Europe: Finland “Theory as Materiel: Teaching Theory in Finland”

Often, theory is taught in order to explain or to help others understand or change (part of) the world, but there are two additional reasons for teaching theory. By considering theory as “materiel,” this chapter discusses how theory can be used for practicing analytical and critical thinking skills and how teaching theory can be part of theory-development. Teaching theory for these purposes at the university level pushes teachers to be more like guides or interpreters, because the learning experience ought to be—both for the students and the teacher—more about knowledge production and less about knowledge consumption. This chapter illustrates these aspects of theory teaching with two examples from a Finnish university. The first example focuses on my “Introduction to Planet Politics” course that I use to push myself to develop further this approach to International Politics/Relations. The second example centers on how I teach social constructivism in a somewhat social constructivist way as part of a jointly taught course. To provide context for these examples, the chapter highlights certain aspects of the contemporary Finnish higher education system in general and International Politics/Relations at Tampere University in particular. The idiosyncrasies of the Finnish system and teaching theory at Tampere University can be summarized with “academic freedom.” The chapter ends by reminding that in-person contact teaching and learning are increasingly more precious; such opportunities ought to be designed to allow the students to practice various transferable skills, the most important being critical thinking skills.