An Argument for Integrative Learning Within Political Science: Rethinking an Undergraduate Course in European Government and Politics

An Argument for Integrative Learning Within Political Science: Rethinking an Undergraduate Course in European Government and Politics

By Brian Mello, Muhlenberg College

Many of the problems that define the political world are the kinds of complex and changing problems that require scholars, students, and voters to approach them with humility and from a variety of perspectives. At its heart, the skills to approach complex problems from different perspectives is what the focus on integrative learning in higher education is designed to develop. And it is precisely such skills that ought to define the continuing relevance of higher education for addressing both the needs of twenty-first century careers and the dispositions essential for reinvigorating democratic citizenship.
This article provides an overview of my approach to rethinking my lower-level undergraduate course on European government and politics in ways that foreground the goals of integrative learning. For me, the question of Muslim immigration to Europe represented the kind of complex problem ideal for integrative analysis, relating as it does to the rise of the far right; cultural political fights over dress, architecture, and even food; and the reshaping of the project of European integration. Consequently, I redesigned my introductory European government and politics course based on the principles and practices of integrative learning in ways that combined political science with work from sociology, anthropology, religion studies, and the analysis of film and literature. This essay develops a narrative that explores the content of this course, and the course assignments, which include the use of analytical writing assignments, as well as the development of an in-class simulation based on Brexit. While I make the case that such a rethinking of European government courses is valuable in and of itself—for example, I argue that by foregrounding the Muslim immigrant experience in Europe we can help our students challenge Orientalist thinking about Islam and explore the limits of European Liberalism in practice—the main goal of the article is to suggest this course as a model for revising other introductory political science courses to foreground the goals of integrative learning.
Overall, I suggest that rethinking single undergraduate political science courses based on the principles of integrative learning will better reflect current research in the field, and position the discipline well for addressing the increasingly difficult higher ed. environment.

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The Journal of Political Science Education is an intellectually rigorous, path-breaking, agenda-setting journal that publishes the highest quality scholarship on teaching and pedagogical issues in political science. The journal aims to represent the full range of questions, issues and approaches regarding political science education, including teaching-related issues, methods and techniques, learning/teaching activities and devices, educational assessment in political science, graduate education, and curriculum development.