New challenges and opportunities are emerging to support young people to learn about socio-ecological risk. While experiences with risk are a daily occurrence, a new phase of history defined by global environmental change will transform lives in complex ways. All young people need to be provided with the knowledge and skills to critique the failings of modernity and learn to manage risk. For that reason, environmental pedagogies need to be balanced with critical understandings of risk across different societies. Forest research in Australia, Nepal and Switzerland highlights that understanding local perceptions of value and risk generates vital knowledge to inform conceptions of sustainable forest management, while providing critical knowledge and processes to support active learning. There are opportunities to guide education systems to help people develop understandings of how beautiful, biodiverse, forested landscapes can be managed sustainably within local socio-cultural contexts. Educators can utilise constructivist pedagogies to identify the values and risks of forests with walks, rides, explorations, monitoring, and analysis of different conceptions of sustainable management. In such a manner, learning about socio-ecological risk develops knowledge and skills, but also supports young people to become advocates and actors for positive change in the forest and beyond.

Textbooks continue to serve as essential central repositories of knowledge for postgraduate education in paediatric cardiology, despite the widespread availability of digital learning tools. Recent studies confirm that trainees still value textbooks for their structure, depth, and accessibility, while also requesting improved pedagogy and organisation. In preparing the 5th edition of Anderson’s Pediatric Cardiology, our editorial team implemented several deliberate educational innovations. These included (1) re-focusing towards our target audience, the congenital cardiac trainee and practicing congenital cardiologist; (2) adoption of a consistent lesion-based framework, termed the “red line,” linking anatomy, physiology, and clinical features; (3) expansion of concise visual elements such as tables, figures, algorithms, and flowcharts; and (4) incorporation of clear learning objectives throughout. These modifications were informed by feedback from trainees, educators, and practicing providers, balancing the desires and needs of the modern learner, and firmly grounded in principles of cognitive and educational science. This paper outlines the rationale, design, and pedagogical implications of these innovations within the broader context of modern medical education.

This article argues that weekly “tiny research assignments” in introductory health law courses promote active learning and deepen student engagement. These focused exercises also build foundational research and communication skills by replacing passive lecture with concise, student-driven investigation tied to each week’s topic.

The paper examines the challenges of teaching about the impact of nuclear weapons on international relations to students who were born after the Cold War and suggests a variety of pedagogical approaches for helping them understand this impact including readings, media, and simulations. We first discuss the value of a multi-methods approach to teaching about nuclear weapons and then discuss resources for these different approaches. For readings, we identify key writing framed as debates that have worked with undergraduates like Waltz and Sagan as well as key articles and literature reviews and historical literature about the actual use of nuclear weapons during World War II. We then discuss different multimedia such as movies and music. Finally, we discuss in class simulations with a focus on Nuclear Diplomacy, providing some examples of student reaction to playing these simulations.

This article reflects on the challenges that social and political disengagement pose within the university environment, and offers an alternative pedagogical solution centred on praxis. To retain the functional role of education for the reproduction of democracy, the article contends that the challenges posed by mass education, the corporatisation of university life and the alienating impact of neoliberal discourse mean that the solution to engagement and participation within university, and beyond, lies in teaching activism.

There is now a rich pedagogical literature that attests to the absolute centrality of assessment and feedback in effective student learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. And yet – despite this consensus in the pedagogical literature over the crucial importance of assessment and feedback – they are not, it seems, fulfilling their purpose or potential for students or lecturers alike. This symposium starts from the premise that assessment and feedback matter, that they are not working at present and that we need to find ways to do them differently. The symposium brings together five original articles from contributors who all want to explore alternative ways of thinking about, and doing, assessment and/or feedback so that they work better both for our students and for us as their lecturers.

A key learning outcome for undergraduate linguistics courses is for students to learn to reason scientifically about language. This article presents the findings from a think-aloud study of undergraduates in an introductory linguistics course who were in the process of learning linguistic reasoning about phonology. I describe the students’ developing concepts and make recommendations for instructors to help students develop fully formed linguistics concepts and the ability to think scientifically about language.

This study proposes a design for and examines the effects of a PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING approach to the promotion and assessment of deep learning in undergraduate linguistics education. Specifically, it reports on how the higher-order learning outcomes are achieved by students through a semester-long problem-solving task in an introductory Spanish linguistics course. Specific teaching strategies are described, and achievement is measured by student grades, self-evaluations, and reflections. This approach has proven effective for stimulating such higher-order thinking skills as (i) applying knowledge of the material to solving linguistic problems, (ii) developing skills in research and critical analysis, and (iii) developing a professional work ethic.

One of the most important challenges facing Political Science Faculty is the way in which the curriculum engages with, and responds to, the populist tide that has spread across a significant number of countries in recent decades. Over recent years there has been an increased level of research activity that has sought to explain the factors for the rise in populism. Yet less attention has been focused on the way in which the political science curriculum could, or should, respond to this change. This article provides an introductory landscape that sets out these challenges and identifies the contextual background for the three articles which comprise this symposium.

Constructed languages (purposefully invented languages like Esperanto and Klingon) have long captured the human imagination. They can also be used as pedagogical tools in the linguistics classroom to enhance how certain aspects of linguistics are taught and to broaden the appeal of linguistics as a field. In this article, I discuss the history and nature of constructed languages and describe various ways I have successfully brought them into use in the classroom. I conclude from the results of my courses that linguists should take a closer look at how they might benefit from similarly enlisting this often criticized hobby into more mainstream use in the linguistics classroom.

This article argues that democracy is on life support in the United States. Throughout the social order, the forces of predatory capitalism are on the march—dismantling the welfare state, corrupting politics with outside money, defunding higher education, expanding the corporate-surveillance-military state, widening inequalities in wealth and income, and waging a war on low income and poor minorities. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish—from higher education to health care centers—there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values, and the common good. This article argues that given this current crisis, educators, artists, intellectuals, youth, and workers need a new political and pedagogical language centered around the notion of radical democracy in order to address the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence of resources—financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological—to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control.

Increasingly, simulation-based teaching and learning is finding a place within politics and international relations (IR) programmes. The majority of literature on this style of teaching and learning has positioned it as both an aid to content delivery and as a response to the many challenges facing contemporary higher education. Little guidance is given, however, to the practical considerations of using simulations as a component of assessment or as informing assessed tasks. This article draws upon the experience of the authors in adapting the well-established Model United Nations (MUN) simulation programme for delivery as an assessed module at a British university. This has involved balancing institutional teaching, assessment and validation requirements with the successful simulation of diplomatic practice. The article introduces the MUN simulation and explores the extant pedagogic literature encouraging the use of simulation-based learning in IR curricula, before moving on to provide an overview of the rationale for the various decisions the authors have made in adapting the simulation for delivery as an assessed curriculum component. The article asserts the value of introducing assessed simulations within IR coursework and provides guidance on how student performance in pedagogic simulations might best be assessed.