Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Network!
The PSA is delighted to welcome the new network leads on to the TLN committee who take up their roles in September 2025!
Chris, Greg, Simon and Susan join Adrian who remains as network lead for another year.
Our sincere and heartfelt thanks go to Cathy Elliott and Victoria Honeyman for the tremendous work they carried out during their time as TLN convenors.
About the TLN
The Teaching and Learning Network (TLN) is a community of practice for academics and higher education teachers, where best practice can be recognised, scholarship and research disseminated, and university teaching supported.
All PSA Academic Members are automatically members of the TLN.
Building on over a decade of work as a PSA Specialist Group, the remit of the Network is:
- To enable all politics academics/HE teachers to share the good and innovative practices that they have developed, within a community of practice
- To support the production and dissemination of research and scholarship relating to the teaching and learning of politics
- To support the PSA in contributing to policy relating to HE matters, including the TEF
- To support early career academics in developing their practice as university teachers
- To support the development of politics students as critical and independent learners, able to contribute to economic, social, and political wellbeing as active citizens.
Previous TLN Activities
2025 Teaching Prizes
Congratulations to the following winners. Find out more here.
Sir Bernard Crick Prize - Dr. Alexandra Meakin
"Her contributions to scholarship within her role at the University of Leeds and beyond have been substantial and positive. Notably, her work on attendance and understanding the reasons behind student dropouts has been particularly noteworthy. She has made significant strides in overcoming this challenge. Additionally, her efforts to integrate academic skills for new students have helped address significant challenges in enabling diverse students to adapt to university study. This work is set to be published later this year. Our judges were impressed by the range of initiatives introduced to support students from diverse learning styles and innovative approaches to supporting students through placements."
Jacqui Briggs Prize - Dr. Davide Vampa et al
"We were impressed by the significant work taken to create an innovative and inclusive team taught module focusing on the 2024 UK General Election. The pedagogic rationale for this module is incredibly well developed, providing students with active-learning opportunities, authentic assessments and practical skills through data analysis that they can apply beyond the course. The approach to team delivery with such substantial expertise across a number of Think Tanks and Universities is impressive and provided students with a unique opportunity to engage in the development of and analyse the outcome of the election. The decision to open up the sessions to a wider audience through public lectures demonstrates significant impact that this work has had in bridging gaps between university and community."
Vicky Randall Prize - Dr. Susan Kenyon
"Our winner has demonstrated a considerable and commendable approach to treating students as individual learners and undertaking significant work to support students in their journey through higher education. Her focus upon building a sense of belonging in the classroom and work on diversifying teaching methods to suite a wide range of learners. Her innovations in teaching have supported students from their first steps in higher education through to preparing them for life after higher education through developing core employability skills in particular through a partnership with representatives from the UK Civil Service. She has shown a commitment to spreading best practice and is a frequent contributor to workshops, conferences and blog posts to help progress teaching in the discipline more broadly."
The Joy of the Teaching Track - from former TLN Convenor Cathy Elliott
The TLN is rightly famous for being a friendly, welcoming community and the highlight of being a co-Convenor was definitely meeting so many passionate educators, making friends and being able to help create productive spaces for conversations about education. I also very much enjoyed being part of a national conversation about education in the discipline. Throughout my time as a co-Convenor, I have been particularly interested in supporting and advocating for education-focused careers, so it's fitting that Politics has just published a co-authored article that some colleagues and I wrote based on our PSA Conference Roundtable on the 'Joy of the Teaching Track'. We are still in the early days of thinking about education-focused careers, and the most recent conference featured a great roundtable on the role of scholarship for educational specialists. The TLN will continue to be a place where people get together to support each other and figure out what a joyful educational career will look like in future. I look forward to seeing you at the TLN Conference!
Teaching and Learning Network Conference - 2025
Call for Journal Articles and Notes about Learning and Teaching in Politics & International Relations
The editorial team of the PSA's Politics journal is seeking engaging, thought-provoking scholarship that addresses the evolving challenges in teaching political science and international relations. We invite submissions that contribute to both the theoretical and practical dimensions of political education, covering topics such as:
- Innovative teaching methods and impactful learning techniques
- Assessments of student growth and learning outcomes
- The role of emerging technologies in education
- Evaluations of educational resources and tools
- New approaches to political pedagogy
The journal encourages articles that provide actionable insights and best practices to enhance education in the field and support the development of both students and educators. Published articles will advance the professional expertise of educators, promoting well-informed, engaged learners in politics and international relations.
* Submission Guidelines:
- Full articles: Up to 10,000 words
- Learning and teaching notes: Up to 5,000 words
- All submissions are peer-reviewed with average turnaround time of 5 weeks.
There is no deadline for submissions and we invite the interested authors to submit their work through the ScholarOne online manuscript submission portal at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/politics
TLN Mentoring Network
For those who are educational specialists and/or on education-focused contracts.
If you feel you have the skills and capacity to become a mentor, we kindly invite you to contact the team via info@psa.co.uk and we will get back to find out more about your skills and experience.
Your details will be added to a database of those who are willing to mentor other teaching-focused, pedagogically-interested or educational leadership staff in Politics (broadly defined), and Mentors can remove themselves from the database at any time once they have reached their capacity.
This is an open database of academics across the UK to contribute towards, but only PSA members may request a copy.
PSA members can use the database to make a direct approach to potential mentors personally.
If you have any queries, please do get in touch with us via PSATeach@psa.ac.uk.
We want to hear from you!
It would be great to get some feedback from members about what you would like the Network to focus on. We are open to all suggestions, whether that’s workshops, conferences and events we could run or be involved in, publication/article/blog ideas, professional development/training opportunities, or anything else under our wide remit. Get in touch via PSATeach@psa.ac.uk.
Blog writers wanted: do you have something to say about teaching and learning in politics and international studies? If so, why not write a blog for us. We are happy to publish content about best practice, scholarship, or your general thoughts about teaching and learning in the discipline. Contact us at PSATeach@psa.ac.uk with your idea.
Fancy running a webinar for us on teaching and learning in politics? You know what to do: contact us!
Teaching and Learning Network Blogs
Read our five-part blog series, being shared between the PSA Teaching and Learning stream and the Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE), in order to promote dialogue between the more academic-related pedagogy-focussed bodies and more practitioner-focussed organisations such as FAC.
PSA External Examiner Database
The PSA Teaching and Learning Network is coordinating an external examiners database, exclusively available as a benefit of PSA membership. If you are a PSA member and would like a copy of the database, please email membership@psa.ac.uk.
PSA members are encouraged to register their details in the database, and can do so by completing this short form.
If you aren’t yet a member, do consider joining as you will be will be able to both request a copy of the database and access the wide range of other membership benefits.
The webinar series focused on general teaching and learning issues, not just online learning!
- 'Let's use technology meaningfully: Designing engaging online learning activities' by Alexandra Mihai (UCL)
- 'Teaching and Learning: the Student Perspective' led by Maxine David (Leiden University)
- 'External Examining in Politics: Rigour and Inclusion' led by Helen Williams (University of Nottingham)
- 'Active Learning' led by Cristina Leston Bandeira (University of Leeds)
- 'The Things we Gained During Lockdown. What we Won’t Miss and What we Should Incorporate Into our Teaching in the Longer Term' led by Victoria Honeyman (Leeds University).
You can find the recordings here: /resources/multimedia
You can view some of our other webinars on the PSA's YouTube Channel
- Humour in Politics by Alex Martin
- From Classroom to Garden by Cathy Elliot
- Teaching in Excel by Charlotte Brookfield
- Teaching Statistics in SPSS by Helen WIlliams
- Decolonising Political Theory by Manjeet Ramgotra & Simon Choat
- Preparing Students for Non-Academic Careers by Rasmus Broms
The International Political Education Database (IPED)
The International Political Education Database (IPED), curated by Network Co-Chair John Craig, is a historic bibliographic database of journal articles relating to teaching and learning in politics, international relations, public administration and related fields. It aims to raise the profile of existing publications to encourage further research and enhancements to student learning.
We believe that IPED is the world's most comprehensive bibliographic database of teaching and learning resources for politics. NOTE: last updated 2018.
