Junior Faculty Spotlight:
Amanda Clayton
I teach comparative politics, gender and politics, and African politics in the Political Science Department. As a teacher, I strive to create learning hooks through personal engagement, and to encourage students to extend their learning beyond the classroom.
Students need hooks to stimulate learning and maintain motivation. When I was a student, this hook was often the expectations of my teachers, and I believe encouragement and personal attention are among the best ways to kindle students' intellectual curiosity. I personally engage with as many of my students as possible. In particular, as a woman using and teaching statistical methods, I enjoy encouraging female students to excel in a discipline in which we are underrepresented.
Civil debate among peers is another excellent learning hook. For instance, I found that students come into my gender and politics courses with strong prior beliefs about the origins of gender inequalities in the US and beyond. When facilitating group discussions, I use the diversity of the classroom to encourage respectful interaction among classmates with different backgrounds (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, political beliefs, family income). This forces students not only to articulate their own convictions to a new group, but also to engage with viewpoints they may not have previously encountered or considered.
I also encourage students to see the connection between academic inquiry and public policy by expanding their learning experiences beyond the classroom. I find many of my students have earnest intentions to make the world a better place, and I want to encourage them to throw themselves into this commitment in the most informed and culturally respectful ways. For instance, I often have extra credit or service learning options that encourage students to become active and involved in political organizations and causes on campus and in the wider Nashville area.
