APSA Teaching and Learning Conference: A Summary of Four Tracks

Extract

Combining the presentations on diversity and global perspectives turned out to be very productive. We discovered a natural affinity between the conference's goal of creating a collaborative teaching and learning environment that bridges the cosmopolitan and local knowledge teachers and students bring together in the classroom and the substance of what we wanted students to learn about diversity within and among countries in a period of accelerating globalization. While the contexts and stakes could not be more different, the challenges of combining a professor's “cosmopolitan knowledge” with students' “local knowledge” are theoretically analogous to the political challenges of honoring the local knowledge that grows out of our diversity while simultaneously nurturing a more shared, cosmopolitan knowledge that can connect us in mutually acceptable ways. Put differently, when it comes to understanding the politics of diversity and globalization, the classroom can be used both as an example and as an application of political theory. Working within this broad theme, we discussed a variety of very specific ideas to promote collaborative and active learning about diversity and world politics.