Call for papers for WG on Degree Programs | NISPAcee Information Portal

Frits Van Den Berg, Consultant, The Netherlands
E-mail: patom@planet.nl
György Jenei, Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: gyorgy.jenei@bkae.hu
László Váradi, Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: laszlo.varadi@bkae.hu

NISPAcee Project Manager:

Viera Wallnerova, Email: wallnerova@nispa.org

Theme 2006: Taking stock of accomplishments and identifying guidelines for progress – the contribution of PA/PP education to the creation of effective civil service and improved governance.

Background

The aim of this Working Group is to contribute to the fulfillment of one of the NISPAcee’s missions: improving educational programs by assisting human capacity building and institutional development through learning from each other.

By now for most post-socialist countries the most turbulent political and economic transition period is the recent past. That period has brought into being reorganized and/or newly established PA / PP programmes (institutes, departments). It is appropriate to start stock-making, consolidating the achievements, and looking ahead to identify immediate and farther steps that could lead to the improvement of the substantive and the pedagogical components of the educational programes.

Teachers, instructors, persons responsible for a whole or a module of educational programme at higher educational institutions offering degree programmes in public administration / public policy are invited to present their papers. The Working Group is an instrument of sharing institutional and personal successes and failures that serve to promote professional advancement. It is not the success or failure in itself that has special significance from this perspective, but the route that have been taken, the obstacles that had to overcome, the factors that have been helpful or damaging. Thus papers should explicitly focus on ‘how’ in dealing with any specific issue of ‘what’.

This Working Group operates in several ways: forum for discussion, platform for initiatives, and vehicle for co-operation. It shall become what the participants are going to create out of it by sharing their own personal and institutional experiment on the problems they face with in their everyday work of teaching and managing departments, faculties and schools.

Call for papers

There is a diversity of PA / PP programmes across the post-socialist countries. Educational programmes differ in their content, mission, disciplinary orientation, pedagogy, relation to practice, etc. These differences can be counted for the national education tradition and institutional structures, and also to the adopted approaches, existing systems of entrance to civil service, national accreditation systems, and the varieties of interpretation of the term “public administration / public policy” – just to mention a few factors. This diversity provides great potential for a cooperation to learn from each other.

This Working Group has no intention to pronounce what is good and what is wrong in any particular PA / PP programme. By taking stock of educational accomplishments and identifying guidelines for progress the objective is to find the ways to improve PA / PP education that could contribute to the creation of effective civil service and better governance.

Papers that give a descriptive analysis of entire PA / PP programmes or some components and also provide evaluation of its advancement from the perspective embracing one or more the following exemplary issues are invited for presentations:

Coping with and/or implementing multi-discipline approach in PA / PP curricula – barriers and leverages
Gaining individual competencies to working for public organisations through PA / PP education
Core components of PA / PP programmes – comparative analysis
Developing a mission statement and/or an educational philosophy of a programme
PA / PP schools (programmes) and the practice of public administration– their relationship
PA schools and their environment: i.e. how the requirements of entry to civil service are taking into account in developing PA / PP educational programmes?
Linear stages and their meaning in PA education: Bachelors – Masters – Ph.D. degree
Ways of assessing the performance of the students as an answer to changes in the larger environment
The position and role of practical placement and internship of students in the curricula
The position and role of doing empirical and theoretical research in a PA / PP school (faculty, department)
Changes in the composition of the faculty of PA / PP programmes
The position and role of innovation (substantial and/or pedagogical) and quality improvement in PA / PP programmes
Key issues of past and future development of degree programmes of PA / PP education.

The Working Group on Degree Programs of PA/PP Education in Post-socialist Countries had been supported by a grant from The Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary http://lgi.osi.hu/