A reality check for students? How participating to the Model United Nations influences skills, IR perceptions, and perspectives on future career

Date01 May 2020
Published date01 May 2020
DOI10.1177/0263395719852238
Subject MatterLearning and Teaching in Politics and International Studies
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719852238
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(2) 245 –261
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395719852238
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A reality check for students?
How participating to the Model
United Nations influences
skills, IR perceptions, and
perspectives on future career
Fabrizio Coticchia
University of Genova, Italy
Enrico Calossi
University of Pisa, Italy
Lorenzo Cicchi
EUI, Italy
Abstract
Despite a growing number of studies on simulations and International Relations (IR), few
analyses investigate how participating in a simulation affects students’ perceptions of relevant
IR issues. In addition, almost none of the current analyses on role playing and IR investigate
how the involvement in a simulation affects students’ views on university enrolment or
future career. This article seeks to fill these gaps, addressing how students’ interpretations
and expectations change after participating in the Model United Nations (MUN). This article
studies how the MUN is perceived as an experience that helps improve personal skills such as
language ability, negotiation skills, and knowledge related to IR issues. This article also analyses
how perceptions about selected IR issues and views on future university enrolment or future
career vary before and after the MUN. The article is based on an original data set from a survey
submitted to high school and university students participating to two MUNs held in Spring
2018. This article also employs ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariate regression analysis to
test alternative hypotheses.
Keywords
enrolment, Model United Nations, perceptions, simulation, skills, teaching
Received: 7th November 2018; Revised version received: 25th April 2019; Accepted: 26th April 2019
Corresponding author:
Fabrizio Coticchia, DISPO, University of Genova, Piazzale Brignole 3, 16125 Genova, Italy.
Email: Fabrizio.coticchia@unige.it
852238POL0010.1177/0263395719852238PoliticsCoticchia et al.
research-article2019
Learning and Teaching in Politics and
International Studies
246 Politics 40(2)
Introduction
This article falls within the broad literature (Asal, 2005; Blair, 2013; Blair et al., 2018;
Giovanello et al., 2013; Holland, 2013; Kirshner, 2018; Lantis, 1998; Ryan et al., 2014;
Toros et al., 2018) investigating the importance of games, simulations, and alternative
teaching methods in the international relations (IR) field. Among many role-playing
experiences, the Model United Nations (MUN) is and one of the most popular IR simula-
tions around the world. The aim of this research is to analyse how students have modified
their own views, interpretations, and expectations after participating in the MUN.
This analysis is based on a survey of students (N = 218) participating in two MUNs held
in Spring 2018. After having presented the data and reviewed how the literature debates on
the benefits of simulations and MUNs as learning tools, this article answers the following
research questions (which correspond to three different sections of this article): How is the
MUN perceived as an experience that helps improve personal skills (such as language abil-
ity, negotiation skills, and knowledge)? How and to what extent do perceptions vary on
selected IR issues before and after the MUN? How and to what extent do views on future
university enrolment or future work and career vary before and after the MUN?
The article makes three innovative contributions to the current scholarly debate. First,
it analyses the evolution of students’ perceived skills before and after the simulation, test-
ing the (mainstream) view that affirms the benefits of active learning in IR. Therefore, the
article aims at addressing one of the shortcomings acknowledged in the literature (Calossi
and Coticchia, 2018; Giovanello et al., 2013): the lack of empirical studies on simulations
based on large samples. Second, the research investigates students’ perspectives on
selected IR issues (such as conflict and cooperation), corroborating the findings of the
very few studies (Brown, 2018; Calossi and Coticchia, 2018; Youde, 2008) that have
stressed a (counterintuitive) ‘reality check effect’ of simulations in tempering the ideal-
ism of participants. Third, this article focuses on another underestimated issue in the lit-
erature on IR and role playing: how student’s viewpoints on future university enrolment
or career vary after the simulation. Furthermore, the study offers three important findings
related to the above-mentioned ‘reality check’. First, students consider international
organizations (IOs), cooperation, and diplomacy in IR to be highly relevant, but this per-
ceived importance decreases after the MUN. Second, after completing the MUN simula-
tion, participants report that conflict in IR is more important than they had supposed
beforehand. Third, their perspectives on future career become less uncertain and more
oriented towards curricula that are somehow related to the world of IR.
Finally, the variance of students’ sample, which is differentiated by age, level of edu-
cation (high school or university, MA, BA, years of enrolment, etc.), gender, and the kind
of MUN attended, allows also running ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariate regres-
sion analysis to confirm – or reject – our hypotheses.
This article is structured as it follows: after reviewing the literature, this article pre-
sents data and research design, highlighting its hypotheses. The empirical section illus-
trates the main findings and the conclusion provides suggestions for further research.
Are simulations ‘useful’ teaching methods in IR? Filling the
gaps in the literature
One of the main goals of simulations as a teaching method is to develop students’ under-
standing through practical learning opportunities (Blair et al., 2018). As stated by Lantis

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