Abstract Book of the 8th World Conference on Social Sciences Studies
Year: 2025
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Subduing Politicized Classrooms: Teaching and Learning Strategies in Political Science
Sokol Lleshi
ABSTRACT:
This paper addresses politicized classrooms in the political science discipline in settings characterized by affective polarization and lack of a well-established research community of political science scholars such as in post-communist Albania and Myanmar after the limited political transition prior to the February 2021 military coup. I reflect on the teaching experience as lecturer of political science at Mandalay University in Myanmar as a visiting scholar of a CEU Global Fellowship Program in November- December 2016, and as a full-time lecturer at the European University of Tirana, in Albania, from 2016-2018, and the University of New York Tirana from 2018 and on. I encountered classroom politicization, which was a hindrance to rational in-class discussions, critical thinking and individual self-reflection. The aim of this paper is to highlight an overlooked structural feature of the societal and political context, namely, politicization and ideological affinities under conditions of political change, that affects the teaching and learning practice based on critical thinking. The key argument of the paper is that to circumvent ideologized settings in the classroom, one could successfully employ and combine historical method with empirical case-study method of teaching and learning by exposing and familiarizing the students with political processes and outcomes taking place at a different culture, political system, and society. Using abstract level concepts of the political science discipline and relying on case-studies from other regions and countries limited partisanship, prejudices and politicized understandings of political and social dynamics and transformations.
Keywords: Critical Thinking; Casestudy-study Method; Rational Debates; Pedagogical Tools; Postauthoritarian-authoritarian Societies