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

Foreword
placements with an enhanced view of the world of politics, a greater
understanding of complex political issues and a sense of the role that they
can play in the political process. Students were less cynical about the
activities of political actors, more aware of their own abilities to affect
change and to improve the well-being of others. This sense of efficacy
within the teaching and learning experience moves us beyond the
personalised idea of student-centred learning to consider the issue of
student experience in a much wider social context: to recognise that the
student experience is not simply about the learning and teaching but that
students have the power to affect meaningful social change.
The collection marks a very happy time in my professional career
when I was able to work with committed and talented colleagues on a
range of teaching and learning projects. Through my work with the Higher
Education Academy subject centre for Sociology, Anthropology and
Politics (C-SAP) based in Birmingham University, and as the Director of
the Reinvention Centre at the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes
University, a centre for excellence in teaching and learning, I was involved
in various ways with work that has been written up in this volume. It is
good to see that this work is now available for colleagues to engage with
and learn from.
Mike Neary
University of Lincoln
ix