Students or Employees?

The question of whether those undertaking placement are employees or should be treated as employees was raised in a paper at the recent Political Studies Association Conference. The paper 'Masters on the Hill – The employment contract of internships' by Mary McLaughlin of Queen’s University Belfast, examines the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission bursary programme run by the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s and the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission. You might not each the same conclusion as the author, but it is a well argueld paper.

Placement Learning in Politics

The Higher Education Academy and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) are running a one day workshop entitled New Developments in Placement Learning in Politics on 27 June 2012. The event will be held at SHU and aims to open up the discussion around the experiences of setting up politics placements and to share in areas of good practice. An anticipated output from the event is the development of an on-line support network, hosted by SHU, which offers a network of contacts and examples of good practice that can be used by colleagues across the country interested in learning more about the setting up and running of effective politics placement opportunities. Click here for further details.

Wilson Review recommends more internships

That "every full‐time undergraduate student should have the opportunity to experience a structured, university‐approved undergraduate internship during their period of study" is one of the recommendations of the newly published Wilson Review on Business–University Collaboration. Examples of how such learning can be structured for politics students can be found on the placements page of IPED and in the book The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics edited by Steven Curtis and Alasdair Blair.

Journal articles on placements and experiential learning

IPED – the International Political Education Database – is a new online bibliographic resource that lists peer-review journal articles relating to teaching, learning and assessment in politics, international relations, public administration and related fields. It includes a sub-section relating to ‘Service learning, Placement Learning and Internships’ and another to ‘experiential learning’, both of which should be of interest to readers of this blog.

Citizenship and Politics

The latest issue of the Journal of Political Science Education (JPSE) is a special issue on Youth, citizenship and Political Science Education. Many of the articles raise issues that relate to experiential and work-based learning in the context of politics - but will also be of interest to others in the social sciences.

Well Worth Reading

Those looking for case examples and conceptual discussions of experiential practice orientated learning in politics should look at a recent edited collection by Steven Curtis and Alasdair Blair. Their book The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: Placement Learning, Citizenship and Employability is published at C-SAP and is can be accessed in e-format for free. It includes sixteen papers exploring practice at a range of higher education institutions and includes some papers written by students, reflecting on their experiences of placement learning.