Teaching Challenges for Political Science in Europe

Abstract

This paper seeks to start a debate about how political scientists in Europe might continue to help each other develop, and how the discipline might begin to tackle the challenges posed by the Sorbonne and Bologna agreements. We believe it is important that political science and political scientists face these challenges, because otherwise it is likely that the answers will be provided for us by others less familiar with the needs and demands of the discipline itself. Higher education today is confronted by a number of challenges. The ICT revolution is one such major challenge, in that it has revolutionised the way in which knowledge can be transmitted - no lecturer worth his salt is now unfamiliar with PowerPoint as an aid to presenting material, whilst most students regularly trawl the Net in search of information for essays and seminars, if not for the essays themselves.