| Abstract: | This essay presents two pedagogical models found in public policy programs, and attends (less exhaustively) to the managerial environment in which they coexist. The models are, of course, lecturing in all its various versions, and the cluster of teaching practices called case‐method teaching, student‐centered learning, active learning, experiential learning, discussion‐based teaching, and the like. The central question addressed is: How can it be that we still don't know which is better, or which is better for what, if know means anything like what it means in the larger policy analytic paradigm? Research comparing practices can improve our choices and outcomes.12 12 1 Thanks to myriad colleagues (especially) John Boehrer, J. Mark Schuster, Eugene Bardach, and David Kirp, plus my cohort of 2005–06 Presidential Chair Fellows and that program's very committed leader, Steve Tollefson, for discussions of pedagogy that have reminded me over the years that teaching could be an intellectually demanding, rigorous, and collaborative enterprise, and to Robert MacCoun for comments on drafts of this paper. |
