In recent years, social entrepreneurs in the third sector have played an increasingly important role in addressing societal problems. Despite their growing presence in civic society, little is known about how social entrepreneurs obtain the necessary skills, knowledge, and motivation to take on this role. This exploratory study empirically addresses this gap through 27 in-depth case studies of social entrepreneurial leaders of third-sector initiatives in Brazil. Findings show that the social entrepreneurs relied on a convergence of experiences including: direct experience with inequality, interaction with target populations, volunteer work, religious institutions, social activism, formal education, professional experience, reading, and intercultural interactions. The study also presents a nuanced understanding of how the interplay among life experiences and learning processes informed these third-sector leaders. Results are relevant to scholars and practitioners committed to fostering social entrepreneurship in the third sector.

This article investigates the combined effect of experiential and reflective learning on student learning in international politics. It proceeds from the premise that students need a more realistic view of decision-makers so as to understand the logic and context of foreign policy-making better. A board game was used to model the foreign policy decision-making environment, and written and oral reflections were utilised to link students’ personal experience to abstract concepts of foreign policy analysis. Using a quasi-experimental design, both qualitative and quantitative data were used to test the hypotheses about students’ altered views of decision-making and their interest in and learning about foreign policy analysis. Results show that, in comparison with the impact of traditional lecturing combined with discussions, the benefits of experiential and reflective learning are very small. The little support for the existence of such benefits that was uncovered comes from qualitative data and a few statistical measures based on student self-evaluation. Quantitative analyses based on objective measures provided little evidence for a difference between the two teaching approaches. The article concludes with a call for improving the effectiveness and evaluation of reflective learning methods and putting the theories of reflective learning into practice more profitably in international relations.

Nonprofit education and management programs often recognize the efficacy of including experiential learning opportunities such as study abroad in their curricula. In addition, higher education institutions increasingly prioritize global citizenship as a learning outcome. However, challenges abound for educators who want to evaluate study abroad courses that expect students to acquire or deepen their levels of global citizenship. This study seeks to evaluate the impact of a short-course study abroad program on students’ global citizenship orientation. Our qualitative findings suggest that students indeed grapple with the notion of global citizenship in various ways while immersed in such a course. They can also express conflicting views, further confounding scholarly understanding of how to best measure global citizenship. We discuss implications for students expressing more of an observational role than an inclination to act on global issues.

This article reports on a starter exercise that trains beginner interview skills without overloading a course with a single project. The exercise is a response to three developments: first, interviewing skills are undertaught in most political science programmes; second, productive elements of online teaching ought to be integrated in campus-based courses; and, third, experiential learning is possible in virtual spaces. Students are exposed to interviews as a methodology through a lower pressure experience. Replacing two classes, students take part in a series of short, student-led but instructor-organised structured group interviews with practitioners. Students then progress to develop their own independent interviewing skills, including identifying informants, in later courses. Survey data collected from students suggest that applying course concepts was one of the top learning outcomes. Surveys and focus groups also illustrate that the exercise made students see an issue differently and they intend to continue learning about the subject armed with new information. This teaching format is practical for a wide range of themes in political science where experts can be interviewed and students will leave such courses with a question-oriented analytical approach, better equipped to interpret answers, and ready to more extensively engage with interviews in their lives.

The articles presented in this symposium explore approaches to political science education that involve students in experiential learning through placements, service learning and community engagement projects. This introduction identifies key themes emerging from the articles and situates these within the wider context of debates on politics, teaching and learning.

This article presents an interactive theatre tool that aims to facilitate a nuanced, holistic exploration of different topics in political science. Its approach builds on insights drawn from the work of four playwrights who provide fascinating, in-depth examinations of social and political topics: Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, and Augusto Boal. Two features that distinguish the method I present here from other techniques are student ownership and interaction with the audience. At a time when political science is increasingly criticised for becoming overspecialised, irrelevant, and unstimulating, this paper offers a promising and flexible tool that can help synthesise ideas from thriving but often ingrown areas of political science research, contextualise them, and examine their practical relevance.

Civic engagement has long been understood as a transformative activity, conducive to the reformation of individual interests, beliefs, and preconceptions. Prior research suggests that such transformation occurs when individuals encounter and process novel and challenging experiences through the course of their work. Yet, as the literature on experiential learning shows, the lessons of such experiences are neither obvious nor self-evident. The challenges experienced through civic engagement do not necessarily lead individuals to change their perspectives on, or understandings of, the world. Rather, these experiences may serve to reify prior beliefs. This article seeks to explain how groups of civic participants collectively experience and interpret their civic encounters. It argues that collective sensemaking and the variety of alternative perspectives available within the group play an important role in determining whether novel information provokes inquiry and search for new understandings or if such information is assimilated into well-worn perspectives. I illustrate this argument through a case study of a mobile soup kitchen. I find that, even though volunteers regularly encounter potentially transformative experiences, their collective processing of these events helps to reinforce prior convictions rather than provoke new understandings.

This article examines how the political science department of a small, regional university (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) has tried to develop activities that will help internationalise the student body and the campus. The article examines, in an attempt to prepare and internationalise students, the departments’ short-term study abroad opportunities. In particular, the article evaluates one course as a case study and proposes a new method aimed at trying to assess its efficacy. In doing so, this article will review the literature on the impact of study abroad, focusing on short-term study (or faculty-led) experiences and discuss the pedagogical motivations of such courses. Finally, the article will propose, and preliminarily test, a new method of assessing short-term study about courses. The conclusion of this article speculates on the final results and details the substantial barriers to replication and augmentation of these programmes.

Organising an academic conference is an experience that many social science scholars will undertake during their careers. There is however a lack of a developed academic literature that provides some guidelines. This article draws on the experiences of the authors in organising an international interdisciplinary conference at the University of Huddersfield in June 2008. It provides five key lessons that might assist colleagues within the profession in their organising of future conferences.

Teaching death, spirituality, and palliative care equips students with critical skills and perspectives for holistic patient care. This interdisciplinary approach fosters empathy, resilience, and personal growth while enhancing competence in end-of-life care. Using experiential methods like simulations and real patient interactions, educators bridge theory and practice. Integrating theological insights and inclusive-pluralism encourages meaningful dialogue, preparing students to address patients’ physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. This holistic pedagogy not only improves patient outcomes but also promotes collaboration and compassion in healthcare.

Safety villages are interventions that aim to boost children's knowledge and behaviour regarding risk-taking behaviours and their consequences via an experiential learning approach. In safety villages, children experience scenarios involving risks that resemble real-life situations. We investigated the extent to which desirable learning outcomes from a single-session safety village visit are visible outside the safety village context. In a well-powered quasi-experimental preregistered field study, we compared students (aged 11–13) who received experiential safety education to a control group of students who had not yet received the education on three important learning outcomes: Knowledge-application, risk-taking behaviour and general risk-taking tendencies. Data were collected outside of the safety village environment, before or after the visit, and without explicit reminders of the visit. Results show students who received experiential safety education outperformed those who did not yet receive experiential education on knowledge-application and reduced risk-taking behaviours. We found no differences on general risk-taking tendencies. These results show a single visit to a safety village visit can reduce risk-taking of risks that were experienced in the village, but not general risk-taking tendencies. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

This article presents an adaptation of the recent e-portfolio learning strategy, named Χαρτοφυλάκιον in ancient Greek and Scrinium in Latin, which significantly enhances the learning and assessment of classical languages in a philosophical academic setting. Developed at the University of La Sabana, this approach synergises constructivist and experiential learning theories to actively involve students in their educational journey, encouraging deeper engagement with the acquisition of ancient Greek and Latin. The e-portfolio encompasses a comprehensive spectrum of student work, from translations and grammatical exercises to philosophical reflections and cultural analyses, all while integrating the creative element of ancient artistic inspiration. The assessment of this didactic strategy employs a custom e-rubric, designed to evaluate organisational skills, independent study, engagement with primary sources, artistic integration, and coherent philosophically reflective insights. Feedback garnered from an anonymous student survey indicates that the e-portfolio not only substantiates students’ intellectual growth but also significantly enriches the learning experience, as evidenced by increased student interest and critical inquiry. The results affirm the e-portfolio’s role in fostering a holistic and interactive learning environment that promotes the students’ autonomy and critical thinking. This research contributes to pedagogical discourse by providing a model for applying reflective, project-based learning frameworks to classical studies. This paper is a product of the project Proteus I: Development of Virtual Environments for Experiential Learning in the Humanities.

Experiential learning opportunities are recognized to help students put classroom discussions into practice, build new peer networks, and challenge their own preconceptions about the roles of global structures and systems to advance health and wellbeing. After a pandemic-related hiatus, the University of Southern California Institute on Inequalities in Global Health returned to Geneva, Switzerland with students for two weeks at the time of the 2024 World Health Assembly to learn and engage with how global health governance plays out on an international stage. We brought eleven passionate and engaged USC Master’s in Public Health (MPH) students whose interests covered a range of issues, including child and maternal nutrition, sexual and reproductive health and rights in conflict settings, mental health, and noncommunicable diseases, among many other topics. We spent two weeks meeting with inter-governmental organizations, international advocacy organizations, United Nations agencies, and joint funded programs, and our students built their own event schedule during the World Health Assembly to cover the health topics they were most interested in pursuing. Our aim was to have students engage with the complex interplay of health, law, and rights, and to see in real time how research and education inform policy, on local, national and global levels. As instructors and coordinators, we are convinced that the role of experiential learning has never been more important or influential. Multilateralism is under attack, and rights regressions are rampant. We found that fostering honest, content driven conversations with our organizational partners, and then having intense follow-up with our students, resulted in new perspectives– personally and professionally – which is likely to serve the work of the students in global health for the years to come. When the distance between classroom readings and the actual people steering global health can be bridged, university courses that center experiential learning offer the opportunity for emerging health leaders to truly understand the structures and systems in place, and better imagine their own roles in the fight for the right to health.

This column describes the history, mission, and work of Saint Louis University School of Law’s service-learning course Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Grassroots Advocacy. Grassroots Advocacy allows law students to work with advocacy organizations on state and federal health policy initiatives, engaging in legislative and administrative advocacy and public education. The course uses community collaboration, community-led advocacy, and collaborative learning to train the next generation of health policy advocates for Missouri and the nation.