Disruption as Control in International Relations Classroom

Abstract

Most college professors are control freaks. The desire for control urges us toward the predictable, and in most ways, the “easy” method of classroom instruction. The thought of losing control of your classroom is a fear-inducing sensation that should be avoided at all costs. In addition, it is highly likely that the modal reaction from an instructor when grappling with a class session gone bad is to revert to a more predictable, even more controlled, form of instruction. And for many, that will mean lecturing even more. But pedagogical reactions that urge us toward imposing more rigid classroom control have serious (and in my view, negative) implications for the types of learning that can take place in the contemporary international relations classroom. By contrast, I argue that we should react to bad classroom experiences by deceptively losing even more overt control in the classroom and covertly asserting control by upending the ways students interact with the material under study. In other words, we need to disrupt the order that students usually expect (and seem to crave) for something that is at times much less comfortable for student and teacher. Disruption will produce better learning outcomes for your students, even if those outcomes may not be easily measurable in a traditional, fact-focused assessment way.