Teaching U.S. politics in comparative perspective.

Abstract

Introduction to American Politics classes would benefit from the use of examples from non-U.S. countries. These examples provide a contrast to the U.S. material, and create a learning environment in which students more thoroughly consider, and therefore better retain, the information. Research outlining the benefits of using cognitive conflict tasks is outlined, and specific examples applicable to American Government classes are offered.

Introduction

In this article, I argue that teachers of Introduction to American Politics courses can usefully integrate material from non-U.S, countries in order to more effectively present the American material to students. This approach encourages students to compare the governmental choices made in the U.S. to other alternatives, and to evaluate and consider the implications of those choices. By having alternative viewpoints presented to them, students are given a "cognitive conflict" task, rather than a simpler "intellective" task. Cognitive conflict tasks have been found by cognitive psychologists to encourage higher level thinking, and to lead to more effective learning on the part of students.

There are few responsibilities more universal in political science than teaching Introduction to American Government. It is a course commonly required of majors, though sometimes the class is a university requirement, or even a requirement as a matter of state law.[1] Indeed, many college-educated people have an Introduction to American Government class as their only contact with political science. Others take the course and are inspired to major in the field, and may even transition to making a career out of the discipline. Given the role that Introduction to American Government courses play, it makes sense to pay attention to how we teach the subject. In accordance with how important Introduction to American Government is, researchers have spent a significant amount of time studying ways to improve it. These studies include assessments of how the use of multimedia presentations affects student learning (Jordan and Sanchez, 1994), and the implications of using online discussion groups for student participation (Pollock and Wilson, 2002; Pollock, Hamann and Wilson 2005). This attention is understandable, since teaching the course well or poorly can have implications from the very narrow (how many majors are recruited into the discipline) to the very broad (how much large numbers of college educated citizens know about government).

Teaching and Learning

Fortunately, educational psychologists have some suggestions about the effects variation in teaching techniques can have on student learning. Though some argue that there is "little variation between teachers in terms of their impact on pupils' progress" (Long 2000, p. 7), other researchers find that teachers vary a great deal in their effectiveness (Wayne and Youngs 2003). In particular, they find that teachers are capable, as Wenglinsky (2000) argues, of promoting higher level thinking in their students. In an extensive study of teacher effectiveness at the college level, Bain (2004) finds that the most effective teachers "often want students to do something that human beings don't do very well: build new mental models of reality" (p. 27). Stimulating students to formulate new understandings of how reality works, rather than simply feeding them information with the expectation that they will remember that information, is the difference between "higher level" and "surface" learning. Bain finds that effective teachers place students in situations where their existing models do not work, and then force those students to grapple with the new information.

This approach to effective teaching is consistent with how cognitive psychologists have come to regard effective learning. People are much more likely to retain information when that information is placed in a useful and interesting context that allows students to relate the information to things that they regard as important (Bransford and Johnson 1972, Symons and Johnson 1997). Wickelgren (1977) concludes: "The time you spend thinking about material you are reading and relating it to previously stored material is about the most useful thing you can do in learning any new subject matter" (p. 346).[2] When integrating and evaluating new material students do learn facts, but they learn how those facts fit in with their need to reconstruct their understanding of an issue.

Cognitive Conflict and Teaching

In traditional teaching, we typically ask students to learn information and test their knowledge with fact-based recall questions on tests. In the language of cognitive psychology, we give our students "intellective" tasks--tasks that have correct, verifiable answers (Laughlin 1980, McGrath 1984). The problem with intellective tasks, from a learning perspective, is that the tasks lack conflict and therefore the ability to prompt students to elaborate or reflect on the implications of what they are learning (Myers et al. 1987). Because of the lack of elaboration and reflection on the part of students, the ability of students to retain the information is lessened (Duffy et al. 1990). A more effective approach to improving students' understanding of material is to place them in situations where the questions that they are asked to consider do not have simple, correct answers. By confronting "cognitive conflict" tasks, students are asked to resolve different viewpoints and come to a reasoned conclusion. The conflict requires more effort on the part of the student to internalize the information, as the student must relate it to their own priorities, values, risk acceptance levels, etc. By resolving the conflicts that arise in their minds, what they have learned is more thoroughly considered, and therefore more resistant to memory decay (Zwann et al. 1995, Springer and Borthick, Forthcoming).

Using Comparative Examples in American Government

How can we integrate this approach into our Introduction to American Politics courses? Often, the way we teach Introduction to American Politics does little to encourage this kind of thinking. Textbook chapters are ordered by topic, and tests reward students for remembering informational details like that fact that amending the constitution requires a two-thirds vote of support in both houses of Congress, rather than a simple majority

or three-quarters vote. In order to get students to wrestle with the material, it would be useful to compare the institutions and politics that exist in American government to some competing alternative.

Fortunately, we have access to a large body of work that can challenge students to reevaluate their understanding of government and politics, and to place American government and politics in comparison with other alternatives. By using examples from comparative politics, students can see not only how government in the United States works, they can see how it could work--that is, they can see how other democratic countries have made choices about governing that differ from those choices made in the United States. By integrating institutions and processes from other nations into our presentation of the institutions and processes in the United States, students can be presented the opportunity to challenge or justify the way things work in the U.S.

And in doing so, the information we ask them to learn becomes an active part of their efforts to decide if the U.S. has made the right decision in having, for example, a Senate, geographically based representation, or a process for amending the Constitution. One easily accessible way to make use of a non-U.S, example to highlight the U.S. information is to teach the parliamentary system alongside the teaching of Congress. In showing how many democratic legislatures concentrate power, enforce party discipline, and contain the executive power, students can be challenged to think about whether or not Congress is a better or worse system than an alternative. Compelling arguments for the parliamentary system include a relative lack of gridlock in the legislature and clearer lines of responsibility when it comes to assigning credit or blame for policy. It is one thing to ask students to understand that party discipline is relatively weak in the U.S. Congress, it is another to ask them to weigh the costs and benefits of changing to a parliamentary system. A student who is defending or criticizing the rules and norms of the U.S. Congress is marshalling facts in the interest of advancing an argument, and is engaging in the kind of deeper knowledge than would be the case if what he or she was learning was a series of facts about the government.

Another possibility for incorporating a non-U.S, example is when we teach elections. In addition to teaching about how elections are held in the U.S., a teacher could present an outline of how some countries use non-geographic proportional representation systems in electing members to their national legislatures. When students are asked to compare the two approaches to elections, they have the opportunity to make decisions about the importance of constituent-representative links, coalition governments, and what representative bodies should represent. The facts about the U.S. are not important to the student in isolation, but become important when they think about what a representative body should look like, and how the U.S. system of elections conforms to or challenges those preferences.

There are benefits to integrating non-U.S, examples into the teaching of Introduction to American Government that go beyond how students learn. It can help departments to participate in "internationalization" initiatives of the curriculum being advanced by many Universities. It also may draw greater class participation from international students who find that they have little to contribute to a conventional American Government class. A final benefit of integrating comparative examples into our Introduction to American Government classes is that it brings more of the things we care about to the classroom. We did not become political scientists to march through descriptions of interest groups and public opinion. We were drawn to the unanswered questions and controversies in political science. When a lecture on the Presidency grows into a lecture on how the President stacks up against other more and less powerful executives, students can discuss the probable consequences of reforming or changing the office, and we open up the issues that political scientists debate. This is especially true for those in comparative fields who find themselves teaching American Government as part of their department responsibilities. But for all political scientists, comparison is the key to learning more about how politics and government works. If nothing else, it should make us more interested in the material we teach, and teacher enthusiasm is not just good for teachers, it is associated with student success (Cruickshank, Jenkins, and Metcalf, 2003).

Conclusion

Introduction to American Government is important as both a common gateway course to our discipline and as the only class on government that many people ever take. Given the role the class plays, making the information in it compelling is a worthwhile goal. Research on teaching and learning suggests that instructors place students in a situation where they evaluate and reconcile competing information--where they engage in cognitive conflict tasks. A readily accessible and useful way to accomplish this is to confront students with alternative sets of preferences for how democracies can work. By using examples from comparative politics, and asking students to consider those examples as worthy alternatives to American political institutions and processes, teachers can provide students with a more effective learning environment that is often more enjoyable for the instructor as well.

References

Bain, Ken. 2004. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Bransford, J.D. and M.K. Johnson. 1972. "Contextual Prerequisites for Understanding: Some Investigations of Comprehension and Recall." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11: 717-726.

Cruickshank, Donald R., Deborah Jenkins, and Kim K. Metcalf. 2003. The Act of Teaching. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Duffy, S. A., M. Shinjo, and J. L. Myers. 1990. "The Effect of Encoding Task on Memory for Sentence Pairs Varying in Causal Relatedness." Journal of Memory and Language 29: 27-42.

Ebbinghaus, H. 1885. Uber das Gedachtnis. Leipzig: Duncker and Humbolt. Cited in Klatzky (1980), Human Memory: Structures and Processes. San Francisco: Freeman.

Jordan, Donald L., and Peter M. Sanchez. 1994. "Traditional Versus Technology-Aided Instruction: The Effects of Visual Stimulus in the Classroom." PS: Political Science and Politics 27 (1): 64-67.

Laughlin, P. R. 1980. "Social Combination Processes of Cooperative, Problem-Solving Groups as Verbal Intellective Tasks." In Progress in Social Psychology, edited by M. Fishbein. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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McGrath, Joseph Edward. 1984. Groups: Interaction and Performance. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Myers, J. L., M. Shinjo, and S. A. Duffy. 1987. "Degrees of Causal Relatedness and Memory." Journal of Memory and Language 26: 453465.

Pollock, Philip H., and Bruce M. Wilson. 2002. "Evaluating the Impact of Internet Teaching: Preliminary Evidence from American National Government Classes." PS: Political Science and Politics, 35 (3): 561-566.

Pollock, Philip H., Kerstin Hamann, and Bruce M. Wilson. 2005. "Teaching and Learning Online: Assessing the Effects of Gender Context on Active Learning." Journal of Political Science Education, 1 (1): 1-16.

Springer, Carol W., and A. Faye Borthick. Forthcoming. "Improving Performance in Accounting: Evidence for Insisting on Cognitive Conflict Tasks." Issues in Accounting Education.

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Wenglinsky, Harold. 2000. "How Teaching Matters: Bringing the Classroom Back Into Discussions of Teacher Quality." A Policy Information Center Report from the Educational Testing Service Report. Report is available at www.ets.org/research/pic/teamat.pdf.

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Endnotes

[1] Texas, for example, requires: "Every college and university receiving state support or state aid from public funds shall give a course of instruction in government or political science which includes consideration of the Constitution of the United States (Texas Education Code, Subchapter F, Section 51.301 (a)).

[2] This insight is not new. It was advanced as early as 1885 by Ebbinghaus who, based on primitive experiments, concluded that learning material without meaningful context required ten times the effort of learning meaningful material

Richard N. Engstrom, Georgia State University 

Engstrom, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Political Science.