Measuring the practice of engagement in public administration

Abstract

Following recent calls for greater synergies between public administration's (PA)’s academic and practitioner communities, this paper examines the prevalence and use of engaged teaching and faculty practices in Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA)-affiliated schools. Results are reported from a survey of PA academic program leaders that includes specific practices – such as the use of service-learning pedagogies, teaching-cases, and faculty–practitioner exchange programs – suggested in the literature. While anecdotal evidence suggests that these practices promote connectedness between PA’s scholarly and practitioner communities, little is known empirically about how widely they are employed or how their use differs across faculty cohorts and institutional settings. This study attempts to address that gap, providing both empirical context and a baseline against which future studies can be compared.

Keywords

Engaged teaching engaged scholarship service learning teaching cases case study

Introduction

The political economy of higher education in the USA has created a challenging operating environment for colleges and universities. Multiple stakeholders (e.g. lawmakers, students, and community leaders) are raising tough questions about the costs of higher education, the value and relevance of what faculty are teaching and researching, and various aspects of student performance, including learning outcomes, time-to-degree, degree completion, and job readiness (Arum and Roska, 2011; Doyle, 2006; Driscoll and Sandmann, 2004; Vogelgesang et al., 2010). Helping to drive these questions is a general and pervasive sense that higher education is increasingly disconnected from the nation’s important problems (Boyer, 1996).

As both an academic discipline and field of professional practice, these concerns are particularly salient to public administration (PA). Indeed, several PA scholars have sounded the alarm about the declining value ascribed to the discipline, a development that calls into question the viability of its academic programs (Rich, 2013; Shand and Howell, 2015). A key contributor to this state of affairs is PA’s ongoing struggle to maintain meaningful and productive linkages between its academic and practitioner communities. These “struggles for connectedness” (Newland, 2000) have been the subject of frequent examination over recent years, resulting in a number of strategies to bridge the so-called “theory–practice gap” (e.g. Battaglio and Scicchitano, 2013; Bolton and Stolcis, 2003; Bushouse et al., 2011; Gibson and Deadrick, 2010; Ospina and Dodge, 2005; Posner, 2009; Wang et al., 2013). Scholars and administrators alike tend to agree that PA would be better served by a greater level of collaboration and share a consensus that growing and persistent disconnectedness leaves both communities lacking (e.g. Battaglio and Scicchitano, 2013; Posner, 2009). Nonetheless, achieving lasting connections within the field has proven elusive.

A variety of proposals have been offered to address these concerns. Some have called for a reexamination of the quality, relevance, and accessibility of PA’s scholarly research (e.g. Bolton and Stolcis, 2003; Ospina and Dodge, 2005; Wang et al., 2013), believing that a realignment of research priorities would facilitate renewed engagement between academics and practitioners (Martin, 2016). Others have focused on PA education. For example, one of Denhardt’s (2001: 527) “big questions” of PA education focuses on whether to teach to theory or practice, a question that is characterized as the field’s “central tension.” For some (e.g. pre-service) students a practical focus, coupled with engaged pedagogies, has great appeal (Denhardt, 2001; Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016). Finally, more recent critiques draw upon Boyer’s (1990) framework of engaged scholarship to offer a more holistic solution to the connectedness problem (Bushouse et al., 2011; Koliba, 2007; Rich, 2013; Schweik et al., 2011; Volcker Alliance, 2017). An engaged approach to addressing the theory–practice disconnect spans the research, teaching, and service realms of faculty work and entails partnering with communities to address practical problems.

Of the various calls for engaged scholarship in PA, Bushouse et al.’s (2011) work is most relevant to current purposes. While acknowledging the need for practitioner-oriented research, the authors go further to propose more deliberate efforts to link theory with practice through the scholarly functions of teaching and service. In particular, they call for an expansion of what they term “engaged teaching” and “engaged faculty” practices. As described in the following section, these teaching and service-based forms of engagement may lead to enhanced learning opportunities for PA students as well as greater connectedness between PA scholars and practitioners.

While there is some anecdotal evidence that engaged teaching and service practices may help to bridge the theory–practice gap in PA, little is empirically known about the extent to which PA faculty members utilize these practices or how such utilization varies across institutional settings and faculty cohorts. This article is an initial attempt to address these questions. We report results from a survey of academic program leaders (e.g. chairs, department heads, and deans) at Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA)-affiliated schools regarding the extent to which engaged scholarly practices are being utilized in PA programs. Our analysis also considers the effects of faculty (gender, age, tenure status, and rank) and institutional characteristics on the reported use of engaged practices. The results provide a baseline measure against which future studies can be compared. They also offer valuable contextual information for current and future faculty members regarding opportunities for the practice of engagement across institutional settings. Finally, to the extent that engaged teaching and faculty practices speak to the prospects of greater academic and practitioner connectedness, the paper offers a measure of where we stand as a discipline.

Literature review

Ernest Boyer published Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Boyer, 1990) in response to what he perceived as an increasingly unhealthy divide between the priorities of the professoriate and the pressing needs of American society. Advocating for a closer alignment of academic incentives with the public interest, Boyer proposed a comprehensive approach to scholarship that accounted for the rigorous, scientific work of knowledge creation, as well as the societal need for practical education and accessible research.

Since dubbed “engaged scholarship,” Boyer’s initial framework identified four dimensions of scholarship: (a) discovery; (b) integration; (c) application; and (d) teaching. The scholarship of discovery aligned with prevailing norms in the field of higher education by emphasizing basic research conducted in the pursuit of knowledge. Boyer added to that the scholarship of integration, which sought to bridge the gap between disparate fields of study by integrating knowledge bases and situating them in their broader context. The scholarship of application focused on the development of research agendas tailored to meet the needs of practitioner communities (i.e. raising substantively relevant questions and conducting research with the aim of providing professional guidance). And finally, the scholarship of teaching emphasized the importance of knowledge sharing as an academic process.

Boyer’s critique, which addressed the academic community at large, has prompted many institutions to embrace engaged scholarship, thus making it one of the major innovations in higher education over recent decades (O’Meara et al., 2011). While the overall influence has been significant, it has been most pronounced in applied disciplines such as PA, where engagement is often regarded as an effective means of connecting theory with practice and enhancing the perceived legitimacy of academic disciplines charged with serving the public good. Posner underscores the value and importance of engagement, noting that “The world of practice serves as the center point of the academic compass for most professional programs” (Posner, 2009: 13) and that through engagement, “Academics not only gain an audience, but enhance the depth and quality of their own scholarship and theory…” (Posner, 2009: 14). Bushouse et al. (2011) also posit that issues of concern to practitioners should, to a great extent, inform academic efforts (including scholarly research agendas and PA curriculum), and they agree that engaged scholarship offers a means of forging and solidifying these bonds.

In this spirit, a number of PA scholars have advocated a greater reliance on engaged scholarship (i.e. all of its dimensions) as a means of connecting academic and practitioner communities (e.g. Bushouse et al., 2011; Koliba, 2007; Raffel, 2007). Following the Minnowbrook III Conference (2008), Bushouse et al. (2011) leveraged the engaged scholarship framework to call for greater relevance and accessibility in PA’s scholarly work. Drawing upon Boyer’s initial framework, they proposed a greater commitment to engaged teaching and engaged faculty initiatives.¹ Under these banners they outlined a number of specific practices, including service learning and case-study pedagogies, as well as faculty–practitioner exchanges and community-based service activities.

Their recommendations echoed previous concerns raised in the literature. For example, Goodman argued that “Public administration as a discipline can better speak the practitioner’s language if classroom instruction is relevant and focuses on contemporary issues” (Goodman, 2008: 254). In similar fashion, others have recommended that PA faculty become more engaged in the practice of public administration in order to ground their research and teaching in practice and develop a greater appreciation for the real-world challenges faced by public administrators (Bolton and Stolcis, 2003; Martin, 2016). In each instance, the authors have argued that these efforts would not necessitate a diminishment in the rigor or quality of the field’s scholarship.

Given that engaged scholarship has emerged as a significant innovation in higher education, and in light of its potential to address PA’s longstanding concern over connectedness, it is important to assess the extent to which faculty members have adopted engaged scholarship. We focus here on two aspects of engagement: engaged teaching; and faculty practices. In the sections below, we endeavor to clarify these terms and identify barriers to the adoption of engaged practices among PA scholars and the academy at large. This discussion is followed by a review of the data and methods employed in this study, an analysis of the survey findings, and a discussion of the study’s limitations and implications.

Defining engaged teaching practices

Bushouse et al. loosely define engaged teaching as the use of “innovative teaching techniques that connect theory and practice” (Bushouse et al., 2011: 100). In advocating these methods, they note that “By making PA education more closely linked to the ‘real world’, we help PA students learn how theory can inform practice” (Bushouse et al., 2011: 105). In particular, the authors highlight the use of service-learning, teaching-case studies, and student reflection exercises as innovative techniques that can help to bridge the theory–practice gap. Other examples of engaged teaching practices include public service internships, capstone courses, and course-based service learning (D’Agostino, 2008; Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016). Along with developing links between theory and practice, many of these techniques also provide students with invaluable networking and professional development opportunities.

Service learning pedagogies integrate classroom learning with community-based projects, allowing students to apply curricula lessons to real-world scenarios (Bushouse and Morrison, 2001; Imperial et al., 2007). In the context of PA, these pedagogies are typically practiced in cooperation with nonprofit and local government organizations. As a result, service learning courses are sometimes referred to as “client-based” (Meltzer, 2013) and can serve a variety of stakeholders both internal (students, faculty, and department) and external (organizations and community) to the university.

In general, there is considerable evidence suggesting that service learning pedagogies support a number of critical outcomes, including student learning objectives (Warren, 2012), problem-solving skills (Bernacki and Jaeger, 2008), degree completion (Lockeman and Pelco, 2013), the persistence of low-income, first generation students (Yeh, 2010), awareness and understanding of social issues (Eyler et al., 1997), and an increased sense of self-efficacy on the part of students (Deck et al., 2015). In the case of PA, similarly positive outcomes have been reported for students (Dicke et al., 2004; Lambright, 2008). Faculty, too, report positive experiences when using service learning, yet they also experience barriers in incorporating it into their curricula (Eyler et al., 2001). Community partners also generally have positive experiences (Carpenter, 2011; Dicke et al., 2004; Sprague and Hu, 2015) with the caveat that attention has to be paid to their organization’s capacity to support and manage students while still providing robust programming to clients (Littlepage et al., 2012).

Arguably, service learning pedagogies are already widely incorporated into PA education (e.g. Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016; Kapucu and Knox, 2013; Stout, 2013; Wheeland and Palus, 2010; Witesman, 2012). The field’s pedagogical literature abounds with case studies (i.e. Kearns, 2014; Lambright, 2008) and best-practices (e.g. Imperial et al., 2007; Kearns, 2014) to help scholars incorporate service learning into PA curricula and understand important considerations regarding the assessment of service learning outcomes.

Along with service learning, teaching-cases represent an alternative method of engaged teaching. The teaching-cases referred to in this instance differ from the “case-study” method commonly employed in scholarly research. As Velenchik notes, “A teaching-case is a rich narrative in which individuals or groups must make a decision or solve a problem” (Velenchik, 2015: 206). Teaching-cases allow students to embrace practical scenarios based on strategic and thoughtful problem-solving grounded in theoretical concepts. Unlike service learning and other community engaged pedagogies, teaching-cases maintain the locus of learning within the classroom, however they emphasize active student participation over traditional lecture-based formats (Burko, 2016).

Compared to service learning, the use of teaching-cases is notably less prevalent, though not absent, in PA’s pedagogical literature. Donald, for example, describes a case-study pedagogy used in a public human resources management class to supplement traditional lectures, noting that cases are valuable for “acquainting students with real-life human resources management problems and with the group decision-making skills to solve them” (Donald, 2003: 20). Hartley (2009) describes a more extensive, semester long project, wherein students study real-world public policy conflicts to apply conflict management and dispute resolution techniques. Goodman (2008) presents an example of problem-based learning, which can be considered a variant of the case-study method. In each instance, the authors report positive student learning outcomes associated with case-study instruction.

Beyond the examples from the literature, there have been several concerted efforts to promote the use of teaching-cases in PA. Notable examples include the University of Washington’s Electronic Hallway, Rutgers University-Newark Cases and Simulations Portal, the Maxwell School’s Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (E-PARCC) online resource, and Harvard’s Kennedy School Case Program. These efforts to assemble and disseminate case study resources have likely facilitated greater use of teaching cases in the discipline. Still, as Bushouse et al. (2011) note, academic incentive structures typically do not reward PA scholars for developing teaching cases, potentially undermining even greater development and use of this engaged teaching strategy.

Finally, under the banner of engaged teaching, Bushouse et al. (2011) note the importance of student reflection as a pedagogical technique. They encourage PA instructors to create space, both in the classroom as well as in the context of community engaged projects, to reflect on links between theory and practice through media such as classroom discussions, written assignments, oral presentations, and even simulated consulting projects. Similarly, Imperial et al. (2007) underscore the importance of student reflection, particularly in the context of service learning projects. Along with providing meaning and context to such projects, they suggest that reflection exercises offer a critical opportunity to assess the attainment of student learning outcomes. The role of PA faculty as facilitators in the student reflection process is critical; to this end, Bushouse et al. (2011) and Stout and Holmes (2013), underscore John Dewey’s observation that “True learning is based on discovery guided by mentoring rather than the transmission of information.”

It has been argued in recent years (e.g. Battaglio and Scicchitano, 2013; Posner, 2009) that the adoption of engaged teaching practices is increasingly important. Battaglio and Scicchitano (2013) note the distinct bifurcation, increasingly apparent since the 1940s, between practitioners and academics in relation to audience, viewpoints, purpose, and methods. These distinctions make it ever more difficult for faculty to effectively engage with students who are looking to enter the public sector. Posner underscores this concern, arguing that “the failure of professional schools to teach…for their natural markets is far more threatening to their social and economic function of preparing students to excel in the worlds of business and public organizations” (Posner, 2009: 13). Highlighting the role of the “pracademic,” Posner (2009) notes the importance of connecting curriculum with real-world needs and experiences (see also Koliba, 2007). This, he suggests, more effectively prepares students, and the discipline, to work on behalf of their target populations. In this way, PA faculty who guide students through service learning, teaching cases, and focused reflection can counteract the disconnect between communities of practice and academic scholarship in PA.

Defining engaged faculty practices

In comparison to teaching, engaged faculty practices are, like professional service in general, less well defined (Holland, 1999; Ward, 2003). At the broadest level, distinctions are typically drawn between internal service (e.g. to the department, college, and university) and external service (to the profession, community, state, and nation). To reflect engaged faculty practices, professional service is that which is directed external to the university and requires faculty to apply their disciplinary expertise to help address community problems (Sandmann et al., 2000; Ward, 2003).

Faculty engagement can come in many specific forms, including university extension (in the Land Grant tradition), consulting, and community and civic service (Ward, 2003). Other varieties include media outreach and legal expert consulting (Smith, 2011). In the specific context of PA, Bushouse et al. (2011) offer four examples of engaged faculty practices: (a) membership and participation in professional associations; (b) service on public/nonprofit boards and commissions; (c) consulting for government/nonprofit organizations; and (d) faculty–practitioner exchange programs, wherein faculty members temporarily work as public administrators while their practitioner counterparts temporarily work in academia as adjunct and visiting faculty members.

As this suggests, engaged faculty efforts focus on directly immersing PA faculty in the field of professional practice. These approaches promote firsthand knowledge about contemporary PA on the part of PA scholars and, in so doing, help enrich classroom instruction and ground academic research in practice. Such faculty engagement is not new to the field of PA. From its inception, the discipline was shaped by the early contributions of “pracademics” such as Gulick, White, and Merriam, who spanned the academic divide as both scholars and practitioners (Ospina and Dodge, 2005; Posner, 2009). Posner noted that “the field of PA was in no small part premised on sustaining a healthy academic–practitioner connection…” (Posner, 2009: 12).

The types of engaged faculty practices noted by Bushouse et al. (2011) echo other recent calls to restore the field’s focus on faculty engagement. For example, Bolton and Stolcis (2003) advocate for more robust agency–university partnerships and the formalization of faculty–practitioner exchange programs, allowing faculty to spend time working directly in public-sector organizations. Similarly, Martin argues that the “connective tissues” linking academics and practitioners could be strengthened through faculty/staff exchanges that would allow “researchers to spend time embedded in government and to witness firsthand the intricacies of the policy process” (Martin, 2016: 19). Smith (2011) also argues that service-related activities such as consulting and serving on nonprofit boards can help scholars “energize” their research while also establishing greater connections with relevant professional communities (see also McDonald and Mooney, 2011).

Empirical analyses of the benefits yielded by faculty engagement have been scarce; however, there is some limited evidence that these practices do improve the quality of classroom instruction and promote positive public relations for academic institutions (e.g. Bermudez, 2005; Lantos, 1994). Examples of engaged faculty practices can be seen in the PA literature, spanning individual and programmatic initiatives. For example, Wheeland and Palus (2010) provide a profile of co-teaching and a university/local government partnership, while Simon et al. (2014) discuss program partnerships with nonprofit organizations. Often these examples of engagement are portrayed as novelties even as others advocate for replication and more wholesale integration. To best meet the needs of students and communities, faculty engagement practices should somehow be better integrated into programmatic design, hiring decisions, and departmental management (Bushouse et al., 2011).

Barriers to use of engaged teaching and engaged faculty practices

While engaged teaching and faculty practices hold some promise for building greater connectivity between academic and practitioner communities, the literature notes a number of barriers working against their adoption. Several authors, for example, point out that current faculty incentive structures – especially tenure and promotion standards – do not promote these practices (Boudreau, 2015; Coggburn and Neely, 2015; Posner, 2009). Therefore, it is not surprising that faculty are unlikely to devote substantial effort to activities that are not rewarded (Snipes and Carter, 2012).

The disincentives to engaged practices may be most pronounced in the case of engaged teaching. Indeed, one of the most telling reasons why community engaged pedagogies are not more widely used is the time demands they place on faculty (as well as students and community partners) (Godwin and Meek, 2016; Imperial et al., 2007; Sprague and Hu, 2015; Stout, 2013; Wodicka et al., 2012). As Meltzer notes, the efficacy of an engaged pedagogy “relies heavily on instructor commitment, and this component cannot be compromised as easily [as other aspects of program or course design]” (Meltzer, 2013: 422). This sentiment is widespread, with scholars noting the significant time commitment required to build and implement a successful community engaged pedagogy that is mutually beneficial to faculty, students, and community partners (e.g. Bushouse et al., 2011; Imperial et al., 2007; Meltzer, 2013). As Posner (2009) suggests, the reward structures for faculty are such that investing time in teaching, beyond what is required in a traditional classroom, takes time away from research and publication.

Similar forces may be at play regarding involvement in engaged faculty practices. As Holland (1999) notes, there are a number of obstacles to faculty undertaking engagement roles. These include time constraints, confusion over what constitutes valued external public service work, lack of confidence and experience in doing such work, and lack of alignment between engaged practices and institutional missions and reward structures (see also Ward, 2003). Since service has traditionally taken a back seat to research and teaching in terms of faculty rewards, many faculty lack the motivation to engage in public service roles (McDonald and Mooney, 2011; Vogelgesang et al., 2010; Ward, 2003).

Junior faculty seeking tenure are not the only population potentially affected by time devoted to teaching or service. Many program rankings rely on the visible outputs of departments as a whole, especially peer-reviewed publications. Thus, rankings tied to traditional notions of scholarship (i.e. research or the scholarship of discovery) can create institutional disincentives for faculty engagement (Vogelgesang et al., 2010). Since undertaking time-intensive engaged practices may limit research productivity, program rankings could be hurt, in turn hampering the recruitment and retention of students (Terpstra and Honoree, 2009).

In an effort to address some of these concerns, institutions are beginning to answer calls for greater funding to support partnership development and sustainability, as well as modifications to rank, tenure, and promotion policies. In efforts to support both pedagogy and faculty engagement, organizations such as Campus Compact are offering programs and tools for universities to design faculty rewards structures encouraging community engagement in both research and teaching (Chamberlin and Phelps-Hillen, 2017). Despite the availability of these resources on many campuses, recent evidence from the field of PA suggests that these efforts have had a limited and slow effect thus far (e.g. Coggburn and Neely, 2015; D’Agostino, 2008; Neely and Coggburn, 2017). In order to increase the prevalence of these practices, Koliba (2007) calls for a renegotiation of expectations for faculty rewards structures, such that engaged faculty practices and engaged teaching practices are better aligned with promotion, tenure, and rankings standards. In short, embracing public engagement may be the best path forward for PA (Rich, 2013).

In sum, engaged scholarship has been offered as a way to improve the connection between PA theory and practice. The literature includes the identification of specific teaching and faculty service practices that reflect engaged scholarship, as well as a number of barriers that may work against their adoption. While there is some anecdotal evidence that these practices are taking root in the discipline, there remains a need for empirical data that provide a better picture of how widespread these practices are in PA and what factors are related to their use.

Data and methods

This study reports data from a survey of academic program leaders in NASPAA-affiliated schools of public policy, affairs, and administration. The sampling frame included department heads and chairs from 273 member-institutions. A total of 144 usable responses were obtained, for a response rate of 54%. The survey was administered using a tailored-design survey methodology (Dillman, 2007), including a multiple contacts strategy (i.e. pretesting, a pre-survey notice, personalized follow-ups, etc.). While the survey covered a variety of topics related to PA scholarship, this article focuses specifically on questions related to engaged teaching and faculty practices. The survey questions examined in this analysis were intentionally crafted to reflect suggested forms of engagement from the PA literature, especially Bushouse et al.’s (2011) operationalization of engaged teaching and faculty practices, in an effort to empirically measure the extent to which these practices are being utilized across the discipline. Table 1 provides a summary of respondents based on a variety of institutional characteristics.

Table 1.

Survey respondents’ public administration (PA) program characteristics.

Characteristic	Percentage (number)
PA program institutional location (n = 141) A separate professional school or college A separate institute or center Department or program within business school/college Department or program within a school/college other than business Program located within a political science department Program located within a department other than political science Other	18.4 (26) 2.1 (3) 12.8 (18) 26.2 (37) 34.8 (49) 2.1 (3) 3.5 (5)
Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA)-affiliated Master’s degree accredited? (n =141) Yes No	69.5 (98) 30.5 (43)
Degrees offered (n = 144) Bachelor’s in public administration/affairs/policy Master of Public Administration (MPA) Master of Public Policy Master of Public Affairs Executive MPA Other Master’s degrees PhD in public administration/affairs/policy Doctor of Public Administration/Affairs	23.6 (34) 83.3 (120) 9.7 (14) 4.9 (7) 11.1 (16) 25.0 (36) 29.2 (42) 2.8 (4)
Academic institution characteristics (n = 144) Public university Private university Faith-based/religiously-affiliated institution Land grant university Urban campus International (non-US) institution Historically Black college or university Hispanic serving institution Carnegie Community Engaged Campus Doctoral/research intensive university Unionized faculty	78.5 (113) 16.7 (24) 4.9 (7) 12.5 (18) 27.8 (40) 1.4 (2) 2.1 (3) 5.6 (8) 10.4 (15) 29.2 (42) 17.4 (25)
Number of: Full-time, tenured/tenuretrack faculty in your academic unit (n = 136) 0 1–5 6–10 11–15 16–20 20+ Students in your NASPAA-affiliated Master’s program(s) (n = 139) 1–50 51–100 101–150 151–200 201+	2.2 (3) 27.2 (37) 39.0 (53) 17.6 (24) 7.4 (10) 6.6 (9) 23.7 (33) 25.9 (36) 22.3 (31) 13.7 (19) 14.4 (20)

Findings and discussion

Engaged teaching

Table 2 reports survey responses pertaining to the prevalence of engaged teaching practices. As the data show, engaged teaching is utilized at significant rates within the discipline, but these practices have not yet been adopted by a majority of PA faculty members. According to the survey results, the most commonly employed practice is the use of teaching-cases. Combining the “all/almost all” and “most” categories, the results show that 50% of institutions reported that a majority of their faculty use this pedagogical technique. This finding supports the characterization of teaching case studies as a “standard educational device” (Rosenbloom, 1995: 44) or “signature pedagogy” (Shulman, 2005) in PA education (see Schweik et al., 2011). Given the development and dissemination of case-study materials noted above, using case-studies may present a lower bar than other engaged pedagogies that faculty might be considering. This corroborates Demb and Wade’s (2012) conclusion that faculty’s choices about which engaged activities to undertake are affected by the time commitment associated with each.

Table 2.

Engaged teaching practices in public administration (PA) programs.

What proportion of PA faculty members in your academic unit are engaged in the following activities:	Percentage of respondents indicating…
	All/almost All	Most	About half	Some	None/almost none
Using teaching cases in PA classes	15.9	34.1	18.1	29.7	2.2
Incorporating service learning components into PA classes	3.6	15.3	20.4	48.9	11.7
Supervising PA students in public service internships	5.0	10.1	9.4	59.7	15.8
Involving PA students in community- based research projects	5.8	12.4	21.2	52.6	8.0

Source: Public Affairs and Administration Scholarship and Tenure Expectations Survey, February–April 2012.

The second most commonly used practice was problem-based, service learning projects, with about one-fifth of respondents indicating that more than half of faculty in their programs were incorporating service learning into their classes and another fifth indicating that about half were. On the other hand, this means that 60% of responding institutions reported that less than half of their faculty members were employing this technique in the classroom. The literature notes that PA is well-suited for service learning (Bryer, 2011; D’Agostino, 2008; Imperial et al., 2007), there is general enthusiasm for it (Lambright, 2008), and its use is pervasive (Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016). Our results suggest PA remains “fertile ground” for service learning (Imperial et al., 2007: 244) although its current use may be more moderate than previously thought.

Similar results were found for the final two types of engaged teaching included in the survey. About 60% of institutions reported that less than half of their faculty members were involving students in community-based research efforts. This finding is similar to Demb and Wade’s (2012), who found the use of community-based research to be among the lowest of the activities they examined. Finally, 75% of institutions reported that less than half of their PA faculty were involved in the supervision of public service internships. This latter finding is not surprising, as the supervision of internships is often coordinated by a central figure such as the graduate program director or, where resources allow, an internship coordinator (nor does it suggest that internships are not common in PA programs; see D’Agostino, 2008).

For advocates of increasing the use of engaged teaching practices, these findings are not necessarily disheartening. The results indicate that there is a healthy degree of engaged teaching occurring in PA classrooms across the country. However, the overall findings suggest that engaged teaching practices have not been widely adopted by faculty members at a majority of NASPAA-affiliated programs. This “wide but not deep” finding is likely due in part to variations in teaching style, course content, and expected student learning outcomes. However, it could also be the result of institutional priorities and the limited weight ascribed to teaching outcomes by prevailing tenure and promotion standards in PA (Coggburn and Neely, 2015). Given the additional time constraints associated with, say, service learning or community-based research, such an interpretation is certainly plausible.

Engaged faculty

Table 3 reports the prevalence of engaged faculty practices among NASPAA-affiliated schools of public policy, affairs, and administration. The data suggest that these practices are considerably less widespread than engaged teaching. A majority of institutions reported that fewer than half of their PA faculty members were involved in any of the engaged faculty practices covered in this analysis. Specifically, 57% of responding institutions reported that less than half of their faculty members were engaged in professional consulting activities. Whether compensated or not, this form of engagement entails faculty applying scholarly expertise beyond campus, something that may be particularly beneficial when it involves government agencies (Ward, 2003). These findings suggest that PA may be missing an opportunity to inform public decision-making, build positive connections with governments, and energize their own research (Smith, 2011; Ward, 2003).

Table 3.

Engaged faculty practices in public administration (PA) programs.

What proportion of PA faculty members in your academic unit are engaged in the following activities:	Percentage of respondents indicating…
	All/almost all	Most	About half	Some	None/almost none
Serving on a public (nonpartisan) board, council, or commission	1.5	15.3	16.1	58.4	8.8
Serving on a nonprofit board	0.7	11.7	13.9	65.7	8.0
Providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations	5.8	20.3	16.7	53.6	3.6
Participating in faculty/practitioner exchange programs	0.0	2.9	3.6	24.8	68.6

Source: Public Affairs and Administration Scholarship and Tenure Expectations Survey, February–April 2012.

Similarly, 67% reported that fewer than half of their faculty were actively serving on public boards, councils, or commissions, and 74% reported that fewer than half were actively serving on nonprofit boards. By far, the least practiced method of faculty engagement was participation in faculty–practitioner exchanges, with a strong majority of institutions (69%) reporting that none of their faculty were involved in such activities.

Based on these responses, there appears to be considerable room for PA scholars to expand their involvement in the practice of public administration. As noted above, the historical roots of PA were heavily influenced by boundary spanning “pracademics” who bridged the professional domains of academia and practice. The data reported here suggest that today’s PA scholars may be more academically isolated than their predecessors, and as many scholars have suggested, this may hinder their ability to prepare students for the world of practice, as well as to produce actionable research for PA’s practitioner community.

Differences among faculty cohorts and institutional types

The preceding discussion provides an overall view of engaged teaching and service activity in PA. However, there are demographic, disciplinary, and institutional factors that influence faculty participation in engaged scholarship. Speaking of external service, Ward notes that “Expectations for faculty to perform service roles, particularly outreach roles, are significantly affected by institutional type, discipline, and rank, as well as demographic characteristics like race and gender” (Ward, 2003: 83–84; see also Demb and Wade, 2012). Given this, it is important to consider differences in PA faculty members’ engaged scholarship associated with demographic and institutional characteristics.

Faculty demographics

The survey included an item asking respondents to indicate which of their faculty members were more involved in engaged practices. Previous research has found that women and faculty of color perform more service than men and whites, including more externally-focused service (Ward 2003; citing Antonio et al., 2000; O’Meara, 2002), and are more likely to teach community-engaged courses (O’Meara, 2002; Vogelgesang et al., 2010). Likewise, tenure status and age have also been identified as factors influencing levels of faculty engagement, though the findings have been less consistent regarding whether younger and pre-tenured faculty are more or less likely to undertake engaged activities than more senior and tenured faculty (see Demb and Wade, 2010).

Table 4 shows reported differences in the use of engaged practices based on faculty gender, minority/non-minority status, tenure status, and age. The responses indicate that there are no appreciable differences in engaged teaching and faculty practices based on gender, with nearly 80% of respondents indicating no gender difference in their departments, with 11.5% perceiving more male faculty involvement, and 9.4% perceiving more female faculty involvement. This finding is consistent with that of Gaurino and Borden (2017) who find that gendered differences in service activity are driven by differences in internal service (e.g. to the department or university) rather than external service. In the case of race/ethnicity, respondents were twice as likely to indicate that non-minority (i.e. White/Non-Hispanic) faculty members were more heavily engaged in these practices (13% to 6.4%, respectively), but once again the majority of institutions (80%) reported no difference between minority and non-minority faculty members. This differs from findings noted above that show minority faculty often are more heavily engaged in service activities.

Table 4.

Engaged teaching/faculty practices by faculty characteristics.

Who is more involved in the practices of engaged teaching/faculty…
Faculty characteristics	Percentage selected
Female faculty members	9.4
Males faculty members	11.5
No difference	79.1
Minority faculty members	6.4
Non-minority faculty members*	12.9
No difference	80.7
Pre-tenured faculty members	8.8
Tenured faculty members	28.5
Non-tenure track faculty	5.1
No difference	57.7
Younger faculty (34 years old or younger)	9.4
Middle age faculty (35–54 years old)	26.6
Older faculty (55 years or older)	10.1
No difference	54.0

Note: *non-minority faculty members are defined as “White, Non-Hispanic”

Source: Public Affairs and Administration Scholarship and Tenure Expectations Survey, February–April 2012.

Greater disparities were found in the case of faculty rank, where respondents reported that tenured faculty members (28.5%) were three times more likely to employ engaged teaching and faculty practices than pre-tenured faculty members (8.8%). This finding may be due in large part to the prevailing tenure and promotion standards in PA, which place significantly less emphasis on teaching and service-oriented activities (e.g. Coggburn and Neely, 2015; Posner, 2009). Given the time and effort required for effective scholarship in these areas, current standards for tenure and promotion may serve as a deterrent for junior faculty members to engage in such practices. It is worth noting, too, that 5.5% of institutions report that non-tenure track faculty were more involved than other faculty members in engaged practices. This finding may reflect the strategy of using part-time instructors, who are often practitioners with strong ties to public service organizations, to lead service learning courses (e.g. Godwin and Meek, 2016).

The data also showed that middle-aged faculty members (35–54 years old) were substantially more likely to participate in engaged teaching and faculty activities. We suspect that these numbers are directly related to the aforementioned findings regarding faculty rank, as middle-aged faculty generally are more likely to have attained tenured status. These differences may also be due in part to the community ties and subject matter expertise that are developed by faculty members as their tenure at a particular university increases.

In their call for a transformation of PA pedagogies, Schweik et al. (2011) note that the new generation of PA scholars may be the ones to facilitate change from traditional to more open and engaged forms of scholarship. The results reported here suggest that traditional incentive structures may be working against the generational change envisaged. In those places where there was a perceived difference of involvement in engaged practices, it was more likely to be tenured and middle-aged faculty members over younger and pre-tenured ones (the authors note the need to partner with senior faculty; since they set standards and make administrative decisions, this seems imperative).

Institutional types

In an effort to provide greater context regarding the use of engaged teaching and faculty practices, we also examined how the proportion of faculty utilizing these techniques varied across institutional settings. Cross-tabulations were constructed for each institutional type listed in Table 1, but statistically significant differences emerged in only two cases: Carnegie Community Engaged Campuses (CCECs), as shown in Table 5; and urban campuses, as shown in Table 6. To conserve space, we only show results for the engaged teaching and faculty practices where statistically significant differences were found.

Table 5.

Cross-tabulation of engaged teaching/faculty practices for Carnegie Community Engaged Campuses (CCECs).

Proportion of faculty members in your academic unit engaged in the following activities…	All/almost all	Most	About half	Some	None/almost all
A. CCECs
Incorporating service learning components into public administration (PA) classes*	0.0	20.0	46.7	33.3	0.0
Involving PA students in community-based research projects**	0.0	33.3	33.3	33.3	0.0
Providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations***	7.1	21.4	42.9	28.6	0.0
B. Other colleges and universities
Incorporating service learning components into PA classes*	4.1	14.8	17.2	50.8	13.1
Involving PA students in community-based research projects**	6.6	9.8	19.7	54.9	9.0
Providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations***	5.6	26.2	13.7	56.5	4.0
χ² = 9.327 (p = 0.053); ϕ_c = 0.261 (p = 0.053); χ² = 10.641 (p = 0.031); ϕ_c = 0.279 (p = 0.031); **χ² = 8.859 (p = 0.065); ϕ_c = 0.253 (p = 0.065)

Table 6.

Cross-tabulation of engaged teaching/faculty practices for urban campuses.

Proportion of faculty members in your academic unit engaged in the following activities…	All/almost all	Most	About half	Some	None/almost all
A. Urban campuses
Incorporating service learning components into public administration (PA) classes*	0.0	17.5	30.0	32.5	20.0
Providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations**	12.5	35.0	22.5	35.0	12.5
B. Other colleges and universities
Incorporating service learning components into PA classes*	5.2	14.4	16.5	55.7	8.2
Providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations**	6.1	18.4	14.3	61.2	0.0
χ² = 11.221 (p = 0.024); ϕ_c = 0.286 (p = 0.024); *χ² = 17.721 (p = 0.001); ϕ_c = 0.358 (p = 0.001)

Looking first at CCECs, Table 5 shows that these institutions were more likely to report that half or more of their faculty members were engaged in service learning pedagogies, involving students in community-based research projects, and providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations. These findings are consistent with the stated missions and documented practices of CCECs, namely to support the institutionalization of community-engagement among colleges and universities (Driscoll, 2009). And, as noted by Vogelgesang et al. (2010), perceived institutional commitment to community engagement is a strong predictor of faculty undertaking such activity.

Table 6 reports those cross-tabulation results which were statistically significant for urban campuses. These institutions were more likely to report that half or more of their faculty were utilizing service learning pedagogies and were also more likely to report that the majority of their PA faculty were providing professional consulting to public and/or nonprofit organizations. These findings are not unexpected given the proximity of urban campuses to local government and nonprofit entities, which creates greater opportunities for collaboration and the development of community-based partnerships. And, as Ward (2003) notes, urban campuses have tended to embrace community problem-solving roles as part of their civic mission.

While comparisons were not statistically significant across other institutional categories, we speculate that this may be due in part to the small sample sizes available for some institutional types (e.g. land-grant institutions and historically Black colleges or universities), particularly given the sensitivity of Chi-square tests to sample size. Additional comparisons were made to determine if the practice of engagement varied based on institutional size. No statistically significant relationships were found with regard to total enrollment or program size. This may in part affirm the observation that smaller teaching colleges increasingly reflect the institutional goals and incentive structures held by larger, research-intensive institutions (Boyer, 1990).

Discussion and conclusions

Connectedness remains an important and enduring aspiration for the field of PA. Over time, a number of approaches to bridging PA theory and practice have been offered. Most recently, engaged scholarship – including engaged research and, as considered in this study, teaching and faculty practices – has been championed. The dialogue regarding the benefits and challenges of engaged scholarly work in PA is occurring within a dynamic political economy that increasingly questions the value of higher education. For applied fields such as PA, engagement affords the opportunity for faculty to collaborate with students and community partners in addressing practical, community-based problems through their research, teaching, and professional service. In so doing, the field may not only promote connectedness but also help demonstrate its relevance and cultivate external support that may be needed for survival (Rich, 2013).

Against this backdrop, this study sought to discover the extent to which PA faculty are undertaking engaged scholarly activity in their teaching and external professional service. The baseline results reported offer cause for both optimism and concern. Optimistically, the data show that most faculty at NASPAA-affiliated schools utilize teaching-case studies which, in the spirit of engagement, seek to situate learning squarely within the field of practice. Other forms of engaged teaching such as service learning and community-based research, which are arguably more in line with true engaged instruction, are certainly being utilized by PA faculty, albeit at more modest rates (i.e. fewer than half of faculty in most programs).

In conjunction with the literature outlined above, these findings raise some important considerations for pedagogy, including how PA students are taught as well as the appropriate focus and content of PA courses. As noted at the outset, PA’s academic programs are facing increased pressure to demonstrate relevance and improve student outcomes (Arum and Roska, 2011; Rich, 2013). While these pressures come from a variety of external stakeholder audiences, NASPAA has also institutionalized the importance of practical, competency-based learning in its recent accreditation standards, which now require programs to operationally define mission specific competencies, and importantly, to develop direct measures that assess student learning outcomes. Engaged teaching pedagogies offer a potential means of addressing these concerns. Problem-based pedagogies, such as service learning and teaching cases, are believed to hone students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills by allowing them to engage with real-world/workplace problems in a structured learning environment (Goodman, 2008). Greater incorporation of these techniques, including a shift in the focus of prevailing Master of Public Administration (MPA) curricula toward those issues of most concern to practitioner audiences and community partners, may help PA programs to meet the increasingly demanding expectations of their governing bodies as well as the public at large.

In contrast to engaged teaching, the data suggest that engaged faculty practices are much less prevalent. PA faculty members were unlikely to be involved in external service roles with government and nonprofit entities, be it through board service or consulting, and very unlikely to be involved in faculty/practitioner exchange programs. We noted that although the historical roots of PA were heavily defined by boundary spanning “pracademics,” the data reported here suggest that today’s PA scholars may be more academically isolated.

Speaking broadly on that point, Van De Ven argues that all scholars should seek some degree of engagement in their scholarship, noting that “No matter what your role or area of practice may be, if you look at an object or a phenomenon or a problem only from your own silo (or ivory tower, if you like), you see it from only one point of view” (Van De Ven, 2011: 43). Such limitation not only affects the focus of scholarly research, but also the perspective that faculty bring to the PA classroom. However, Van De Ven adds that this does not obligate all theoretical scholars to engage directly in practice, suggesting that a healthy mix of scholars focusing “principally” on science as well as practice may ultimately be in the best interest of knowledge advancement. We would add the caveat that practitioners, in some instances, may be prone to overemphasizing their most urgent practical needs, holding a narrow conception of what is relevant, and getting caught up in managerial fads (Ospina and Dodge, 2005). As such, we would echo Boyer’s (1990) sentiment that there is indeed still virtue in scholarship that focuses principally on basic research and the development/assessment of empirical evidence as the basis for practice.

The findings also provide some insights about the faculty and institutional characteristics associated with participation in engaged teaching and faculty practices. Contrary to existing work, survey respondents did not indicate substantively significant differences in levels of engaged teaching and service based upon gender or race/ethnicity. There was some indication that tenured and middle-aged (35–54 years old) faculty were more involved in engaged teaching and faculty practices. These findings speak to the risks some observers have noted for junior, pre-tenured faculty members who invest required time and energy into engaged scholarly activities that may not be fully recognized by traditional (and prevailing) faculty reward systems (Driscoll and Sandmann, 2004; Ward, 2003).

Prospectively, the general enthusiasm for engaged scholarship reported in the literature and its compatibility with PA as a field of practice (Bryer, 2011; D’Agostino, 2008; Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016; Imperial et al., 2007; Lambright, 2008) give reason to believe that more faculty are likely to pursue it in the coming years. Efforts to facilitate and reward such work could go a long way toward that end. Research suggests that faculty are likely to pursue those forms of engaged activity that are the least time consuming (Demb and Wade, 2012) and properly incentivized (Bolton and Stolcis, 2003; Bushouse et al., 2011; Koliba, 2007; Posner, 2009). Our findings about the widespread use of case-studies is illustrative and suggestive: faculty readily use this pedagogy due, in part, to the availability of cases and knowledge about its use. Developing similar knowledge about and resources for other forms of engaged teaching could likewise lower temporal burdens and promote greater utilization of engaged pedagogies. As D’Agostino (2008) notes, many campuses have Campus Compact offices whose resources can be used to initiate service learning. Such resources, coupled with more knowledge sharing through public affairs teaching and learning journals (e.g. Teaching Public Administration and Journal of Public Affairs Education), may promote various forms of engaged teaching. Likewise, additional case-studies on engaged service, including how to integrate it into one’s faculty career (McDonald and Mooney, 2011), and clarification about the various types of engaged service (Ward, 2003) may provide needed direction about how faculty members may more easily and effectively draw upon their scholarly expertise to link with the field of practice.

As for institutional characteristics, we found that there were differences reported for urban campuses and CCECs, respectively, which suggest the importance of institutional mission and culture in motivating faculty engagement. Urban campuses and those who have sought the engaged campus designation have communicated messages about the value of engaged scholarship and are situated in proximity to community partners that facilitate it. Given the importance of institutional context, we note our surprise at the unexpected finding regarding PA programs at land-grant universities. Given their historical focus on extension and engagement, PA programs located in these campuses would seem more likely than others to extend engagement to the present-day focus on community-based problems (Boyer, 1996; Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016; Rich, 2013), yet we found that they were no more likely than other types of institutions to be involved in engaged teaching and faculty practices. It could be that the rural setting for many of these campuses limits access to potential community partners, even as these smaller communities stand to gain the most from engagement (Wodicka et al., 2012). Additional research is needed to assess this possibility but, at the same time, it underscores the importance of institutional considerations to the practice of engaged scholarship.

In conclusion, engaged scholarship holds promise for helping to bridge the theory–practice divide in PA but it is not a panacea. The literature reviewed shows that there are perceived barriers and risks associated with engaged scholarly activity. Institutional barriers, including mission, faculty reward structures, and organizational culture, may serve as deterrents to faculty members. Faculty have different motivations at various stages of their careers (Denhardt, 2001), which suggests that not all faculty will be amenable to adopting engaged approaches. Likewise, programs and faculty must take into consideration student needs when making curricular and pedagogical choices: for some (e.g. pre-service students), engaged pedagogies and a greater emphasis on practice relative to theory may be appropriate while, for others (e.g. in-service) more emphasis on theory and sense-making may be apt (Denhardt, 2001; Gerlach and Reinagel, 2016; Godwin and Meeks, 2016).

Limitations and future research

Although we provide an initial look at the prevalence of engaged teaching and faculty practices, there are several limitations to our study that should be noted. First, the study relies on program leaders’ perceptions of engaged teaching and faculty practices as opposed to self-reports from PA faculty members or direct observation of faculty behavior. As McDonald and Mooney (2011) note, much of the engaged work that faculty do is often unobserved or unreported. Therefore, the perceptions of the program leaders reported in our survey may underestimate the amount of engaged teaching and faculty practices in their respective programs. Future studies in this area should target faculty members to directly assess their knowledge about and participation in engaged scholarship, as well as the factors that motivate and sustain their commitment to such activity.

Second, the survey developed for this analysis examined a limited number of engaged teaching and service activities. Future studies should consider additional pedagogies, including capstone courses and those associated with information communication technologies (Schweik et al., 2011), as well as engaged professional practices to determine more fully how the discipline has responded to calls to improve connectedness through scholarly engagement.

Third, the data examined in this study largely prohibit us from speaking to the practice of engagement outside of the United States context: the sample included only two respondents (1.4%) from international institutions. Future studies might consider both the practice of engagement and its cultural relevance in other global PA traditions. Although engaged scholarship emerged within the context of US higher education, its broader questions about the relevance of what PA programs teach and PA faculty members’ connectedness to the field of practice are salient across a variety of international settings and PA traditions (i.e. Broucker, 2015; Knassmüller, 2016).

In addition to research that overcomes these limitations, research is needed that assesses the outcomes of engaged scholarship in the PA context for multiple stakeholders, including faculty, students, universities, and community partners. For faculty, research that examines their motivations for pursing engaged scholarship, commitment to it, and career outcomes (e.g. satisfaction and career advancement) is needed. A related line of inquiry should assess, specifically, the implications of engaged scholarship on the connections between the PA discipline and field of practice: Does it foster the connections promised? Does it lead to research that clears the dual hurdles of rigor and relevance (Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006)? For students, work along the lines of Sprague and Percy’s (2014) study could be extended to assesses the short- and long-term outcomes for MPA student learning, career trajectory, and public service motivation. And, given the importance of demonstrating the relevance and problem-solving capabilities of an engaged model of PA (Rich, 2013), more work is needed showing the outcomes of engaged practices for community partners, as well as their societal impact (Carpenter, 2011; Sprague and Hu, 2015). All told, this represents a healthy agenda that holds promise for deepening our understanding of one of the most significant innovations in higher education (O’Meara et al., 2011), as well as its implications for connectedness and long-term viability in the field of public administration.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

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