Description
Amid the proliferation of technological innovations such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) that are changing how students learn and a global political arena characterized by upheaval, crisis, and conflict, there is increasing impetus to reconsider how we teach international politics. The mainstream of the field – especially in North America – remains dominated by positivist research and pedagogy, with its focus on value-free knowledge and the separation of the researcher from their object of study. Accordingly, many international politics courses seek to introduce students to various paradigms, themes, and topics from an ostensibly objective perspective. However, in the present era, where much of what has been taken for granted as settled knowledge in the field is constantly being challenged, and the stakes of international politics feel immense, if not life-or-death, this pedagogical approach is neither well equipped to explain the present moment nor best placed to face the future.
To speak to this, drawing on critical perspectives in IR, which emphasize the importance of context and positionality, I designed two simulation-based introductory global politics courses in my first year as an Assistant professor of Politics at Acadia University. In contrast to the types of simulations often used in the field of International Relations, where students are placed in positions of power (such as delegates in Model United Nations panels), students in these classes occupied roles with varying degrees of power, from leaders of postcolonial states negotiating with the IMF to forcefully displaced families crossing borders. Highlighting specific simulations that engendered animated discussions, the paper draws out the advantages of this pedagogical approach, contending that simulations can be effective in helping the next generation of global politics students grasp the weight of their research and scholarship, by placing them as participants in global politics, rather than positioning them as neutral observers.
