I have been using a two-part instrument (PAPPI) to measure each student's position on a crude liberalism/conservatism axis and a set of questions measuring whether they know which ideological position favors which argument as a political knowledge measure. I don't think the political knowledge measure has worked very well.
I am thinking now that a lot of factual questions in a multiple choice format--take them from AMPU?--wouldn't be a better measure of "knowledge."
I am also thinking, based on my grading of the part of the final based on The West Wing, that I could measure political sophistication better by giving them a TWW script and asking what the political implications are. On the clip I used on the final, Judge Christopher Mulready rebuts Toby Zeigler's charge that Mulready's opinion denies "full faith and credit" by pointing out that this leaves the state of Vermont in charge of all the states' laws on gay marriage. This clip requires that you know what "full faith and credit" means and also that you know Vermont was one of the first states to legalize gay marriage.
Applying the implications of Vermont's action to the "full faith and credit" situation of the rest of the states is what I mean by "political sophistication." That could be approximated by a multiple choice test as well, although it would be really hard to make up.
At this point, I am thinking that knowledge of what is liberal and conservative is the most accessible of all the information I am asking. Factual knowledge about American government is the next level down. The reasoning about political implications, as in the TWW segments, is the furthest down and hardest to get to.
No comments:
Post a Comment