What is The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics?

The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics was a FDTL5 funded project whose main aim was to develop, evaluate and promote research-based placements as a formal dimension of the Politics and International Relations curriculum in UK Universities. The project has now developed, and tested a variety of models and templates for placement learning within the formal curriculum, and will soon be publishing its findings. The research has evaluated the impact and effectiveness of the Scholarship of Engagement for Politics, thus offering other UK Politics Departments the opportunity to develop their own models of research-based placement learning.
While university Politics departments in the UK often provide voluntary work placement opportunities for students to enhance their learning in undergraduate programmes, in contrast, this project encourages the learning and teaching of governance through the Scholarship of Engagement as an essential and integrated dimension of the Politics undergraduate experience.
The emphasis has always been upon research-based learning rather than simply work experience. This project has developed partnership frameworks with local and regional government agencies, political actors, non-governmental organisations, and the voluntary sector. The project team has then created a repertoire of examples of the Scholarship of Engagement, whilst evaluating the impact and effectiveness of this upon student learning, thus offering other UK Politics Departments the opportunity to develop their own models of engagement.

This project has involved the Departments of Politics at the Universities of Warwick, Coventry and Oxford Brookes.

	For more information Please click on the image of our project brochure to download it (.pdf format, 728Kb).