Making the Undergraduate Classroom into a Policy Think Tank: Reflections from a Field Methods Class (original) (raw)
Related papers
Supporting Field-Based Education in Political Settings
Journal of Social Work Education, 2018
This article presents findings from a qualitative study of social work students who participated in an intensive block placement in a state legislature. Findings explore what students perceive as the central learning outcomes from field placements in political settings and how they navigate aspects of practice that may differ in critical ways from other social work practice settings. Findings identify challenges social work students face when placed in a political environment as well as strategies and supports students use to navigate these challenges. We discuss implications for creating and sustaining effective social work field placements in political settings to further students' policy practice competency.
Public Policy Pedagogy: Mixing Methodologies Using Cases
Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2010
Over the past two decades, public policy professors have been confronted with a choice to teach either from the traditional positivist approach grounded in rationality, objectivity, and economics or from a postpositivist approach grounded in politics, subjectivity, and democracy. Yet, such a choice is both false and limiting. Instead, we argue that it is possible to teach a practical public policy analysis course based on mixed methodologies that stems from both the positivism and postpositivism camps. At the pedagogical center of this approach is the case method. Our approach is grounded in both the belief and experience that the combination of an approach that is pragmatic, yet infused with politics, and a stimulating case also serves to increase student interest. In this article, we present a class-tested case study ready for use by faculty members in courses in public policy analysis, public policy, and, introductory public administration. Along the way, we provide guidance on how to use the case and how it fits into a mixed methodological approach. Professors of public administration, when asked to teach public policy analysis, seemingly have a choice between two alternative approaches. They can JPAE, 16 (4), 517-540 Policy Analysis and the Pedagogical Trade-Offs Historically, professors of public policy analysis have been confronted with a sort of Hobson's choice. 1 On one hand, they could teach rational, quantitativebased analysis where rigor is imposed simply by applying the typical positivist techniques of analysis. While this dominant approach certainly has appeal and importance, lost in it is the essence of politics, power, and nonrationality that has dominated the past two decades of public policy literature (e.g., Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Stone, 2002) and that proves very interesting to students. Moreover, as Layzer writes (2006) after discussing the rational-comprehensive model: Most political scientists eschew this model as a description of reality, however. Contrary to its predictions, policy making is rarely a linear process of identifying problems and devising optimal solutions; instead, solutions often go in search of problems, and decision Public Policy Pedagogy: Mixing Methodologies Using Cases
Integrating Curriculum, Research, and Civic Engagement with the Policy Research Shop Model
On May 10 2012 three students from the Dartmouth College Policy Research Shop briefed NH Governor John Lynch on the best practices for developing a performance measurement system for the state bureaucracy, capping a ten-month co-curricular research project that included nearly thirty comparative case studies, many interviews of public officials, a thorough literature review, and the preparation of a comprehensive analysis of best practices for performance measurement in the field of public safety. These students effectively bridged the public policy curriculum, beginning with an introductory course in public policy analysis, moving into independent, but subtly mentored research, and civic engagement, culminating with a professional, non-partisan policy briefing at the highest level of state government. This paper details the co-curricular Policy Research Shop model that produced this outcome, and particularly the role of the faculty mentor, and proposes ways for its replication at other institutions with public policy programs of different sizes and levels of available funding.
A Bernsteinian View of Learning and Teaching Undergraduate Sociology-based Social Science
Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences, 2013
Taking a perspective drawn from Basil Bernstein, the paper locates itself at the boundary between teaching as transmitting disciplinary knowledge and teaching as a set of generic 'good practice' principles. It first discusses the value of undergraduate sociology-based social science knowledge to individuals and society. This discussion leads to highlighting the importance of pedagogical framing for realising the value of sociological knowledge. A longitudinal three-year study in four different status universities suggested that studying undergraduate sociology-based degrees can give students access to what Bernstein called 'pedagogic rights' of personal enhancement; social inclusion; and political participation. Access to the rights is through the formation of a 'specialised disciplinary identity' whereby the student becomes a person who knows and understands specific content, which is applied to lives and society, and who has developed the skills and dispositions of a social scientist. In pedagogical terms more evidence of equality than inequality was found: despite some subtle differences, whatever the status of the university attended, the same disciplinary identity was projected and students' perceptions of the quality of their teaching strongly mediated the formation of a disciplinary identity and access to pedagogic rights.
Undergraduate and doctoral education in public policy: What? Why? Why not? Whereto?
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2008
In 1986, a small group of public policy faculty gathered at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for a conference on what was then a novel enterprise in professional education for public service. The enterprise grew into the dozens of master's programs in policy analysis and management that now cover not only the United States but the globe, and on the twentieth anniversary of that influential meeting, APPAM organized a conference at Park City, Utah, where a much larger group of faculty gathered to reflect backward on how policy analysis education had evolved, and forward on where it should be going. The Park City conference was organized around a set of commissioned papers, each providing a starting point and common ground for discussion sessions that were in turn recorded by rapporteurs. Rapporteurs were asked to write essays capturing the most important themes of their sessions, not to merely transcribe the conversation, and they did so admirably. The Curriculum and Case Notes section of JPAM is publishing a selection of the papers and discussion reports. This is the fourth and final installment. It includes Eric Jensen's paper on law, economics, and craft skills courses, with Roland Cole's discussion report; a review of practitioners' participation in MPP programs by Robert Garris, Janice Madden, and William Rodgers, and its discussion report by Kenneth Apfel; the paper on policy Ph.D. and undergraduate programs by Dylan Conger, Joseph Cordes, Helen Ladd, and Michael Luger and a discussion report by Cordes; and my paper on pedogical issues with the discussion report by Michael Lipsky.
Undergraduate and Doctoral Education in Public Policy
2016
In 1986, a small group of public policy faculty gathered at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for a conference on what was then a novel enterprise in professional education for public service. The enterprise grew into the dozens of master's programs in policy analysis and management that now cover not only the United States but the globe, and on the twentieth anniversary of that influential meeting, APPAM organized a conference at Park City, Utah, where a much larger group of faculty gathered to reflect backward on how policy analysis education had evolved, and forward on where it should be going. The Park City conference was organized around a set of commissioned papers, each providing a starting point and common ground for discussion sessions that were in turn recorded by rapporteurs. Rapporteurs were asked to write essays capturing the most important themes of their sessions, not to merely transcribe the conversation, and they did so admirably. The Curriculum and Case Notes section of JPAM is publishing a selection of the papers and discussion reports. This is the fourth and final installment. It includes Eric Jensen's paper on law, economics, and craft skills courses, with Roland Cole's discussion report; a review of practitioners' participation in MPP programs by Robert Garris, Janice Madden, and William Rodgers, and its discussion report by Kenneth Apfel; the paper on policy Ph.D. and undergraduate programs by Dylan Conger, Joseph Cordes, Helen Ladd, and Michael Luger and a discussion report by Cordes; and my paper on pedogical issues with the discussion report by Michael Lipsky.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1995
Students are an important teaching resource-especially in professional education environments where they often bring many years of personal experience into the classroom. In the following article, Cohen, Eimicke, and Ukeles describe a two-semester workshop course sequence designed to make full use of students as a teaching resource. We commend this article to our readers, first, because their workshop course effectively combines policy analysis and public management by focusing on the challenge of program design. Just as automobile manufacturers have come to recognize that separating the design function from the manufacturing function often leads to low quality automobiles that are costly to build, the separation of policy analysis from program management often leads to ineffectual programs that are costly to deliver. Second, their course structure makes a virtue of the political enthusiasm, administrative naivete, incomplete information, and compressed time horizons that often surround the implementation of new initiatives by focusing on current legislative initiatives and a demanding milestone-driven schedule of work products. Third, because the working groups are large and the required work to be done substantial, there is little possibility that one individual could effectively take up the slack for nonperforming members of the group: This activity requires true group work. And finally, we commend this article because of the level of detail it provides regarding the practical administrative structure of a successful workshop program. Successful curriculum initiatives, in our experience, are often differentiated from unsuccessful ones, not by overall conceptual design, but by attention to details.