The Future of Education

Many students in my undergraduate American Politics courses struggle to see policy issues as complex. Too often they get stuck making surface-level observations or jumping straight to personal opinions, falling far short of critical thinking. This problem is not limited to the study of policy and politics, nor is it unique to teaching and learning in higher education. My presentation introduces and demonstrates an active learning exercise—situational mapping—designed to provoke students to recognize and think critically about the complexities of issues such as healthcare, immigration, and guns. An example of what James M. Lang calls “small teaching” (2016), this simple exercise can have an outsized impact on learning and has broad value across disciplines and education levels.
Situational mapping is a grounded theory research technique, developed by Adele Clarke, which  involves deep immersion in the “complications, messiness, and denseness of actual situations” (2003, 556). Adapted into a teaching and learning exercise, the goals of mapping in the classroom are (1) to help students “see” policy issues (and the social world, more broadly) as messy, (2) to encourage them to “wallow in complexity” rather than oversimplify, and (3) to provoke them to think through complexities before forming conclusions. The exercise actively engages every student, is simple to prepare and implement, can be completed during a one-hour class, and is flexible in its application. It also involves teamwork, informal presentations, moving around the classroom, and some fun with colored markers.

Keywords: Mapping; critical thinking; active learning; situational analysis; recognizing complexity; learning exercise;

References:
[1] Clarke, Adele E. 2003. “Situational Analyses: Grounded Theory Mapping After the Postmodern Turn.” Symbolic Interaction 26 (November): 553-76.
[2] Lang, James M. 2016. Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.