Teaching Generation Z Students About Politics: Optimism or Pessimism?

Authors

Mark K. McBeth, Idaho State UniversityFollow
Jonathan W.L. Blakeman, Brigham Young University-IdahoFollow
Logan Kearsley, Idaho State UniversityFollow
Alyson Tyler, Idaho State UniversityFollow
Emma Villanueva, Idaho State UniversityFollow

Abstract

The scholarship of teaching and learning is primarily concerned with improving student learning. Of course, we want our students to learn our disciplines, we want them to become critical thinkers, and we want them learn to write. But this study looks at how learning impacts a student’s optimism or pessimism. We believe that it is an important topic in today’s world and provides an important new topic in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This study is co-authored by two team-teachers and three honors students. Using an Introduction to Politics course as case material, the study provides a pre and post-test measuring student optimism versus pessimism on a wide variety of political issues facing Generation Z students. Then we provide a content analysis of honors essays which were collected during the semester and interviews with our three honor student co-authors. We draw initial conclusions about optimism versus pessimism in teaching and argue that a larger research agenda around this topic would benefit the scholarship of teaching and learning literature.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

McBeth, Mark K.; Blakeman, Jonathan W.L.; Kearsley, Logan; Tyler, Alyson; and Villanueva, Emma (2023) "Teaching Generation Z Students About Politics: Optimism or Pessimism?," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 17: No. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2023.17105