Comparative Reasoning in the Undergraduate Classroom

One of the greatest challenges we face as political scientists is to teach undergraduates how to think comparatively. This article proposes a number of practical, easily adaptable exercises that many of us can incorporate in our teaching to turn curious undergraduates into smart social scientists who think comparatively about the world. of the most exciting and distinctive features of political science is the use of comparative logic to understand and explain the social world. Indeed, our discipline would not exist without the explicit and implicit use of comparison. Yet, one of the greatest challenges we face as political scientists is to teach undergraduates how to think comparatively. If you have ever offered students the choice of selecting their own research topics, you will have noticed that they frequently opt to write detailed descriptions of a single election, a single revolution, a single war, and so on. This is not because students are lazy, but because of our own shortcomings in the classroom to convey why and how to compare. So we optimistically refer to their papers as "single-case studies" when in reality it is painfully obvious that students rarely understand what a "case" is. This article proposes seven in-class exercises that instructors can easily incorporate into their teaching to turn curious undergraduates into smart social scientists who think comparatively about the world. The exercises encourage students to explain complex political events, understand what a case is, construct creative comparisons, and reason using conditions and counterf actuals. While they are no panacea for the uneven methods training that undergraduates receive in political science programs (Thies and Hogan 2005), the exercises endow students with the building blocks of comparative reasoning. Our aim here is not to show students the mechanics of the comparative method. Instead, we have two other goals: First, to drive home the general lesson that comparative logic underwrites every aspect of our lives, from everyday transactions to the organization of knowledge in myriad fields.1 Second, to prod students to ask pointed questions and develop smart answers using comparative reasoning. Using these exercises should not require restructuring of wellcrafted syllabi. Whether you teach an introductory survey course in comparative politics, international relations, or American polGeorge Gavrilis is assistant prof essor of international relations in the department of government at the University of TexasAustin, and he is the author of The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Gavrilis can be reached at gavrilis@austin. utexas.edu. Mona El-Ghobashy is assistant professor in the department of political science at Barnard College, and a 2009 Carnegie Scholar. El-Ghobashy can be reached at melghobashy@barnard.edu. itics, and regardless of whether you adopt a country-based or theme-based approach on your syllabus,2 the exercises can be easily incorporated into lecture and/or discussion sections. At the end of the artic e, we suggest a number of options for evaluating students on these exercises. Our sole warning is that effectively channeling in-class student participation can be much more difficult than straight lecturing. As seasoned teachers know, when called to participate, students may fall silent or raise extraneous ssues. The unpredictability of student behavior can add some color to th classroom, and channeling it is beneficial both for the instructor and the students. Our own and others' experiences in the classroom (O'Leary 2002, 92) indicate that in-class exercises help to e liven the ab tract concepts of our discipline, demystify complex real-world events, and engage both students and professors in the relevance of political science (Beavers 2005, 770). EXERCISES FOR THE CLASSROOM 1. Warm-Up Exercises. Use a preparatory warm-up exercise in the first two weeks of class to build students' skills of observation and description. Before they can analyze and compare, students first have to understand what is going on. Powner (2006) proposes an innovative classroom activity that walks students through the process of describing and measuring the unobservable concepts that constitute social science research. In peer groups, students describe and theorize about the identity of an oddly shaped object concealed in a small fabric bag without touching it. This exercise allows the instructor to convey both the difficulty and importance of measuring common political science concepts such as anarchy, culture, and federalismconcepts that we can only identify indirectly through their observable implications (Powner 2006, 521) .3 Additionally, we suggest the following exercise. To drive home the point that trained observation is the building block of social science, distribute and discuss the famous extract from the Sherlock Holmes story The Sign of Four (Doyle 2001). In the story, the shrewd detective infers a startlingly accurate portrait of an owner of a watch simply from close examination of the object. Cuts on the watchcase suggest a careless owner who kept the watch in the same pocket with hard objects (coins and keys), and thousands of scratches all over the winding keyhole suggest the unsteady hands of a drunkard. When Watson is incredulous, Holmes patiently explains, "What seems strange to you is only so because you do (10^10.1017/81049096509990199 PS • October 2009 753 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.17 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:09:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Teacher: Comparative Reasoning in the Undergraduate Classroom not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large inferences may depend" (2001, 11). The story can be used to jump-start a discussion about how his foolproof deductions may be better framed as hypotheses to explain real-world political events. Follow this up with a second step that allows students to record their own precise observations. Screen a short, un-narrated fiveto seven-minute video of a protest, parliamentary or congressional debate, courtroom scene, or your favorite political phenomenon.4 Showing hews photographs on a projector serves the same purpose. Ask students to spend five minutes writing a description of what they saw as clearly and precisely as possible, as if they were forensic experts in a lab peering at slides under a microscope. Then call on volunteers to read out their observations. Two things happen when students are aware that they are learning the art of observation. First, in trying to describe what they see, they naturally segue into hypothesis generation to explain what they're observing; and second, they stumble upon political science concepts and models without knowing it, which you can make explicit.5 2. How to Ask Critical Questions. This exercise tackles a crucial skill that is most difficult to teach: how to ask effective questions. Belanger (2004) rightly notes that when students finish a course, it is more important that they remember how to ask the right questions than to recall specific substantive details. Asking questions is a powerful form of reasoning, and what, why, and why not questions in particular are "three mental prods to inventiveness" (Howard and Barton 1986, 73). Prepare a straightforward empirical lecture of no more than 20 minutes on a relevant topic in your subfield. We have used turning points in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, narratives stringing together major events leading up to the Iranian revolution of 1979, and events leading to World War I, to name just a few. To accompany the lecture, distribute a one-page handout containing a chronology or key facts to aid student retention. Before delving into the lecture, tell students that they ought to jot down basic why questions as they listen to your narrative. At the end of your lecture, call on volunteers to read out their questions for discussion. In the lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one student was intrigued by the events that led up to the 1987 Intifada and asked: why did the Intifada happen in that year but not in the early 1980s when social conditions seemed more conducive? Another student came back in the next session with a perceptive research question: why has the occupation of Tibet not earned China the level of international opprobrium that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has elicited? This exercise shows students that why is "the principal interrogative of science" (Shepsle and Bonchek 1997, 7). In practicing the formulation of their own why questions, students may also be inspired to compose more interesting research papers.