Description
Teaching international affairs, particularly topics like civil war and peacebuilding, involves navigating sensitive and complex political landscapes. This paper focuses on using Lego as an innovative pedagogical tool to teach these challenging subjects. The paper uses Object-Based learning to explain the principles and methodology behind using Lego, and its applicability to teaching civil war and peacebuilding. Despite extensive pedagogical research on the advantages of object-based teaching, Lego has not been systematically employed in the political science and IR classroom. The paper will present case studies from our own classroom experiences to show that using Lego provides cheap, quick and effective approaches for hands-on engagement; critical discussions; and including students come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
