The meaning of doing

Abstract

Governments write us into being by compelling the public to fill in tiny boxes on forms revealing our most private information. These personal details become matters of public record. What if students thought about how writing in public administration shapes us? In the spring of 2015, my Public Administration class joined with New York City Historic Houses Trust and its LatimerNOW project a not-for-profit organization affiliated with the New York City Parks department whose goal is to reimagine the use of historic house museums, Louis Latimer House and Writing On It All (a participatory art not-for-profit exploring space and identity through writing) to learn public administration through participation in a public participatory art project. The immediate goal was for the students to use public administration theory to design, implement, participate and evaluate a one-day project. The hope was to offer a chance to practice on a real project in a safe space so that they could later use the skills once they were employed in public administration (and the stakes were higher). I engaged reflective practice to get them to move from theory to practical application, forcing them to defend and make explicit their administrative choices, thus offering a common vocabulary for critical conversations about the process and the results. In this article, I describe the experience and critically evaluate how reflective practice can add to the teaching and learning of public administration.

Internationalizing public administration education: Why and how?

“…In other words, we engaged openly, candidly, and intentionally with the subject matter reflected on here and the subsequent narrative features specificity and detail that could be derived only from direct experience. Second, intentional reflection on lived experience is critical for learning—“reflective practice, or the capacity to reflect on action and engage in a process of continuous learning” is integral to professional practice and is valuable, whether as a comparative study or singular case (Harper 2018: p . 145; Schon 1983).…”

“…145; Schon 1983). The “critical analysis and evaluation” granted by reflective practitioners can “refocus thinking on existing knowledge and help generate new knowledge and ideas (Harper 2018: p . 145).…”

“…I adopt the perspective of a reflective practitioner throughout (Schon 1983(Schon , 1987Harper 2018). Thus, this article is not intended to be the "last word" on internationalizing public administration education, but rather aims to stimulate more thoughtful and innovative curricula design.…”

Transforming the master of public administration education for a changing world of work: A personal account of a South African case

“…Let us turn to our assumptions on how people learn. These assumptions are informed mainly by the works How people learn: Bridging research and practice by the National Research Council (NRC) (1999) in the USA, Promoting professional inquiry for improved outcomes for students in New Zealand by Timperley et al (2009) and The meaning of doing: Reflective practice in public administration education by Harper (2018). For this project, we departed from the following assumptions on how people learn: Assumption 1: Our students are situated within the world of public administration and are academically qualified (at least a 4-year higher education qualification) with considerable experience in and preconceptions of public administration.…”

“…Let us turn to our assumptions on how people learn. These assumptions are informed mainly by the works How people learn: Bridging research and practice by the National Research Council (NRC) (1999) in the USA, Promoting professional inquiry for improved outcomes for students in New Zealand by Timperley et al (2009) and The meaning of doing: Reflective practice in public administration education by Harper (2018). For this project, we departed from the following assumptions on how people learn:…”