A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Teaching in the disciplines
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Case study 2: Developing pedagogical knowledge
specific to political theory
Professor Alan Patten teaches political theory in the Department of Political
Science at Princeton University, USA. Political theory is the subfield of political
science that looks at political ideas. At the time of the interviews, Alan had been
teaching at university level for seven years. His teaching experience has spanned
two continents, as he had taught at the University of Exeter, UK, and then at
McGill University, Canada. The particular undergraduate course that was the
focus of the interviews is an introductory course to political theory which
attracted between 200 and 300 students.
One aspect of Alan’s DPK brings together components from his knowledge base
for teaching and the disciplinary specificity of his field. For instance, when
reflecting upon the assessment of his students’ learning, Alan draws from his
knowledge related to teaching, namely his knowledge of assessment of learning. As an
illustration, he says that his approach is to examine ‘how well students are
achieving the goals of the course’ as opposed to merely getting them to ‘reproduce
the material of the course’. Therefore, Alan has deep reservations about the use
of multiple choice exams – particularly in political theory – as that would
encourage the students simply ‘to learn facts’. He prefers to use essays rather
than ‘poorly designed multiple choice exams’.
In a parallel fashion, Alan reflects on the learning to be achieved by his students
and draws from the socio-cultural characteristics of his discipline in doing so. More
specifically, he draws upon what he sees as requirements for teaching in the
discipline. As an illustration, Alan says that three elements would constitute good
teaching in general: imparting knowledge, giving students tools, and triggering
motivation. He adds that different disciplines would put ‘more or less weight on
each of these’. But Alan feels that in political theory ‘giving students tools and
exciting them about the subject is more important than the knowledge’.
Alan’s DPK thus comprises a relationship between his knowledge of assessment
of learning and what he sees as requirements for teaching in the discipline. On the
one hand, Alan chooses to assess learning that goes beyond the reproduction of
facts. On the other hand, he says that teaching in the discipline of political theory
requires focusing on something beyond imparting knowledge; that is, giving
students tools and helping them become proficient in their use of such tools. These
two ideas are closely related, thus linking his pedagogical and disciplinary
knowledge.
(Alan Patten, Princeton University; Denis Berthiaume,
University of Lausanne)