From February 19–21, 2005, several hundred political scientists met
at the second annual APSA Conference on Teaching and Learning in
Bethesda, Maryland. To facilitate an atmosphere of intensive
interaction and mutual learning, the conference was conducted in the
“European format” where topic-specific Tracks worked as a
deliberative community over three days rather than the format of
American conferences—paper, paper, paper, comment, question, then on
to a different session. Track Five's task was to exchange ideas
about teaching methodology with the goal of formulating proposals
that could be disseminated to the discipline. Interestingly, the
topic was taken up by contributors in Track Five from two angles:
first, “teaching methods” as a pedagogical issue and second,
teaching research methodology.