January 22, 2025 • 32 mins
Class discussions of public policy issues can be challenging in our politically polarized environment. In this episode, Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley join us to discuss a new resource that suggests a variety of strategies that encourage students to address their differences and to engage productively in civic engagement projects.
Allison is an Associate Professor of American Politics and chair of the Department of Politics here at SUNY-Oswego. Lauren is the inaugural James L. Miller Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs at Randolf-Macon College. Carah is the Vice President of Election Protection at Issue One and is a co-chair of the American Political Science Association’s Civic Engagement section and a member of the APSA’s Civic Engagement Committee. Allison, Lauren, and Carah are editors of Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics, which was recently released by Springer.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
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(00:00):
Class discussions of public policy issues can be challenging in our politically polarized
environment. In this episode, we discuss a new resource that suggests a variety
of strategies that encourage students to address their differences and to engage
productively in civic engagement projects. Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching,
(00:27):
an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer......and features guests doing important research
and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
(00:55):
Our guests today are Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley. Allison is an Associate
Professor of American Politics and chair of the Department of Politics here at SUNY-Oswego. Lauren
is the inaugural James L. Miller Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost
and Dean of Academic Affairs at Randolf-Macon College. Carah is the Vice President of Election
(01:18):
Protection at Issue One and is a co-chair of the American Political Science Association’s Civic
Engagement section and a member of the APSA’s Civic Engagement Committee. Allison, Lauren, and
Carah are editors of Civic Pedagogies (01:30):
Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics,
which was recently released by Springer. Welcome Lauren and Carah, and welcome back, Allison. It's
been a while since you've been on the podcast. It has.
Today’s teas are:... Lauren, are you drinking some tea today?
I am. I have English breakfast tea. Always a good choice. How about you, Carah?
(01:53):
I am, actually I made my favorite Rishi’s tumeric and ginger tea.
I have continued my trend of rejecting tea and have this diet coke.
And although we're friends, Allison, I don't like the rejection of tea.
And I have a black raspberry green tea today.And I have, in holiday season,
I've got a candy cane tea. In my backpack I actually had two packages of
(02:18):
Christmas tea, but I got here too late to dig it out. We're approaching the holidays. This will be
released in January, but we're recording it right before the Christmas holiday. So we've invited you
here today to discuss your new book. Can you tell us a bit about the origin of this book project?
Yeah, I'm happy to describe the origin of this book project, because in some ways, it almost
(02:38):
didn't happen. Carah was invited to a meeting with the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan
at APSA back in, I think, fall of 22 (the American Political Science Association's annual meeting).
And they were inviting her to talk about a potential book project. And over lunch, before
the meeting, Carah said to me, “I have my hands full. I have a lot of things going on. Will you
(03:01):
come with me to just kind of hear their proposal, but ultimately help me say no?” And I said, “Sure,
I’m happy to do that. You have no obligation to say yes to another project. You are over-committed
as it is.” And then when we got there, we had a really wonderful conversation about the need for
scholarship and discussion of how to engage students in an era of divisive politics. And
(03:27):
toward the end of the conversation, I found myself enthusiastically embracing the idea of this book,
Carah was probably elbowing me in the side. I don't know. I was so overwhelmed by how much
potential I thought the project had, that instead of saying “no,” we found ourselves wrapping up
the meeting by saying, “Well, when do you need our proposal?” And so that's the sort of origin story
(03:47):
for this book, although then Carah followed up and brought Allison into the project as well.
I think the next day, I took Allison for a walk and said,
“Hey, I think you should join us in this.” Yeah, Lauren committed me to something that
she told me I should say no to. So guess who else is getting roped in?
Happy to be roped in. Can you talk a little bit about
how the contributors were selected for inclusion in the volume?
(04:10):
It's a pretty straightforward story, actually, we just put out an open call for proposals,
we circulated among the American Political Science Association’s Civic Engagement Section. We also
circulated it amongst the American Democracy Project at the American Association of State
Colleges and Universities. We were really looking to go beyond just political science,
(04:31):
although political scientists were primarily the contributors, but we were trying to get diverse
perspectives, diverse regions, diverse ranks in terms of tenure and promotion, as well as trying
to get some from backgrounds in student affairs as well. And then we also really encouraged
partnerships between professors and students. And I ended up co-authoring a chapter with a student
(04:54):
as well, Kylie Holzman, who is in her third year now at the University of Virginia.
The Bonneau and Fields chapter is also a co-authored faculty member, and I guess by
that point, former student contributed volume. But Jordan Fields was one of Chris Bonneau's
undergraduate students who was in law school at the time that they prepared their contribution.
So it was nice to see that. And we did have some practitioners who ended up being part
(05:19):
of the project. We tried to be inclusive. I think that was the main object of what we
were looking for. And then we also tried to work with proposers. So when people submitted proposals
that maybe weren't exactly on the mark or didn't exactly fit in with what we had envisioned,
we went back to them several times to try to, in an iterative way, make sure that what they were
(05:42):
offering to do would find a nice home. And I think in the end, we were successful with nearly all of
those, although some proposers ultimately decided not to continue in the process.
One of the challenges facing people in pretty much all disciplines today, which grows out of the
political polarization, is that we see divisions in terms of the understanding of reality between
(06:03):
our political parties, so that some people strongly believe in 17th and 18th century
economics and science, for example, and others perhaps may take into account what we've learned
over the last few centuries. But in a classroom when you have people with such different views of
reality, how do you address classroom discussions when people are coming in with very different
(06:24):
views of the reality in which we're living? So I think actually naming that as part
of the challenge of teaching civics is a key component. So rather than treating that as
something that we're kind of implicitly striving to overcome in our pedagogy, actually naming that
for students as sort of what the starting point is that in order to have a sort of civic space,
(06:47):
we have to be able to pull those differences out, and so part of it is actually making that
part of the pedagogy to work through. I think the other part of that strategy is actually
no longer, at least for me, being able to assume students are going to come in and I'm going to
throw out a prompt and we're going to have a conversation. It's that you actually have to
(07:08):
seed conversations in a much more intentional and thoughtful way in terms of the resources
that sort of pre-structure any kind of classroom conversation than we've had to do in the past.
Yeah, I will maybe not name it in quite as explicit ways as Allison described, but I do
tell my students that I am comfortable with them articulating whatever viewpoints they want to
(07:32):
articulate, and it's not my job to tell them that their opinions or their views are wrong, but it is
my job to correct for factual inaccuracies, and I think for me, establishing that my role is about
looking for objective facts. And I think that gives me a certain credibility with the students,
(07:53):
because they know that if I'm really pushing back it's because I've identified a factual error in
the position that they're taking, not because I disagree with the opinion that they're expressing,
and I think it's a different way of being explicit as you sort of structure those conversations,
but that has been what has worked for me. It allows the students to know that I'm not going
(08:14):
to call them out because I disagree with them, but that I will push back when they provide
information that is just factually inaccurate. There's a couple of ways I've approached it,
and my approach has also evolved over the years as times have changed. I
have been teaching at the higher ed level since 2008 and one of the things I started doing,
(08:36):
particularly after the 2016 election was to, at the start of each class, rather than me setting
out norms in a syllabus on the first week of class, we actually write the norms together,
and I pull suggestions from students in the room. I give ideas of what's worked in the past,
but we come to an agreement together about how we're going to approach the material,
(08:59):
with the spirit of inquiry and creativity, being willing to receive feedback, to be willing to
question things from other perspectives, and then also being open minded, but then let them
come up with norms of how they want the course to proceed, how they want the discussions to proceed,
and then we come to an agreement and vote on it and make sure that there is consensus about how
(09:20):
we'll proceed. And on many occasions, I've had times when the discussion goes off the rails,
when someone feels that one of the norms was violated, or perceives or receives information
in that context to have violated the norms, so we pull the norms back up and have an open
conversation about what happened. And then another thing is, and I name in the syllabus,
(09:43):
that I don't call myself the professor, I call myself the facilitator of the course. I see myself
as facilitating the learning, that trying to give them more agency in the process. And I think
that helps too. Sort of similar to what Lauren said, I'm presenting myself as sort of a neutral
arbiter, that I'm coming in, not trying to tell them what to learn, but rather, this is
(10:05):
an experience we're all going to do together.You started kind of hinting at some of these
things, but can you talk a little bit more about additional ways that faculty across disciplines
can build a climate in their classrooms where students feel comfortable sharing their views that
might not be popular with their classmates.So I will say readily, this is something
that I struggle with a lot with intro level classes. One of the things I have tried to do,
(10:29):
which I will outright say has failed, is in that kind of norm setting conversation, which I also do
at the start of the class, almost always someone will say, and a number of students will agree,
“One of the things I want to do is hear other people's opinions.” They will actively say that
that is something they want out of an introduction to American government and politics class. And so
(10:50):
I'll emphasize it like, “yes, that's such a great idea,” and we'll talk about why that’s
something that they want out of the classroom experience, and then four weeks later, no one has
raised a viewpoint that does not clearly fit the kind of normative conversation that we're having.
And so I'll kind of reference back to “You guys say that this is something you want. Why won't you
(11:11):
participate?” And what I've often then ended up reverting to is a lot of short writes, anonymous
short writes that students turn into me, and I then use that to essentially seed the conversation
without sharing names, so it provides a space… like they want it, and they are very hesitant
to actually, with their kind of face and name, raise the opinion, but they'll provide it and then
(11:35):
they'll have a conversation about it when those opinions are divorced from people. And so I don't
think that's that's the ideal situation. I'd still very much like to get them to the place where
they're willing to own the position that they have, but at least for a number of classes, that
has been a good middle ground strategy to get the ideas out, so that people know that their ideas
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are being shared and they're hearing ideas that they want to hear, even if we can't quite get all
the way to ownership of the ideas in the room. So that anonymity helps make students feel more
comfortable sharing their views that they might not be willing
to do it otherwise. That makes sense. For me, I am at an institution where our
student body is pretty evenly split in terms of their partisan identification. And I can
(12:20):
say this with some authority, because Randolph Macon has been doing a mock election every four
years since 1968 so we can actually look back and see how our students say they would vote
if they were voting in the presidential election. And so we know our student body is almost evenly
divided between Republicans and Democrats, or at least in terms of their voting habits. And so I
(12:43):
actually use that as an entry point into talking to my introductory political science students,
my Intro to American government students. Part of why I think sometimes students are reluctant to
speak up is that they assume nobody in the room will agree with them. And I think when they hear
that there are more than likely half the people in the room that are going to share your perspective,
(13:05):
at least to some degree, I think that can be useful as far as breaking the ice or adding
to their comfort level. I think it also, for me, then serves as a good reminder,
if conversations start to get a little bit heated or slanted toward one perspective or the other,
to be able to say, remember, there are likely many people in this room that would disagree with you,
(13:27):
and then I can use that to say, “What would the opposing viewpoint look like?” And so, of course,
I think all of us who teach political science get really good at playing devil's advocate. We have
to. But the question that you asked, I think, was also broader. It was, what about kind of elsewhere
on our campuses, and for my administrative role on campus, I have a pretty helpful vantage point to
(13:50):
see kind of what happens in other departments and in other disciplines, and I think a lot of faculty
are really uncomfortable talking about political issues, and so when those kinds of questions
arise, they tend to freeze. Again, I'm thinking outside of Political Science primarily. And I
think one of the cases that this edited volume makes is that getting connected into the community
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or forming civic habits doesn't necessarily mean being political in a partisan way. It
means identifying those ways in which whatever it is that you do, connects to your community,
and trying to get your students out into that community, doing those things, listening to
the community members, learning about how problems exist in a practical setting. And I've seen that,
(14:45):
for example, our Environmental Studies faculty do that all the time. They have real world clients
that they bring in for students. Our sociology students are out working with communities of color
or minority language communities in our area. And so other disciplines, other departments, can take
some of those habits of citizenship that get talked about extensively throughout this volume
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and apply those without having to get political, which I think makes so many of the non-political
scientists I know really, really uncomfortable.I think one of the things, just to further
elaborate on what both Alison and Lauren said, is that context really matters, and
different things are going to work in different communities, in different populations of students.
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But the important thing is that we are thinking about creating learning experiences that really
are focused on addressing public problems. And of course, we're going to have to define what
those public problems are, and there may be disagreements about how to address it,
but finding ways to work together and finding the means for different communities and populations
(15:57):
to actually contribute meaningfully to solving those problems. So I think one of the greatest
contributions in the book comes from Andrew Smith, who talks about working at a Hispanic
serving Institution in Texas and thinking about what the needs are for students in that context,
and many of the students, of whom are from different communities. And so really, starting
(16:18):
from the point of who are the students I'm working with, what are their needs? What are the
community's needs? And how can we work together in mutually reciprocal and beneficial ways, so that
we're not extracting from the community? We're not seen as “saving the community,” right? But we're
creating experiences where we can work together. And I think that's a really important element for
(16:40):
overcoming political polarization, because it's contributing to re-humanizing groups that we
might not particularly engage with on a regular basis, and it fundamentally is about solving
problems in an era where it's been challenging to do so because of the othering, because of
negative campaigning, because of all the things we know that has contributed to political
(17:03):
inequalities and economic inequalities.I think one of the things that sometimes
happens is a lack of trust between students and communities, faculty and communities, institutions
and communities, and all the different iterations of those different combinations of people,
and maybe also the data that informs some of those projects. Can you talk about how to build
(17:24):
trust amongst those groups and also maybe the data that's used on those projects?
So this is a major challenge, and this was something where, as we were preparing a proposal
to establish an institute for community-engaged research at the University of Virginia, which
is now the Equity Institute. This was one of the things where I spent a lot of time interviewing
(17:45):
members of the community in the surrounding area. And this was a problem that came up over and over
again about hearing that many researchers dive into communities, that they're extractive of
that knowledge. The communities don't ever know where that knowledge goes, so there's a lack
of ownership, and yet it's being used to create additional lines on CVs and to get grant funding,
(18:08):
and the benefits don't always necessarily go back to the communities from which we
got that knowledge. So I think there's a greater understanding of this, or a growing understanding
of this. I think we have a long way to go. One book I'd highly recommend is In the Shadow of the
Ivory Tower. That's a fantastic book that talks about many of the inequities between universities
(18:31):
and institutions of higher education and their communities. But I think there's really important
ways in which, as teachers, as professors, we can think about building lasting partnerships.
So when I'm doing the civic engagement course, I'm starting from a point of, where is the community
need that we can actually meaningfully contribute to? Does the community partner want us to work on
(18:55):
it? And is there something that we can do where the students are contributing that is beneficial
to the community, but then the students are also learning? And it's also really important for the
student learning experience, because it means that they're not just doing paperwork or doing
some organization’s social media like a typical internship would, but it is actually engaging in
meaningful ways. And then making sure that the community organization actually has a product,
(19:19):
has that knowledge that they can hold on to. And I think there's a lot of great work and
opportunities to do those kinds of courses. The challenge is they're not always rewarded
in the tenure and promotion line for people like me who want to teach courses like that,
and they're also super intensive for the professors and the community partners,
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because it's really about building relationships and sustainable relationships. It's not going to
be just a one-and-done class. It's something that's going to carry on from year to year.
Several of the contributors to the volume actually talk about the importance of building trust. We
have contributions that involve advocacy work with an addiction recovery organization in
(20:06):
Maine. There's the Bonneau and Fields example. Again, they're doing prison education. So those
are cases where you have practitioners engaged with the folks from their local universities,
and they have to build a community of trust, because the issues that they're managing,
the personal characteristics of the people that they're serving, require
(20:29):
a certain degree of care, a certain degree of confidentiality. And so I think the volume and
many of its contributors really do emphasize the importance of that trust building, and it
requires, I think, the faculty member working very carefully with their students to make sure
the students understand the importance of what they're doing out in the community and how their
(20:49):
work will affect the people that they're working with. But I think that's a really important point,
that any kind of community-engaged work, whether it's research, whether it is engaged pedagogy,
all of that has to involve really being thoughtful and explicit about how you're building trust and
maintaining it, And Carah mentioned not exploiting a resource. Just kind of go in and then take what
(21:14):
you can from that organization. You have to be contributing something back to it, and ideally,
these are longer term partnerships, not just one-and-done kind of engagements, unless that's
what the community partner is looking for.You've been talking a bit about these various
types of civic engagement projects. Since the pandemic, a lot of faculty have been
complaining about students not being that engaged with class work. But might these
(21:38):
types of projects where students are actually doing something in the community, where they
see that they're making a difference, and they can see the intrinsic value of the work, does
that give students more of a sense of value in the work, giving them perhaps, a little bit more
intrinsic motivation for engaging in the work, and is that something, perhaps that should be
done in other disciplines a bit more as well? I think there's actually two ways of thinking
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about the question that you asked that I think the book has chapters that give purchase on both.
I think one is to help students think about how some of the skills that I think we lost,
just as a people during the pandemic, are actually really necessary for democracy and
so being able to engage in conversation with one another, have those relationships with students in
the classroom (22:27):
why it matters that you come in and you make small talk with somebody for a little bit
before class starts, as opposed to just staring at your phone. One of the pieces that I really
love from this book from Strachan that talks about this idea of Madisonian virtue and the need for a
kind of civic friendship and relationship building that underlies democracy. And I think that that's
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a little bit different than kind of an intrinsic motivation for doing work where you can see the
good happening, but it is about there are skills that come from being in community with people in
a classroom that in and of themselves have some good and that can kind of help students make
a difference. And I think in some ways, that's about faculty thinking about why it's worth it to
(23:12):
actually build that classroom community that then can set the stage for some of these bigger civic
engagement projects. So kind of thinking about, what are the skill sets that underlie student
engagement initially, and their value, and then kind of a set of chapters that really talk about
how getting students engaged, giving students something tangible that they're working on,
(23:36):
where they can both see that kind of intrinsic or internal and external efficacy, I think,
in the Political Science language. And for that, I would think about Meagher’s chapter on ENACTus,
which is a fantastic program that I would frankly love to try to figure out how to
get at SUNY Oswego, where students actually take part in significant advocacy and lobbying on a
(23:57):
piece of legislation at the state level. And so for students to think about being able to build
skills that are really kind of pushing forward on a specific issue area, where they can make
a difference and are really interacting with people who have the capacity to make certain
kinds of decisions. I think that those kinds of activities can be huge for student engagement.
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I was so inspired by Rich Meagher’s chapter that I basically adapted it and taught a year-long course
last year at the University of Virginia, where the first semester of the course, the students
in the course viewed artificial intelligence as an up and coming challenge that Congress was not
(24:41):
making any progress on. Some states have done some work to address it in the policy arena. So anyway,
the students spent the whole first semester working with a legislative champion, researching,
presenting policy options; and then the second semester, they worked to introduce legislation,
testified before a Senate committee in the Virginia State Legislature,
(25:04):
organized a lobby day with leave behinds, advocated until the legislation was passed,
and met with the executive branch in Virginia, and the legislation was ultimately signed by
the governor. And I think one of the things from that experience was they were so engaged and so
excited because they were learning something substantively. They were actually practicing
(25:24):
the skills. It built their sense of efficacy, because they learned how to engage with the state
legislature. They learned the different hearing processes, and then it was bipartisan legislation
so they could see people working across the aisle and again, going back to the previous question
about reducing polarization, it became about solving a problem. They also learned that some
(25:47):
of the solutions are driven by what's politically feasible. Not all of their options were accepted,
but one was and so they actually got to learn the real world process, and the students were
incredibly enthusiastic. So I think part of it is, again, sort of seeing what else is out there,
seeing the amazing work that's being done by professors across the country, figuring out what
(26:09):
works in your context, and then providing those opportunities so that students can be engaged.
I think we've known for a long time that active learning pedagogies, regardless of discipline,
result in better learning outcomes for students, and so whether it is adapting something that a
reader finds in this volume, or whether it's looking at some of the introductory
(26:32):
and prefatory material where we, collectively as editors, talk about some of that existing research
on active learning. I think this volume, I think the research that undergirds it,
really suggests that one way to overcome that kind of apathy among students or that lack of
engagement is to really put them in charge of their own learning and to make them responsible
(26:56):
for getting something out of the activity. And so whether that's doing a simulation in the classroom
where they've got to take on leadership roles, whether that's doing the sort of advocacy work
that Rich talks about in his chapter, whether it's even doing an internship where, independently,
they're going down and working in a particular context, whether it's the General Assembly,
(27:19):
or whether it's an internship where they're taking water samples because they want to ultimately do
environmental science, anything that makes them responsible for their own learning,
for developing their own initiative, I think, is going to contribute to helping overcome the
problem that we're all seeing, which is a lack of student engagement. But I don't think we have to
(27:41):
reinvent the wheel. I think we've known for a long time that the kinds of pedagogical approaches that
these contributors have taken to the next level can be implemented across the board, regardless of
field of study, to engage student learners. So there's lots of great examples that you've
provided and got us really excited about thinking about civic engagement,
(28:03):
but we're definitely thinking about what's next. So we always wrap up by asking, what's next?
I'll say that for me, what's next around civic engagement is trying to grow, hopefully,
a program that I was able to get support from the provost for on our campus this year, which
was a civic lesson plan mini grant, so basically providing $250 travel grants as incentives to
(28:26):
faculty who were willing to put one class period’s worth of civic content into their classes. And so
I was able to draw in faculty from our human and computer interaction program, from chemistry,
from psychology, from a range of locations, math, and work with them on developing one lesson plan
(28:46):
around civics that would fit with the content they were already teaching. So for instance, a lesson
on puzzles this year in an introductory math course now talks about gerrymandering as a puzzle,
and a class on accessibility and human computer interaction actually looked at voting systems
from around the country and thinking about doing accessibility checking and assessment of voter
(29:09):
programs. And so I am really interested in trying to continue figuring out those conversations,
of really meeting other faculty where they are to help them think through what are the
civic questions that they're comfortable with that meet their kind of time and risk
tolerance and teaching style in order to help build more civic capacity on our campus.
We have a really short term “what's next,” because I am deep in the process of planning
(29:33):
my January term study travel course that goes to Japan, where from January 13 to the 28th I will
be in Japan with 22 students learning about how the Japanese government functions. That
is about as civically engaged and in the specific location as you can possibly get. But longer term,
(29:54):
institutionally, Randolph Macon does not have the optional Carnegie endorsement for civic
engagement. And so longer term, one of my goals for my administrative role is to move us toward
that classification. I think we're doing the work, but I don't think we have done enough to
demonstrate that yet in a sort of systematic way, and so my own personal goal is to see us obtain
(30:19):
that classification within the next few years. So I moved this year to be full time in the
nonprofit space, and then I'm teaching a course at UVA. I am really trying to focus right now
on thinking about the broader pro- democracy movement, and hoping to do additional work that
(30:39):
really links community-based organizations and national organizations that are engaged
with academic institutions and specifically with professors, so that there can be a better matching
between research needs and teaching needs, and sort of the broader movement in civil society.
Sounds like some really wonderful projects are underway.
Well, thank you for joining us. This is an issue that we're going to have to be facing for quite
(31:03):
a while now, because I don't think we're going to see a reduction in polarization and social media
and social networks. So it's an issue we all have to address. Thank you for putting this together
and providing this resource. Thank you for having us.
Yes, thank you. Thank you so much.
(31:26):
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other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Class discussions of public policy issues can be challenging in our politically polarized
environment. In this episode, we discuss a new resource that suggests a variety
of strategies that encourage students to address their differences and to engage
productively in civic engagement projects. Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching,
(00:27):
an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer......and features guests doing important research
and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
(00:55):
Our guests today are Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley. Allison is an Associate
Professor of American Politics and chair of the Department of Politics here at SUNY-Oswego. Lauren
is the inaugural James L. Miller Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost
and Dean of Academic Affairs at Randolf-Macon College. Carah is the Vice President of Election
(01:18):
Protection at Issue One and is a co-chair of the American Political Science Association’s Civic
Engagement section and a member of the APSA’s Civic Engagement Committee. Allison, Lauren, and
Carah are editors of Civic Pedagogies (01:30):
Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics,
which was recently released by Springer. Welcome Lauren and Carah, and welcome back, Allison. It's
been a while since you've been on the podcast. It has.
Today’s teas are:... Lauren, are you drinking some tea today?
I am. I have English breakfast tea. Always a good choice. How about you, Carah?
(01:53):
I am, actually I made my favorite Rishi’s tumeric and ginger tea.
I have continued my trend of rejecting tea and have this diet coke.
And although we're friends, Allison, I don't like the rejection of tea.
And I have a black raspberry green tea today.And I have, in holiday season,
I've got a candy cane tea. In my backpack I actually had two packages of
(02:18):
Christmas tea, but I got here too late to dig it out. We're approaching the holidays. This will be
released in January, but we're recording it right before the Christmas holiday. So we've invited you
here today to discuss your new book. Can you tell us a bit about the origin of this book project?
Yeah, I'm happy to describe the origin of this book project, because in some ways, it almost
(02:38):
didn't happen. Carah was invited to a meeting with the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan
at APSA back in, I think, fall of 22 (the American Political Science Association's annual meeting).
And they were inviting her to talk about a potential book project. And over lunch, before
the meeting, Carah said to me, “I have my hands full. I have a lot of things going on. Will you
(03:01):
come with me to just kind of hear their proposal, but ultimately help me say no?” And I said, “Sure,
I’m happy to do that. You have no obligation to say yes to another project. You are over-committed
as it is.” And then when we got there, we had a really wonderful conversation about the need for
scholarship and discussion of how to engage students in an era of divisive politics. And
(03:27):
toward the end of the conversation, I found myself enthusiastically embracing the idea of this book,
Carah was probably elbowing me in the side. I don't know. I was so overwhelmed by how much
potential I thought the project had, that instead of saying “no,” we found ourselves wrapping up
the meeting by saying, “Well, when do you need our proposal?” And so that's the sort of origin story
(03:47):
for this book, although then Carah followed up and brought Allison into the project as well.
I think the next day, I took Allison for a walk and said,
“Hey, I think you should join us in this.” Yeah, Lauren committed me to something that
she told me I should say no to. So guess who else is getting roped in?
Happy to be roped in. Can you talk a little bit about
how the contributors were selected for inclusion in the volume?
(04:10):
It's a pretty straightforward story, actually, we just put out an open call for proposals,
we circulated among the American Political Science Association’s Civic Engagement Section. We also
circulated it amongst the American Democracy Project at the American Association of State
Colleges and Universities. We were really looking to go beyond just political science,
(04:31):
although political scientists were primarily the contributors, but we were trying to get diverse
perspectives, diverse regions, diverse ranks in terms of tenure and promotion, as well as trying
to get some from backgrounds in student affairs as well. And then we also really encouraged
partnerships between professors and students. And I ended up co-authoring a chapter with a student
(04:54):
as well, Kylie Holzman, who is in her third year now at the University of Virginia.
The Bonneau and Fields chapter is also a co-authored faculty member, and I guess by
that point, former student contributed volume. But Jordan Fields was one of Chris Bonneau's
undergraduate students who was in law school at the time that they prepared their contribution.
So it was nice to see that. And we did have some practitioners who ended up being part
(05:19):
of the project. We tried to be inclusive. I think that was the main object of what we
were looking for. And then we also tried to work with proposers. So when people submitted proposals
that maybe weren't exactly on the mark or didn't exactly fit in with what we had envisioned,
we went back to them several times to try to, in an iterative way, make sure that what they were
(05:42):
offering to do would find a nice home. And I think in the end, we were successful with nearly all of
those, although some proposers ultimately decided not to continue in the process.
One of the challenges facing people in pretty much all disciplines today, which grows out of the
political polarization, is that we see divisions in terms of the understanding of reality between
(06:03):
our political parties, so that some people strongly believe in 17th and 18th century
economics and science, for example, and others perhaps may take into account what we've learned
over the last few centuries. But in a classroom when you have people with such different views of
reality, how do you address classroom discussions when people are coming in with very different
(06:24):
views of the reality in which we're living? So I think actually naming that as part
of the challenge of teaching civics is a key component. So rather than treating that as
something that we're kind of implicitly striving to overcome in our pedagogy, actually naming that
for students as sort of what the starting point is that in order to have a sort of civic space,
(06:47):
we have to be able to pull those differences out, and so part of it is actually making that
part of the pedagogy to work through. I think the other part of that strategy is actually
no longer, at least for me, being able to assume students are going to come in and I'm going to
throw out a prompt and we're going to have a conversation. It's that you actually have to
(07:08):
seed conversations in a much more intentional and thoughtful way in terms of the resources
that sort of pre-structure any kind of classroom conversation than we've had to do in the past.
Yeah, I will maybe not name it in quite as explicit ways as Allison described, but I do
tell my students that I am comfortable with them articulating whatever viewpoints they want to
(07:32):
articulate, and it's not my job to tell them that their opinions or their views are wrong, but it is
my job to correct for factual inaccuracies, and I think for me, establishing that my role is about
looking for objective facts. And I think that gives me a certain credibility with the students,
(07:53):
because they know that if I'm really pushing back it's because I've identified a factual error in
the position that they're taking, not because I disagree with the opinion that they're expressing,
and I think it's a different way of being explicit as you sort of structure those conversations,
but that has been what has worked for me. It allows the students to know that I'm not going
(08:14):
to call them out because I disagree with them, but that I will push back when they provide
information that is just factually inaccurate. There's a couple of ways I've approached it,
and my approach has also evolved over the years as times have changed. I
have been teaching at the higher ed level since 2008 and one of the things I started doing,
(08:36):
particularly after the 2016 election was to, at the start of each class, rather than me setting
out norms in a syllabus on the first week of class, we actually write the norms together,
and I pull suggestions from students in the room. I give ideas of what's worked in the past,
but we come to an agreement together about how we're going to approach the material,
(08:59):
with the spirit of inquiry and creativity, being willing to receive feedback, to be willing to
question things from other perspectives, and then also being open minded, but then let them
come up with norms of how they want the course to proceed, how they want the discussions to proceed,
and then we come to an agreement and vote on it and make sure that there is consensus about how
(09:20):
we'll proceed. And on many occasions, I've had times when the discussion goes off the rails,
when someone feels that one of the norms was violated, or perceives or receives information
in that context to have violated the norms, so we pull the norms back up and have an open
conversation about what happened. And then another thing is, and I name in the syllabus,
(09:43):
that I don't call myself the professor, I call myself the facilitator of the course. I see myself
as facilitating the learning, that trying to give them more agency in the process. And I think
that helps too. Sort of similar to what Lauren said, I'm presenting myself as sort of a neutral
arbiter, that I'm coming in, not trying to tell them what to learn, but rather, this is
(10:05):
an experience we're all going to do together.You started kind of hinting at some of these
things, but can you talk a little bit more about additional ways that faculty across disciplines
can build a climate in their classrooms where students feel comfortable sharing their views that
might not be popular with their classmates.So I will say readily, this is something
that I struggle with a lot with intro level classes. One of the things I have tried to do,
(10:29):
which I will outright say has failed, is in that kind of norm setting conversation, which I also do
at the start of the class, almost always someone will say, and a number of students will agree,
“One of the things I want to do is hear other people's opinions.” They will actively say that
that is something they want out of an introduction to American government and politics class. And so
(10:50):
I'll emphasize it like, “yes, that's such a great idea,” and we'll talk about why that’s
something that they want out of the classroom experience, and then four weeks later, no one has
raised a viewpoint that does not clearly fit the kind of normative conversation that we're having.
And so I'll kind of reference back to “You guys say that this is something you want. Why won't you
(11:11):
participate?” And what I've often then ended up reverting to is a lot of short writes, anonymous
short writes that students turn into me, and I then use that to essentially seed the conversation
without sharing names, so it provides a space… like they want it, and they are very hesitant
to actually, with their kind of face and name, raise the opinion, but they'll provide it and then
(11:35):
they'll have a conversation about it when those opinions are divorced from people. And so I don't
think that's that's the ideal situation. I'd still very much like to get them to the place where
they're willing to own the position that they have, but at least for a number of classes, that
has been a good middle ground strategy to get the ideas out, so that people know that their ideas
(11:56):
are being shared and they're hearing ideas that they want to hear, even if we can't quite get all
the way to ownership of the ideas in the room. So that anonymity helps make students feel more
comfortable sharing their views that they might not be willing
to do it otherwise. That makes sense. For me, I am at an institution where our
student body is pretty evenly split in terms of their partisan identification. And I can
(12:20):
say this with some authority, because Randolph Macon has been doing a mock election every four
years since 1968 so we can actually look back and see how our students say they would vote
if they were voting in the presidential election. And so we know our student body is almost evenly
divided between Republicans and Democrats, or at least in terms of their voting habits. And so I
(12:43):
actually use that as an entry point into talking to my introductory political science students,
my Intro to American government students. Part of why I think sometimes students are reluctant to
speak up is that they assume nobody in the room will agree with them. And I think when they hear
that there are more than likely half the people in the room that are going to share your perspective,
(13:05):
at least to some degree, I think that can be useful as far as breaking the ice or adding
to their comfort level. I think it also, for me, then serves as a good reminder,
if conversations start to get a little bit heated or slanted toward one perspective or the other,
to be able to say, remember, there are likely many people in this room that would disagree with you,
(13:27):
and then I can use that to say, “What would the opposing viewpoint look like?” And so, of course,
I think all of us who teach political science get really good at playing devil's advocate. We have
to. But the question that you asked, I think, was also broader. It was, what about kind of elsewhere
on our campuses, and for my administrative role on campus, I have a pretty helpful vantage point to
(13:50):
see kind of what happens in other departments and in other disciplines, and I think a lot of faculty
are really uncomfortable talking about political issues, and so when those kinds of questions
arise, they tend to freeze. Again, I'm thinking outside of Political Science primarily. And I
think one of the cases that this edited volume makes is that getting connected into the community
(14:18):
or forming civic habits doesn't necessarily mean being political in a partisan way. It
means identifying those ways in which whatever it is that you do, connects to your community,
and trying to get your students out into that community, doing those things, listening to
the community members, learning about how problems exist in a practical setting. And I've seen that,
(14:45):
for example, our Environmental Studies faculty do that all the time. They have real world clients
that they bring in for students. Our sociology students are out working with communities of color
or minority language communities in our area. And so other disciplines, other departments, can take
some of those habits of citizenship that get talked about extensively throughout this volume
(15:11):
and apply those without having to get political, which I think makes so many of the non-political
scientists I know really, really uncomfortable.I think one of the things, just to further
elaborate on what both Alison and Lauren said, is that context really matters, and
different things are going to work in different communities, in different populations of students.
(15:34):
But the important thing is that we are thinking about creating learning experiences that really
are focused on addressing public problems. And of course, we're going to have to define what
those public problems are, and there may be disagreements about how to address it,
but finding ways to work together and finding the means for different communities and populations
(15:57):
to actually contribute meaningfully to solving those problems. So I think one of the greatest
contributions in the book comes from Andrew Smith, who talks about working at a Hispanic
serving Institution in Texas and thinking about what the needs are for students in that context,
and many of the students, of whom are from different communities. And so really, starting
(16:18):
from the point of who are the students I'm working with, what are their needs? What are the
community's needs? And how can we work together in mutually reciprocal and beneficial ways, so that
we're not extracting from the community? We're not seen as “saving the community,” right? But we're
creating experiences where we can work together. And I think that's a really important element for
(16:40):
overcoming political polarization, because it's contributing to re-humanizing groups that we
might not particularly engage with on a regular basis, and it fundamentally is about solving
problems in an era where it's been challenging to do so because of the othering, because of
negative campaigning, because of all the things we know that has contributed to political
(17:03):
inequalities and economic inequalities.I think one of the things that sometimes
happens is a lack of trust between students and communities, faculty and communities, institutions
and communities, and all the different iterations of those different combinations of people,
and maybe also the data that informs some of those projects. Can you talk about how to build
(17:24):
trust amongst those groups and also maybe the data that's used on those projects?
So this is a major challenge, and this was something where, as we were preparing a proposal
to establish an institute for community-engaged research at the University of Virginia, which
is now the Equity Institute. This was one of the things where I spent a lot of time interviewing
(17:45):
members of the community in the surrounding area. And this was a problem that came up over and over
again about hearing that many researchers dive into communities, that they're extractive of
that knowledge. The communities don't ever know where that knowledge goes, so there's a lack
of ownership, and yet it's being used to create additional lines on CVs and to get grant funding,
(18:08):
and the benefits don't always necessarily go back to the communities from which we
got that knowledge. So I think there's a greater understanding of this, or a growing understanding
of this. I think we have a long way to go. One book I'd highly recommend is In the Shadow of the
Ivory Tower. That's a fantastic book that talks about many of the inequities between universities
(18:31):
and institutions of higher education and their communities. But I think there's really important
ways in which, as teachers, as professors, we can think about building lasting partnerships.
So when I'm doing the civic engagement course, I'm starting from a point of, where is the community
need that we can actually meaningfully contribute to? Does the community partner want us to work on
(18:55):
it? And is there something that we can do where the students are contributing that is beneficial
to the community, but then the students are also learning? And it's also really important for the
student learning experience, because it means that they're not just doing paperwork or doing
some organization’s social media like a typical internship would, but it is actually engaging in
meaningful ways. And then making sure that the community organization actually has a product,
(19:19):
has that knowledge that they can hold on to. And I think there's a lot of great work and
opportunities to do those kinds of courses. The challenge is they're not always rewarded
in the tenure and promotion line for people like me who want to teach courses like that,
and they're also super intensive for the professors and the community partners,
(19:40):
because it's really about building relationships and sustainable relationships. It's not going to
be just a one-and-done class. It's something that's going to carry on from year to year.
Several of the contributors to the volume actually talk about the importance of building trust. We
have contributions that involve advocacy work with an addiction recovery organization in
(20:06):
Maine. There's the Bonneau and Fields example. Again, they're doing prison education. So those
are cases where you have practitioners engaged with the folks from their local universities,
and they have to build a community of trust, because the issues that they're managing,
the personal characteristics of the people that they're serving, require
(20:29):
a certain degree of care, a certain degree of confidentiality. And so I think the volume and
many of its contributors really do emphasize the importance of that trust building, and it
requires, I think, the faculty member working very carefully with their students to make sure
the students understand the importance of what they're doing out in the community and how their
(20:49):
work will affect the people that they're working with. But I think that's a really important point,
that any kind of community-engaged work, whether it's research, whether it is engaged pedagogy,
all of that has to involve really being thoughtful and explicit about how you're building trust and
maintaining it, And Carah mentioned not exploiting a resource. Just kind of go in and then take what
(21:14):
you can from that organization. You have to be contributing something back to it, and ideally,
these are longer term partnerships, not just one-and-done kind of engagements, unless that's
what the community partner is looking for.You've been talking a bit about these various
types of civic engagement projects. Since the pandemic, a lot of faculty have been
complaining about students not being that engaged with class work. But might these
(21:38):
types of projects where students are actually doing something in the community, where they
see that they're making a difference, and they can see the intrinsic value of the work, does
that give students more of a sense of value in the work, giving them perhaps, a little bit more
intrinsic motivation for engaging in the work, and is that something, perhaps that should be
done in other disciplines a bit more as well? I think there's actually two ways of thinking
(22:02):
about the question that you asked that I think the book has chapters that give purchase on both.
I think one is to help students think about how some of the skills that I think we lost,
just as a people during the pandemic, are actually really necessary for democracy and
so being able to engage in conversation with one another, have those relationships with students in
the classroom (22:27):
why it matters that you come in and you make small talk with somebody for a little bit
before class starts, as opposed to just staring at your phone. One of the pieces that I really
love from this book from Strachan that talks about this idea of Madisonian virtue and the need for a
kind of civic friendship and relationship building that underlies democracy. And I think that that's
(22:50):
a little bit different than kind of an intrinsic motivation for doing work where you can see the
good happening, but it is about there are skills that come from being in community with people in
a classroom that in and of themselves have some good and that can kind of help students make
a difference. And I think in some ways, that's about faculty thinking about why it's worth it to
(23:12):
actually build that classroom community that then can set the stage for some of these bigger civic
engagement projects. So kind of thinking about, what are the skill sets that underlie student
engagement initially, and their value, and then kind of a set of chapters that really talk about
how getting students engaged, giving students something tangible that they're working on,
(23:36):
where they can both see that kind of intrinsic or internal and external efficacy, I think,
in the Political Science language. And for that, I would think about Meagher’s chapter on ENACTus,
which is a fantastic program that I would frankly love to try to figure out how to
get at SUNY Oswego, where students actually take part in significant advocacy and lobbying on a
(23:57):
piece of legislation at the state level. And so for students to think about being able to build
skills that are really kind of pushing forward on a specific issue area, where they can make
a difference and are really interacting with people who have the capacity to make certain
kinds of decisions. I think that those kinds of activities can be huge for student engagement.
(24:21):
I was so inspired by Rich Meagher’s chapter that I basically adapted it and taught a year-long course
last year at the University of Virginia, where the first semester of the course, the students
in the course viewed artificial intelligence as an up and coming challenge that Congress was not
(24:41):
making any progress on. Some states have done some work to address it in the policy arena. So anyway,
the students spent the whole first semester working with a legislative champion, researching,
presenting policy options; and then the second semester, they worked to introduce legislation,
testified before a Senate committee in the Virginia State Legislature,
(25:04):
organized a lobby day with leave behinds, advocated until the legislation was passed,
and met with the executive branch in Virginia, and the legislation was ultimately signed by
the governor. And I think one of the things from that experience was they were so engaged and so
excited because they were learning something substantively. They were actually practicing
(25:24):
the skills. It built their sense of efficacy, because they learned how to engage with the state
legislature. They learned the different hearing processes, and then it was bipartisan legislation
so they could see people working across the aisle and again, going back to the previous question
about reducing polarization, it became about solving a problem. They also learned that some
(25:47):
of the solutions are driven by what's politically feasible. Not all of their options were accepted,
but one was and so they actually got to learn the real world process, and the students were
incredibly enthusiastic. So I think part of it is, again, sort of seeing what else is out there,
seeing the amazing work that's being done by professors across the country, figuring out what
(26:09):
works in your context, and then providing those opportunities so that students can be engaged.
I think we've known for a long time that active learning pedagogies, regardless of discipline,
result in better learning outcomes for students, and so whether it is adapting something that a
reader finds in this volume, or whether it's looking at some of the introductory
(26:32):
and prefatory material where we, collectively as editors, talk about some of that existing research
on active learning. I think this volume, I think the research that undergirds it,
really suggests that one way to overcome that kind of apathy among students or that lack of
engagement is to really put them in charge of their own learning and to make them responsible
(26:56):
for getting something out of the activity. And so whether that's doing a simulation in the classroom
where they've got to take on leadership roles, whether that's doing the sort of advocacy work
that Rich talks about in his chapter, whether it's even doing an internship where, independently,
they're going down and working in a particular context, whether it's the General Assembly,
(27:19):
or whether it's an internship where they're taking water samples because they want to ultimately do
environmental science, anything that makes them responsible for their own learning,
for developing their own initiative, I think, is going to contribute to helping overcome the
problem that we're all seeing, which is a lack of student engagement. But I don't think we have to
(27:41):
reinvent the wheel. I think we've known for a long time that the kinds of pedagogical approaches that
these contributors have taken to the next level can be implemented across the board, regardless of
field of study, to engage student learners. So there's lots of great examples that you've
provided and got us really excited about thinking about civic engagement,
(28:03):
but we're definitely thinking about what's next. So we always wrap up by asking, what's next?
I'll say that for me, what's next around civic engagement is trying to grow, hopefully,
a program that I was able to get support from the provost for on our campus this year, which
was a civic lesson plan mini grant, so basically providing $250 travel grants as incentives to
(28:26):
faculty who were willing to put one class period’s worth of civic content into their classes. And so
I was able to draw in faculty from our human and computer interaction program, from chemistry,
from psychology, from a range of locations, math, and work with them on developing one lesson plan
(28:46):
around civics that would fit with the content they were already teaching. So for instance, a lesson
on puzzles this year in an introductory math course now talks about gerrymandering as a puzzle,
and a class on accessibility and human computer interaction actually looked at voting systems
from around the country and thinking about doing accessibility checking and assessment of voter
(29:09):
programs. And so I am really interested in trying to continue figuring out those conversations,
of really meeting other faculty where they are to help them think through what are the
civic questions that they're comfortable with that meet their kind of time and risk
tolerance and teaching style in order to help build more civic capacity on our campus.
We have a really short term “what's next,” because I am deep in the process of planning
(29:33):
my January term study travel course that goes to Japan, where from January 13 to the 28th I will
be in Japan with 22 students learning about how the Japanese government functions. That
is about as civically engaged and in the specific location as you can possibly get. But longer term,
(29:54):
institutionally, Randolph Macon does not have the optional Carnegie endorsement for civic
engagement. And so longer term, one of my goals for my administrative role is to move us toward
that classification. I think we're doing the work, but I don't think we have done enough to
demonstrate that yet in a sort of systematic way, and so my own personal goal is to see us obtain
(30:19):
that classification within the next few years. So I moved this year to be full time in the
nonprofit space, and then I'm teaching a course at UVA. I am really trying to focus right now
on thinking about the broader pro- democracy movement, and hoping to do additional work that
(30:39):
really links community-based organizations and national organizations that are engaged
with academic institutions and specifically with professors, so that there can be a better matching
between research needs and teaching needs, and sort of the broader movement in civil society.
Sounds like some really wonderful projects are underway.
Well, thank you for joining us. This is an issue that we're going to have to be facing for quite
(31:03):
a while now, because I don't think we're going to see a reduction in polarization and social media
and social networks. So it's an issue we all have to address. Thank you for putting this together
and providing this resource. Thank you for having us.
Yes, thank you. Thank you so much.
(31:26):
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other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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