Teaching and Learning Network

Description

Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Network!

The Teaching and Learning Network (TLN) is a community of practice for academics and higher education teachers, where best practice can be recognised, scholarship and research disseminated, and university teaching supported.

All Academic Members of the PSA are automatically members of the TLN.

Building on over a decade of work as a PSA Specialist Group, the remit of the Network is:

To enable all politics academics/HE teachers to share the good and innovative practices that they have developed, within a community of practice
To support the production and dissemination of research and scholarship relating to the teaching and learning of politics
To support the PSA in contributing to policy relating to HE matters, including the TEF
To support early career academics in developing their practice as university teachers
To support the development of politics students as critical and independent learners, able to contribute to economic, social, and political wellbeing as active citizens.

Find out more about the winners of this year's Teachers' Prizes here!

The Joy of the Teaching Track - from outgoing TLN Convenor Cathy Elliott

The TLN is rightly famous for being a friendly, welcoming community and the highlight of being a co-Convenor was definitely meeting so many passionate educators, making friends and being able to help create productive spaces for conversations about education. I also very much enjoyed being part of a national conversation about education in the discipline. Throughout my time as a co-Convenor, I have been particularly interested in supporting and advocating for education-focused careers, so it's fitting that Politics has just published a co-authored article that some colleagues and I wrote based on our PSA Conference Roundtable on the 'Joy of the Teaching Track'. We are still in the early days of thinking about education-focused careers, and the most recent conference featured a great roundtable on the role of scholarship for educational specialists. The TLN will continue to be a place where people get together to support each other and figure out what a joyful educational career will look like in future.

Call for Papers Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Network Conference

For more information about the theme and how to submit your abstract, please visit here.

Call for Journal Articles and Notes about Learning and Teaching in Politics & International Relations

The new editorial team of the PSA's Politics journal is seeking engaging, thought-provoking scholarship that addresses the evolving challenges in teaching political science and international relations. We invite submissions that contribute to both the theoretical and practical dimensions of political education, covering topics such as:

Innovative teaching methods and impactful learning techniques
Assessments of student growth and learning outcomes
The role of emerging technologies in education
Evaluations of educational resources and tools
New approaches to political pedagogy

The journal encourages articles that provide actionable insights and best practices to enhance education in the field and support the development of both students and educators. Published articles will advance the professional expertise of educators, promoting well-informed, engaged learners in politics and international relations.

* Submission Guidelines:

Full articles: Up to 10,000 words
Learning and teaching notes: Up to 5,000 words
All submissions are peer-reviewed with average turnaround time of 5 weeks.

There is no deadline for submissions and we invite the interested authors to submit their work through the ScholarOne online manuscript submission portal at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/politics

TLN Mentoring Network

For those who are educational specialists and/or on education-focused contracts.

If you feel you have the skills and capacity to become a mentor, we kindly invite you to sign up by completing this short form stating your skills and experience.

Your details will be added to a database of those who are willing to mentor other teaching-focused, pedagogically-interested or educational leadership staff in Politics (broadly defined), and Mentors can remove themselves from the database at any time once they have reached their capacity.

This is an open database of academics across the UK to contribute towards, but only PSA members may request a copy.

PSA members can use the database to make a direct approach to potential mentors personally.

If you have any queries, please do get in touch with us via PSATeach@psa.ac.uk.

We want to hear from you!

It would be great to get some feedback from members about what you would like the Network to focus on. We are open to all suggestions, whether that’s workshops, conferences and events we could run or be involved in, publication/article/blog ideas, professional development/training opportunities, or anything else under our wide remit. Get in touch via PSATeach@psa.ac.uk.

Blog writers wanted: do you have something to say about teaching and learning in politics and international studies? If so, why not write a blog for us. We are happy to publish content about best practice, scholarship, or your general thoughts about teaching and learning in the discipline. Contact us at PSATeach@psa.ac.uk with your idea.

Fancy running a webinar for us on teaching and learning in politics? You know what to do: contact us!

Teaching and Learning Network Blogs

Read the latest in our five-part blog series, being shared between the PSA Teaching and Learning stream and the Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE), in order to promote dialogue between the more academic-related pedagogy-focussed bodies and more practitioner-focussed organisations such as FAC.

PSA External Examiner Database

The PSA Teaching and Learning Network is coordinating an external examiners database, exclusively available as a benefit of PSA membership. If you are a PSA member and would like a copy of the database, please email membership@psa.ac.uk.

PSA members are encouraged to register their details in the database, and can do so by completing this short form.

If you aren’t yet a member, do consider joining as you will be will be able to both request a copy of the database and access the wide range of other membership benefits.

The International Political Education Database (IPED)

The International Political Education Database (IPED), curated by Network Co-Chair John Craig, is a historic bibliographic database of journal articles relating to teaching and learning in politics, international relations, public administration and related fields. It aims to raise the profile of existing publications to encourage further research and enhancements to student learning.

We believe that IPED is the world's most comprehensive bibliographic database of teaching and learning resources for politics. NOTE: last updated 2018.

Teaching Politics and IR Online: Key Issues, Skills and Pedagogy

The webinar series focused on general teaching and learning issues, not just online learning!

'Let's use technology meaningfully: Designing engaging online learning activities' by Alexandra Mihai (UCL)
'Teaching and Learning: the Student Perspective' led by Maxine David (Leiden University)
'External Examining in Politics: Rigour and Inclusion' led by Helen Williams (University of Nottingham)
'Active Learning' led by Cristina Leston Bandeira (University of Leeds)
'The Things we Gained During Lockdown. What we Won’t Miss and What we Should Incorporate Into our Teaching in the Longer Term' led by Victoria Honeyman (Leeds University).