Communicating Politics: Using Active Learning to Demonstrate the Value of the Discipline

In the context of higher tuition fees, the Government’s employability agenda and growing concern for defined career development strategies among young people, there is a need more effectively for Politics programmes to foster the capacity to communicate politics. Without communicating the implications and relevance of politics the subject and the skills derived from studying within Politics the discipline, Politics departments may face recruitment difficulties that those in, for example, the natural sciences, vocational subjects or the ascendant Business Management, may not. This article examines pedagogical means of promoting the capacity to communicate politics as part of an overall programme which integrates outreach, widening participation, recruitment, undergraduate study and employability activities. I focus, in particular, on applying salient approaches prominent within the Politics pedagogical literature to the development of the curriculum of a third year undergraduate module in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University: PPR389: Communicating Politics. I suggest that incorporating active learning and innovative teaching and assessment methods provides opportunities for meeting both student recruitment and employability agendas in Politics and beyond.