The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: - Higher Education ...

Foreword: E-Learning: Engagement and
Efficacy
This collection marks a significant moment in the development of the
teaching and learning of politics in higher education (HE) in the UK.
The book is the outcome of what has been a very creative period in
the development of progressive pedagogies in university teaching. This
creative and experimental period has been promoted by a series of
government funding programmes to support innovation in teaching and
learning in HE. Projects discussed in this book have benefited from the
Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning and the monies
provided under the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
programme.
What has been central to the development of these competitive
funding programmes is that they have encouraged colleagues to
collaborate within their own institutions and across the HE sector. These
funding streams have persuaded even the most research-minded
universities to create an institutional environment for the progressive
development of teaching and learning. These institutional environments
have ensured that colleagues have been rewarded for their work in the
classroom at the institutional and at the national level. The activities
recorded in this book provide real evidence for the effectiveness of these
funding programmes.
The work contained in this volume comes out of work done by a
project funded under the FDTL 5 in Politics: The Scholarship of
Engagement for Politics and out of papers presented at an end-of-project
conference. Key to all of the work recorded in this volume is the issue of
student engagement. In this book these engagements are framed within
the real world and simulated contexts of political education and
employability.
If the book is about student engagement with politics and the world
of work, it is also about another form of engagement: the engagement
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