Teaching the European Union in Brexit Britain

Abstract

This contribution to the Special Issue focuses on how we might incorporate ‘peripheral thinking’ on the EU, with a particular focus on teaching the EU at a ‘new periphery’: in Brexit Britain. First, it considers the challenges of teaching the EU in the context of what now feels like an almost permanent crisis in the EU. It argues in favour of a ‘critical-pluralist’ approach: that is, an approach that fully engages with a ‘peripheral’ (including ‘critical’, ‘normative’ and ‘dissident’) set of ideas as part of a commitment to scholarly pluralism. Second, it suggests--with reference to the recent experience of updating an EU politics textbook--that a ‘question driven approach’ might be one pedagogically practical way of presenting such a plurality to our students.  Finally, it turns to consider how such an approach might be realised in the classroom, in the particular context of teaching the EU at the EU’s ‘new periphery’, the United Kingdom. While that context presented various teaching related challenges, Brexit as a case study was usefully deployed in a variety of ways in order to pursue the critical-pluralist approach that is advocated.