Call for Papers: Special Issue on Curriculum in Public Administration

Rationale and scope:

The trend across the higher education (HE) sector has increasingly been about demonstrating results and outcomes in both the research and teaching spheres. System-wide assessments of teaching quality and performance metrics that consider factors such as graduation rates and post-graduation employment and income have resulted in increased attention by policy-makers, faculty and students themselves on higher education curriculum. As whole new sectors of the economy develop and grow, employers are also signifying their interest in a university curriculum that is better aligned to their immediate requirements.

In response administrators and faculty of the HE sector are striving to find the right balance between a curriculum built upon the development of skills traditionally associated with the academy, e.g. critical thinking, research and writing, and the skills increasingly sought by the labour market. The HE sector has responded to this by increasing student access to service and work integrated learning and industry- university research and teaching partnerships. Public administration, as a discipline that has historically spanned the worlds of academia and practice, has not been isolated these trends.

Curriculum, as defined by Joseph Schwab (1983) is about “what is successfully conveyed to differing degrees to different students, by committed teachers using appropriate materials and actions”. The purpose of this special issue seeks to explore all of the dimensions proposed by Schwab through a focus on the state of the disciplinary curriculum and new approaches to curriculum development and delivery.

Call for papers:

Teaching Public Administration (TPA) is a peer-reviewed journal, published three times a year, which focuses on teaching and learning in public sector management and organisations. TPA is committed to publishing papers which promote critical thinking about the practice and process of teaching and learning as well as those which examine more theoretical and conceptual models of teaching and learning. It offers an international forum for the debate of a wide range of issues relating to how skills and knowledge are transmitted and acquired within public sector/not for profit organisations.

TPA is preparing a Special Issue on Curriculum in Public Administration broadly defined that will be published in March 2021. The special issue will feature original research, reflective and review articles focusing on all matters of design, development and implementation of the public administration curriculum in higher education and professional training and development. Manuscript contributions, from practitioners as well as academics, that take a multi-disciplinary approach to curriculum design and delivery or that focus on new approaches and pedagogies to teaching and learning in public administration, are especially welcome.

Abstract and manuscript submission guidelines.

Interested scholars are cordially invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words by 31 March 2020 to the Editor. The Abstracts should indicate authors names for correspondence purposes and clearly and briefly present: (1) a descriptive title; (2) a problem statement; (3) a sound conceptualization with theoretical grounding; (4) a purpose statement; (5) the ‘originality’ and significance of the paper; (6) a brief methodology (sources of data, tools and methods of analysis, etc.); and (7) potential contributions to knowledge.

Fully completed manuscripts of accepted abstracts will be due by 31 August 2021. The completed papers should not exceed 15 pages (double spaced/3500 words), inclusive of all tables, figures, and charts. TPA adheres to the SAGE Harvard reference style. All manuscripts will go through rigorous double blind- reviews.

Review, acceptance and publication timelines.

Authors are required to submit an abstract for review by 31 March 2020 with acceptance notifications sent to authors by 31 April 2020. Authors whose abstracts have been accepted with have until 31 August 2020 to submit the manuscript for peer review. Final manuscripts will be required by 15 January 2021 for publication in the March 2021 issue of TPA.

Abstract submission or information

All abstracts and queries should be submitted to the SI Guest Editor Michael A. O’Neill (University of Ottawa) by email at droneill@uottawa.ca.

Special issue editors

This special issue will be edited by Michael A. O’Neill (University of Ottawa) and co-editors Hiroko Kudo (Chuo University) and Prudence Brown (University of Queensland).