PS: Political Science & Politics
Learning Before Doing: Community-Based Learning as Research Methods Learning
2026-02-17
Instructors must balance advancing student knowledge and fostering civic abilities as dual objectives of political science education. Combining these objectives has informed various approaches in course design that often follow the idea of learning by doing, with a strong emphasis on the doing. This article presents a pedagogical frame—“community-based learning as research methods learning”—that focuses on the learning side of learning by doing and centers research instruction. It suggests that community-based learning must come before community-based research and that research methods learning must come before carrying out research tasks. The article invites those who aim to address the dual objectives of political science education in their course design to do so with a methods-learning mindset rather than solely with a research-output trajectory.