The benefits of open educational practices that invite students to collaborate and interactively create knowledge are well known. Despite this, it remains underutilized for teaching in research methods classrooms. This article presents a framework for using open pedagogy in undergraduate research methods courses. Drawing upon the knowledge authors…

Since the establishment of the "Journal of Political Science Education" (JPSE) in 2004, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become more rigorous and data-based, thanks in large part to the efforts of editors, peer-reviewers, and submitters to the journal. Where does the field go from here? I argue that our greatest strengths lie…

Some in our discipline have recently voiced the opinion that political science is a data science. What follows from this argument is that we as instructors are training the next generation of data scientists, especially professionals and researchers who will work with big data. This paper explores the implications for political science education,…

Although research methodology is a staple and essential requirement of many undergraduate political science programmes worldwide, there are still many intense and ongoing debates among teachers and students on the series of effective learning and teaching approaches and strategies for this subject matter that involve theoretical understanding,…

Despite the relevance of qualitative methods in political science, the process of teaching qualitative research has received relatively little attention in the literature. What is it like to teach qualitative research in political science? This article focuses on the teaching of qualitative research by exploring examples from Brazil. The country…

Much of the literature on research-oriented teaching relies on the impressions of instructors who have experimented with such practices. Often authors are enthusiastic. This article shifts the focus to assess student satisfaction with such methods. We hypothesize that a student preference for research-based learning in Political Science would grow…

Because the research methods course is critical in helping students to better understand political outcomes, one would expect the subject to be of great interest to political science majors. Evidence suggests, however, that undergraduates often approach the methods class with substantial fear and generally avoid or postpone taking the class. Using…

In recent years, scholar-educators have examined a variety of new approaches for teaching research in political science. Many of these inquiries begin with the observation that research activities cause some students to experience trepidation and aversion. The result is often poor performance in courses which assign research. In this project, I…

Participatory action research (PAR) investigates issues through collaboration and cooperation between academics and nonacademic community members. Recently, awareness of such approaches has increased as the need for transformative research and contribution to social goods has become clear. However, participatory methods have been deployed unevenly…

This paper discusses the design, facilitation and outcomes of a pilot embedded librarian initiative that transpired in a research methods course in a political science program. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact and affordances of embedding a librarian in an undergraduate methods course. This study explored how embedding a…

This article offers two novel tools for teaching political science methodology and research design. The first is a comprehensive framework for helping students conceptualize a research project in political science. The second is a reformulation of the dominant conceptualization of process-tracing tests. Building on Collier's use of Sherlock Holmes…

Client-Focused Research (CFR) offers an approach to teaching research methods that brings classes into a professional environment by working directly with nonprofit or public sector clients. Students work with clients to define the scope of the research project, design the research methodology, create data collection instruments, gather and…

This article discusses the current situation of research methodology training for international relations (IR) graduate students in China. Since the country's opening up, research methods training in IR has gradually advanced in universities. We administered a survey to postgraduate IR students in China about their training in research…

The statistical computing and graphics software R, despite its many advantages, is sometimes considered too complex to be introduced to undergraduate political science majors. In this article I showed that when taught appropriately, R could be a valuable and well-received aspect of an introductory research methods course. It is important to teach…

Learning-by-doing presents an opportunity for political science departments to instruct undergraduate students in social science research methods. Conducting these trainings as short-term, high impact programs have the potential to make research and research methods accessible and appealing to students. Building these opportunities around major…