LIST OF PANELS

Case-studies are a valuable tool for teaching and learning and enable students to apply their knowledge and skills to a range of real world situations; to learn through practice; and reflect and participate in peer leaning, often with experts providing context and help with situating the problem. In public policy related teaching and learning, case-studies can help ready students for the unpredictable nature of policy problems and policy making and enable them to consider and negotiate problems and policy options with key interest groups of different positions and influence. Case-studies expose students of public policy to a wide range of issues that, when worked through, can contribute to workforce ‘readiness’ for a wide range of public policy roles and experiences. 

Case-studies are also useful tools for experiential learning. According to Kolb (1984), and later described by (Fenwick, 2001), in experiential learning “…new knowledge and skills are achieved through confrontation among concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and subsequent experimentation” or put more simply, education “grounded in experience” and “complemented by reflection” (Kreber, 2001, p.218).  The case-study is a tool that can facilitate the transition between each of these phases (Fenwick, 2001; Kreber, 2001), though it should be noted that the real world ‘learning’ gained will depend on the way in which the case-study is facilitated in the learning environment, and the balance and interaction between experience, reflection and prior and developing knowledge.

Public policy can be ‘messy’ and does not follow a set of predicted or predictable stages of development. And while case-studies can be useful for shifting typical university teaching from the traditional ‘abstract conceptualisation’ to ‘concrete experience’ (Kreber, 2001, p.220), for a case-study to successfully provide ‘concrete experience’ in public policy, it needs to reflect real-world experience, and any attempt to formulate solutions to set problems will fall short of experiential learning.  This presents some unique challenges to case-study teaching in the field of public policy. This panel would like to explore how case-studies in public policy teaching address these challenges.

The objective of this session are fourfold. The first objective is to identify the range of approaches for using case-studies in public policy related teaching and learning. These could include individual or team based, simulations or role play, etc. The second is to determine which public policy related learning outcomes are best suited to these different modes, and content. For example, what are best suited for evidence evaluation and synthesis? Stakeholder engagement? Policy development? Policy evaluation? etc. The third is to identify the ways in which case-studies used in public policy teaching and learning can be evaluated – for specific knowledge and practice (or competency) based learning outcomes. The fourth is, to explore the range of structures and compositions of public/private public policy case-study repositories for use in teaching and learning and to identify elements of these that support quality public policy teaching and learning.

References:

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.  

Fenwick, T. (2001) Experiential Learning: A Theoretical Critique from Five Perspectives Information Series No. 385: 1-74. ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, Columbus, OH.

Kreber, C. (2001) Learning experientially through case studies? A conceptual analysis. Teaching in Higher Education, 6 (2):217-228. 

This panel invites papers that explore the research questions (but are not limited to):

· How are case-studies used in teaching and learning of public policy, or more specifically: What are best practice examples of the use of case-studies as a tool in teaching and learning of public policy?

· What are the different modes used, and which are best suited for specific policy-related learning outcomes?

· How do we best evaluate the use of case-studies in public policy for preparing students for real world policy processes?

· What are the different structures and compositions of repository platforms for public policy related case-study sharing and learning, and how do these facilitate quality teaching and learning and in what contexts?

Papers can be empirically based using qualitative and/or quantitative data, or include case-studies of good examples of teaching and learning using the tool that is the topic of this panel.  It is expected that the paper attempts to answer one or more of the questions above.