An Active Approach to Teaching the Political Economy of Development

The scene is familiar. The student to your left is expounding upon an esoteric interpretation of Marxist theory. The student on your right looks confused and then, after getting enough courage, says, "I'm sorry, maybe I'm the only ignorant one in here but, what really is socialist development?" Another student, near the back of the room, keeps nodding off, struggling to stay awake. Because of the diversity in student backgrounds, discussions of the political economy of development in a classroom setting can be unsatisfying. Some students, familiar with the writings of classical political economists, tend to dominate the discussion; others feel shrouded in ignorance and, hence, reluctant to participate. The two of us teach an interdisciplinary course, offered for both social science and humanities credits, which focuses on how the United States influences developing countries. We have found it crucial that students become familiar with the meaning of development, as viewed from different perspectives, prior to discussing the history and motivations of U.S. foreign policy. We have employed an "active learning" teaching methodology in our course and find it effective in keeping students interested.' The course was organized into three segments, each of which focuses on a theory of development. Students were assigned readings from a book by James Weaver and Kenneth Jameson; we began with the orthodox/classical view, moved to the growth-with-equity paradigm, and ended with dependency theory and the radical political economy perspective. These were three sequenced, separate exercises, as identified in the comprehensive schedule in the appendix. We divided our method of approaching each segment into four distinct phases-exposure, discussion, performance, and reflection. During the exposure phase, a lecture format was used. For example, while presenting the orthodox/ classical view, we introduced basic concepts such as capital accumulation, government enforcement of contracts, savings rates, and the philosophical bases of private property. We consider the exposure phase necessary for the sake of comprehensive coverage. However, it should be kept to a minimum, and other approaches should also be employed, as we recommend in the discussion phase, as a hedge against some students' feeling overwhelmed, disinterested, or intimidated because a number of their colleagues have more background in the subject. We should note that, besides limiting the duration of the early lecture/ questions/comments exposure phase, we broadened the students' useable knowledge and experience base with humanities readings prior to this development theory, social science module. This provided tangible hooks for students to hang theoretical information. The discussion phase converted asymmetrical knowledge of political economy into a learning advantage. Less knowledgeable students learned from those more familiar with the theory but also questioned doctrinaire assumptions. To add energy to their discussion, we broke the students into small groups with an assignment to motivate them to pursue the theory with missionary zeal. We surprised them with this announcement: