I have to assume I’m not the only professor in the social sciences who struggles to help undergraduate students understand a model-based approach to explaining the world. We certainly throw enough theories and models at them! Their textbooks are filled with models we ask them to learn and then apply to explain real world events. I’m never happier then when I get to introduce them to a new theory in class using a simulation or cut-throat battle for bonus points on their next paper (shout-out to the bargaining model of war, two level game style negotiations and principal-agent problems). But I can never quite shake the feeling that they are humoring me without ever really understanding the task or the models themselves in any substantially useful way.
Who can blame them? They come to college after years of being told to memorize facts, and now, here they are in my Introduction to International Relations class being told that there are innumerable contradictory explanations for why ol’ Vladdy Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine and that the answer depends on them selecting a “model” that is clearly ignoring something important they intuitively “know” about the world. Why do I get to tell them that an incomplete explanation in a textbook or journal article is a useful model whereas the incomplete nonsense they see on Facebook is not?
Ok, I don’t have an answer for that but what I do have is an exercise I’ve been refining over the years inspired by the analogy (simile? metaphor? who the hell knows…) of models to maps in the excellent A Model Discipline: Political Science and the Logic of Representations by Kevin A. Clarke and David M. Primo. Long story short, in their telling, models are like maps. We value maps for their usefulness in getting us from A to B and not for their accuracy. We all seem to intuitively understand that maps are partial representations of the world, that they reflect the interests of their designers, that they are designed for some purposes and not others. No sane person gets mad that their subway map doesn’t list all the bathrooms on the third floors of building they pass on their morning commute. And, what goes for maps goes the same for models.
Long story short, early in the semester I have my intro classes draw maps of our campus in class. I then ask the students to walk around reviewing the maps and selecting the “best” one with the promise of extra credit for the “winner.” We then argue for a bit about what “best” means and I transition us to talking about why all maps are inaccurate, but some are useful. I also try to keep this analogy alive during the rest of the term. Whenever I introduce new theories or models I try to do it using the language of a map (e.g. What are the main features of this model? Who is it designed to help? Is it for the individuals walking the streets, groups traveling between cities, etc? Where is it trying to help you go? What are the big features of the world it omits?).
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve cracked the code and that all my students immediately come to grasp the value of thinking with theory, but I like to think this has helped. At the very least it has certainly helped me think about the value and design of useful models.
Justin Leinaweaver 