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What Are the Formal Learning Goals of the Politics Major?
Aristotle wrote that politics is both the most comprehensive and most ennobling
of
disciplines. It is the most comprehensive because it contemplates with the basic
questions of power, conflict, and structure that underlie all human experience;
it is the most ennobling because it points us toward the highest ends of human
life, including equality, freedom and justice.
In practice, politics is the art and the rough-and tumble of diverse persons
attempting to live together in civil society. In a world characterized by
uncertainty,
scarcity, conflict and power relationships, politics enables us to make
collective choices by debate and negotiation rather than brute force.
As an academic discipline, politics is equally challenging and provocative. It
demands that we grapple with fundamental questions: How are we to act as
citizens? How do our public institutions, and those in other countries, actually
function? What values inform, or should inform, public policies? What forces
motivate or impede change?
At Pomona, the Politics Department is organized around four subfields: Political
Theory, American Politics, Comparative Politics, and International Relations. We
encourage our students to take a pluralistic approach to their studies, to take
courses in each subfield, and to look at politics from a variety of angles,
methods, and perspectives. In addition, we strongly encourage in-depth
exploration in at least one area of the field of politics.
Upon graduating from the department our students should have attained: a
college-level understanding of the rudiments of American government; a
respectable understanding of the politics of at least one country/region outside
the United States; a working familiarity with various social science
methodologies common to the field of political science, including political
theory and some quantitative methods; writing and speaking skills worthy of
graduates of a premier liberal arts college.
These goals have been defined by the department as a whole, through past
practice and through specific department retreats where we have considered our
curriculum in its entirety and complementarities, the latest of which took place
in the spring of 2008, thanks to a generous curriculum development grant from
the College.
Formally, these learning goals are embodied in the requirements of the degree.
These are:
- Eight general courses, including one course from each of the four
subfields and no more than four introductory courses;
- A senior seminar in “Contemporary Politics and Theory” or in “Comparative
and International Politics;”
- A senior oral examination, based on a list of books supplied by the
student and covering three topics chosen by the student, taken in the senior
year (on which more below).
In addition, students desiring greater depth in a particular area of politics
may elect to take a Subfield Specialization, which is a coherent collection of
five courses, comprising three of the nine required courses and two additional
ones, in one of the four subfields. Students are also eligible to write a
two-semester senior thesis.
These requirements guarantee that students obtain exposure in all four
subfields. By requiring a certain number of introductory classes, the department
highlights the need for foundational knowledge in order for majors to more fully
benefit from more advanced classes. While many advanced classes do not require
the intro classes as prerequisites, Politics majors will have taken them and
will develop a fuller, more coherent and vertically integrated knowledge of
political systems and theory.
How Are Learning Goals Communicated to Politics Majors?
While some Politics faculty might explicitly write on their syllabi the learning
goals of their courses, this is not a universal practice in the Department, and
the Department does not impose any such requirement to its faculty. To a large
extent, we do not typically write narrowly-defined learning goals because the
material may not lend itself to it or it is so obvious as to not be necessary or
so broad as to be impractical. For example, in a class on the “Politics of Latin
America,” students can expect to learn about the government, politics, parties,
institutions, foreign policy and social movements of Latin American countries.
For such a class (as many other ones in the Department), listing detailed
learning goals, country by country, would add very little insight for the
students while significantly distracting the instructor from the actual task of
instructing. In most cases, a cursory look at the syllabus will fully reveal to
the student the scope and objectives of the course.
In other instances, the questions dealt with by the discipline are so broad and
complex, and human knowledge so limited, that mere humility requires us not to
present the students with unreasonable learning goals. In the course on
“Political Economy of Development,” for example, students are warned against
unreasonable expectations:
Why are some countries rich and some poor? The short answer is: we do not know.
… in this class, …we focus on the political, social and institutional
determinants of development, addressing mostly recent theories and empirical
work, and reviewing older theories to the extent that they inform current
knowledge. We still do not end up answering the question of what explains the
distribution of wealth and poverty around the world, but I think we get closer.
Similarly, in the course “US Foreign Policy,” the syllabus announces that “This
course will focus mainly on the U.S. attempt to define its global role and
interests in the post Cold War era, and the Bush 43 administration’s stated
intention of redefining the scope and direction of the American role in a
changing world.”
In other cases, some very course objectives will be defined more as modes of
thought than skills or objectives per se, such as “thinking politically,
thinking holistically, thinking developmentally,” etc.
The broad and humanly central questions addressed by politics—and thus, in a
more pedestrian way, the “learning objectives” of the discipline—are explained
to out students on the Politics web site, which partially reads:
As one of the ancient disciplines, politics is about how people grapple with
fundamental questions of freedom, order, and equality, about the nature of
justice, and about legitimacy, community, individualism. Politics asks such
questions as: How are we to act as citizens? How do our public institutions, and
those in other countries, function? What is the nature and practice of
citizenship? What values inform, or should inform, public policies? How does
political change occur? Since the study of politics is characterized by
disciplinary fragmentation, political scientists employ a variety of
perspectives and methods in their work. Much of this disciplinary variety is
available at Pomona College, where politics may be addressed through the study
of values, institutions, processes, or behavior, and where literary and
historical methods coexist with quantitative approaches
The web site and catalogs then inform the students of the formal requirements
of the degree. Numerous Department meetings and consultations over the years,
often in conjunction with new recruitments or department retreats, have ensured
that the class offerings of the department contribute to exposing the students
to the above-mentioned variety of the field and the complexity of the questions
it asks. Because Politics is not a professional or vocations field, students
cannot be informed of any more specific learning goals.
Nevertheless, advisement and a required meeting with the Department chair
upon declaring the major guarantees that the students understand the nature of
the major and the education they can gain from it. In addition, no later than at
the beginning of their senior year (when it is required—it is optional before
that), students are notified of the procedures of the senior oral examination,
the major’s capstone exercise.
Despite all this, it must be stressed that students can have diverse learning
goals upon entering the major. Politics, the quintessential liberal arts major,
can accommodate a wide variety of educational goals.
How Does the Politics Department Assess whether its Learning
Goals Have Been Achieved?
What are the instruments the Politics Department uses to measure that our
learning goals have been achieved? To a large extent, grading of student
performance in classes is a well established and robust measure of learning
outcomes. We would not allocate so much time assigning (and grading!) term
papers, homework, mid-term and final exams, if we did not think they allowed us
to measure the extent of learning taking place in our classes. In this respect,
- Exposure in all four subfields is assessed by reviewing students’
transcripts to confirm that they have taken the necessary classes. Students
are in constant dialogue with their advisors in the Department and are thus
encouraged to expose themselves to the four subfields early on.
- Similarly, exposure to more advanced mid-level and upper-division courses
in the major, as well as the required comparative politics and international
relations courses, is measured by performance in the appropriate courses.
In addition to course-specific knowledge, the Politics Department has an
original assessment tool of the student’s progress and learning as a Politics
major over the four-year. The Politics Department requires majors to pass a
senior oral examination. The exam is based on a list of twelve books of the
student’s choice. Students divide the books into three groups, each of which
corresponds to its own theme, but there should be some overarching rationale
behind the entire list. For each book, the student writes a one-page summary.
The whole list is preceded by a one-page statement explaining the integrity and
purpose of the list. Under each topic, the student lists four books (or
significant articles, historical documents, or legal cases). The topics
demonstrate depth and breadth and must be approved and signed by a department
faculty member before being submitted. Such approval follows discussions and
intellectual exchange between faculty and the students, which provide both an
additional opportunity for intellectual growth for the students and a tool of
assessment of the student’s maturity as a Politics major for the faculty. The
exam is a chance for the student to show what she has thought about and learned
as a Politics major. Each exam lasts between 45 minutes and one hour and is
conducted by two members of the Politics faculty. At the close of the exam, the
examiners will have a short conference in which they assess the quality of the
student’s performance (more on which below) and decide to award one of four
marks: High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, or No Pass.
What is the faculty assessment of the orals based on? There is no single answer.
Since every book list is unique, the student in effect sets the terms of the
discussion, and thus the dynamics of every exam are different. But here are a
few things faculty members ask themselves in evaluating an examination:
- How challenging – broad-ranging, integrative, rigorous, and detailed – are
the books on the list? Do the texts represent a variety of perspectives on an
issue or are they all selected because they conform with the student’s view?
- How engaged is the student with the issues and texts on the list? Is the
student in command of the texts and the issues they raise? Can he/she move
beyond a set of “book reports” to some more general view of the topic?
- Can the student show a thorough understanding of the texts and present
his/her own interpretation or critique? Is the student thoughtful about these
texts? Can he/she create a conversation among them?
- Can the student respond to questions and think on his/her feet? Is the
student able to respond to counterarguments to his/her positions?
Our orals requirement forces students to take individual ownership of a
particular area of politics, and the requirements and the formal advising system
for that exercise (advising clinics, sponsor discussions, list submissions,
written overview, sign-off signature) hold students accountable to this end.
Our means of assessment are (1) the discussion between the examiners at the
conclusion of the exam, (2) the subsequent discussion with the student, and (3)
the subsequent discussion in the department to take stock of the exercise as a
whole and make adjustments. We should also note that the exam is an exit
interview, since we ask students at the end how the major worked for them.
Methods are also an important part of the Politics curriculum. Yet, as diverse
as the discipline is in terms of focus, it also embodies a wide variety of
research methods which largely contribute to its intellectual wealth. The
college General Education requirements mandate that students take a course in
statistical methods. As a result, the Politics department does not require
Politics 90 (Statistics for Politics and International Relations) of its majors.
About half of our graduates take that course to fulfill that requirement,
however. But, in general, many, if not most of our courses embed quantitative
and other methods as part and parcel of their course materials. As a result, our
students are not only exposed to content but also to the multiple methodologies
of the social sciences. Knowledge in methods is assessed by performance in the
quantitative class of the student’s choice, as well as through reading,
correcting and editing of their papers and theses. Moreover, our senior seminar
requirement, coupled with our mandatory senior orals exercise, ensures that our
students will receive ample formal opportunities for developing their speaking
skills.
In short, our requirements tightly reflect and reinforce our goals—so the
success rate among graduating seniors with passing grades in all classes has to
be 100%. Any and every graduate must fulfill all of the basic requirements. We
now have in place formal options for more concentrated and rigorous subfield
exploration, and we will try to track future changes in the overall major as
those changes are grandfathered into our curriculum.
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