Teaching science and values in political science using computer-assisted instruction

TY - JOUR

T1 - Teaching science and values in political science using computer-assisted instruction

AU - Urken, Arnold B.

N1 - Funding Information: This article describes “A Political Science Mathematical Library,” a project designed to allow undergraduates to appreciate the use of deductive models in resolving disagreements about objectives. The aim of the project was to develop flexible teaching materials that take account of students’ intellectual strengths and weaknesses, motivation, and schedules. Development was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Local Course Improvement (LOCI) Program for Undergraduate Science Education. * This program supported activities to upgrade the scientific content and presentation of concepts in undergraduate courses, particularly at smaller institutions. Funding Information: This article is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SER. 7900151. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reJect the views of the National Science Foundation. The author would like to thank anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Funding Information: 2. National Science Foundation. 1979. Program announcement: Local Course Improvement For Undergraduate Science Education. Washington, D.C. 3. This perspective is developed in William H. Riker’s Liberalism against populism, W. H. Freeman, 1981. 4. Several students have pursued independent research studies related to this project. One student who took a course on the French Revolution investigated the probabilistic concept of competence that underlies the theorem developed in the module on the electoral college. Another student used project software to study the problem of jury design and developed his work into a senior project that has been edited for publication in a professional journal. 5. Peirce, Neal R. 1968. The people’s president. Simon and Schuster. 6. Under the “district” and “proportional” systems, electoral votes would be allocated on a proportional basis. The difference is that the former plan’s unit of collective choice is the congressional district, while the latter proposal’s locus of decision making is the state. 7. Peirce, The people’s president. 8. Longley, Lawrence D., and Braun, Alan G. Thepolitics oj electoral college rt$orm. 2d ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. 9. Cf., Urken, Arnold B. 1979. Voting competence as a political and administrative issue. Unpublished manuscript. These tests were not prohibited on the basis of the argument that all voters are equally competent to make choice or satisfy some minimum criterion of competence for making such decisions. Instead the tests were outlawed because they were administered unfairly. 10. See Baker, Keith M. 1975. Condorcet: From natural philosophy to social mathematics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The utilitarian framework that underlies the concepts of power and winning is now a “normal paradigm” for many social scientists. See also Kuhn, Thomas. 1968. The structure of scientifiG revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 11. Kenneth Arrow “rediscovered” this problem and developed it in his classic Social choice and individual values, Yale University Press, 1963. 12. Baker, Condorcet. There is a growing literature on the implications of the jury theorem. For example, see Bernard Grofman. 1977. Judgmental competence of individuals and groups in a dichotomous choice situation. Journal of Mathernotical Sociology. 13. Marxist and fascist theorists agree that people are too incompetent to make liberal institutions work, but disagree about the perfectability of humanity and governance structures. See Urken, Marhzts for votes. 14. For a survey of the possibile uses of computers in undergraduate education, see Licklider, J. C. R. 1979. Impact of information technology on education in science and technology. Technology in Science Education. National Science Foundation. 15. For a description of an earlier problem-oriented approach to political science developed without substantial support, see Urken, A. B. 1977. Teaching social choice to students of science and engineering. Teaching Political Science, 5( 1). 16. Mathematical analysis is stressed in the UMAP (Undergraduate Modules in Applied Mathematics Project) series developed by the Educational Development Center under a grant from NSF. The importance of values and problem definition is emphasized in the LAPSS (Learning and Analysis in Political and Social Science) modules created by the American Political Science Association under NSF sponsorship. In the latter series, see the author’s Markets for votes. 17. Other modules developed as part of the project include computerized computation of voting power in complex weighted voting bodies and simulation of voting behavior in different voting systems.

PY - 1986

Y1 - 1986

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84952412449&partnerID=8YFLogxK

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U2 - 10.1080/00922013.1986.9942396

DO - 10.1080/00922013.1986.9942396

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84952412449

SN - 0092-2013

VL - 13

SP - 124

EP - 127

JO - Teaching Political Science

JF - Teaching Political Science

IS - 3

ER -