Teaching Theory: Lessons from a Ranciere-ian Approach

Date

2024-08-30

Author

Birler, Reşide Ömür

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Teaching Theory: Lessons from a Ranciere-ian ApproachJacques Ranciere is a contemporary French philosopher who is mostly known for his studies in the field of political and social theory. This study, however, takes its premises from the intersection of the two fields: theory and pedagogy. Even though the research question is related to the field of social theory, the question itself originated from the classroom experiences. As a professor of political and social theory, I have been attending to students’ experiences in theory seminars and classes. Varying from too abstract to impenetrable, very sophisticated to puzzle-like, students expressed their encounter with the content of theory always with a difficulty. While such observations carry an indisputable element of truth, the problem seems to lie more with the classroom experience than the teaching material itself. In other words, the question is not the theory per se, but how to teach it. Taking this formulation as the basic research question, this study has two main inquiries: is a Rancierian approach to teaching theory (one that takes the equality of the minds as its fundamental premise) possible and if so what would it entail? To that aim this study attempts to uncover the difference in the learning experience of senior students from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in METU when a different teaching and evaluation method is used in the classroom. The sample is composed of 47 senior students who were enrolled with the ADM 4150 Modernity and the Idea of Freedom, an advanced level theory class, over the past five years.

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https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111749

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Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Conference / Seminar