motivation in pursuing an academic career is a conviction that political science is critical to the public understanding of government. I see teaching as the primary way that scholars make an enduring impact on public life. When teaching, I have two goals in mind: the first is to make students familiar and fluent users of the key ideas that make up a body of knowledge. The second is to give students the skills to be confident critics and, ultimately, independent developers of ideas in their own right. When both these goals are achieved, students graduate with a deep understanding of political ideas and rhetoric, as well as their origins and uses as deployed in contemporary debates. They are also able to participate in and ultimately influence these debates for themselves.

In achieving these goals, I am inspired by research-driven approaches to pedagogy and especially recent advances in cognitive science in education. These approaches emphasize the importance of multiple modalities for initial learning, staged content, spaced practice, formative assessment and meta-cognition. This means a willingness to use visual aids and other presentation techniques intelligently when introducing new concepts and their structural relationships. It includes providing opportunities for students to make use of these concepts (sometimes in the form of presentation assignments), and engage in low-stakes assessment of their current knowledge.