I wrote a chapter for a newly published edited volume, Teaching Political Science and International Relations for Early Career Instructors. The volume itself, capably edited by Michael P.A. Murphy and Misbah Hyder, is indeed concerned primarily with providing guidance for “Early Career Instructors” (ECIs) ranging from Ph.D. students to tenure-track faculty members.

I was asked to write about mentorship for ECIs—given the challenges one faces in the classroom, how can mentors support ECIs? My chapter, “Teaching in Context,” argues against the idea that there is one “right” way to teach any given class, a premise that I take to be implicit in much Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) that advocates for different teaching techniques. I thus argue that mentorship for ECIs should prepare them to capably adapt to the particular demands of their classroom.

The most enjoyable thing about writing this chapter was the detour I take through Game Studies to make my argument. I draw an analogy to the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s concept of “the magic circle,” which has long been used as a canonical point of reference in defining what constitutes a game.

For Huizinga, games entail the creation of a space separate from “the real world”. “The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, and screen…are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed within which special rules obtain. …Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count.”

As Game Studies scholars like Mia Consalvo have since argued, however, games are not wholly separate from “the real world”. Rather, “the ordinary rules of life” still intrude in the game space; they apply “in addition to, in competition with, other rules and in relation to multiple contexts, across varying cultures, and into different groups, legal situations, and homes”.

Similarly, I argue, SoTL sometimes treats the classroom as a space separate from “the real world” when we ought to see each individual classroom as instead intersecting with the outside world in at least three ways.

First, instructors bring “the real world” with them into the classroom. One’s teaching may at the least be shaped by professional ethics, career-related concerns, identities, or other personal qualities.

Second, students bring “the real world” with them into the classroom in some of the same ways but also insofar as their learning may be shaped by varying degrees of preparation for college-level work, varying abilities to take the time necessary to do that work, and varying familiarity with the “hidden curriculum“.

Finally, I argue, “the real world” impinges on the classroom itself. Decisions about who teaches what to how many students—decisions shaped by demographic trends and institutional resources—will affect the classroom environment. Similarly, the nature and location of the institution—e.g., its mission and its surrounding political environment—will yield differences in the classroom.

What all this means for mentorship of ECIs, I argue, is that teaching-related mentorship ought to emphasize adaptability to the different contexts in which one might teach. Helping ECIs recognize salient forms of difference in the classroom would be a starting point for such mentorship, and pedagogical exercises that push ECIs to think through how they would respond to such differences would be useful.

There is much else in the edited volume. Stephanie Denardo includes a particularly helpful chapter on the nuts and bolts of teaching an International Relations class, hand-written lecture notes included. Liam Midzain-Gobin writes about how he navigates sensitive topics as an instructor, a frequent feature of his classes on Indigenous politics. Louise Pears offers useful advice on finding and contributing to teaching-focused communities within one’s discipline. It’s nice to have a chapter alongside these scholars, and I hope others find the volume useful.