Abstract
We want to encourage scholarship, critical enquiry and reflection within the field of teaching and learning in public administration. We recognise that the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) has provided a home for such work and we are proud to be associated with this initiative. The changes within the field over the past 20 to 30 years have been significant. The extent to which those engaged in the teaching of the discipline have been able to resist broader processes of social and political change have varied. Indeed, these changes (the influence of neo-liberalism, the need to make sense of changes in governance and accountability at the national as well as the local level, the influence of supra-national institutions and the relationships between these developments and civil society) illustrate the importance of the field and how it can act as an important link between the different boundaries of politics, social policy and constitutional affairs, as well as ways of thinking and analysing concepts and theoretical frameworks. Indeed we can see how there have been important developments too post Bologna or those that highlight the potential for learning and reflection through institutional exchanges or across borders as well as the impact of ICT, the significance of accreditation and the on-going blurring of boundaries between the public and private.
We will award the Best Paper on Teaching and Learning at EGPA 2014 and will encourage the author to submit to SAGE’s Teaching Public Administration (TPA) via a fast track reviewing process.
We will present the winner with their award at EGPA 2015.
The paper will be judged by the convenors of the EGPA Permanent Study Group IX (Teaching and Learning Stream – Christopher Richard, Jean-Loup Chappelet and Arthur Ringeling) and by the editors of TPA (John Diamond and Catherine Farrell with our publisher Ellie Craven).