Jaume Castan Pinos receives the Teaching Award 2024
Associate Professor Jaume Castan Pinos has been passionate about teaching ever since he grew up in the western parts of Barcelona. Today, he is implementing role-play and simulation at the University of Southern Denmark to engage students and make international politics tangible.
Lecturer Jaume Castan Pinos from the Department of Political Science and political science received the national Teaching Award 2024 on Monday 23 September at an event at the Opera in Copenhagen.
Mie Olsen from the Ministry of Education and Research has written the following portrait of SDU's talented employee:
Jaume Castan Pinos
One group of students stays after the lecture to discuss a geopolitical theory that helps understand conflicts in the Balkans. They are enthusiastically asking for more reading material. At such moments, Associate Professor Jaume Castan Pinos, Department of Political Science and Public Management, feels his heart swell with pride.
During his 12 years at University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg, as Programme Manager at European Studies from 2015 to 2023, he has managed to turn around a real crisis in terms of attracting students and to make the programme sought after.
‘I make a contract with the students: I promise not to be boring, but in return you need to participate actively and not be lazy.’
Arousing curiosity
The secret is to find little tricks that make the students raise their eyebrows in amazement. This can be anything from a meme to a newspaper headline. If the start of the lesson is boring so that you lose them from the beginning, then it’s an uphill battle to make a comeback, explains Jaume Castan Pinos.
On the other hand, there are almost no limits to what a good teacher may achieve.
Jaume Castan Pinos learnt this already during his school days in the socially and economically deprived area of Sabadell North, 25 km west of Barcelona. The teacher was under pressure and the students were unusually wild.
Nevertheless, motivation and participation were fostered in subjects such as geography and maths.
This impressed a young Jaume Castan Pinos, who maintained his passion for sharing knowledge throughout his childhood in Catalonia and later during his PhD research in international politics at Queen’s University Belfast.
‘In a way, the topic is secondary when it comes to preparing an exciting lesson.
My focus is on relating knowledge to the students and awakening their inner curiosity.
My aim is to transfer my passion and love for the subject to them.’
A culture of active learning
European affairs are complex, and understanding foreign policy and trade agreements can easily become overwhelming. But not if the students are allowed to be protagonists and make the decisions themselves, explains Jaume Castan Pinos.
Sometimes he works on hyper-realistic scenarios with the international politics class, in which students have to act as interns at, for example, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and analyse strategic documents from the USA. He may also ask them to create their own party from scratch, develop a party narrative and research voter bases and ‘vacant’ political values prior to a fictional – but realistic – election campaign.
Students put a lot of effort into their assignments, asking friends and family for advice and revising their political strategy from lesson to lesson.
This has evolved as Jaume Castan Pinos has not hesitated to introduce mandatory attendance and compulsory in-class presentations. This has created an active learning culture and simply adds value to the students’ learning experience, according to Jaume Castan Pinos.
About
Name: Jaume Castan Pinos.
Title: Associate Professor and Head of Section at the University of Southern Denmark.
Subject area: Teaches International Politics and Global Challenges.
Place of birth and residence: Born in Barcelona, lives in Valby/Sønderborg.
Contact details: Email jaume@sam.sdu.dk and phone 50163098.