The dark horse of public administration: The challenge of pedagogical research

The fallacy of traditional research

The incorporation of research into the education system is premised on the hope that research impacts society. The connection between knowledge, innovation, and economic growth has been long established within the economic literature (see Morgan, 2012). When a private organization develops knowledge or technology, that development typically becomes proprietary, minimizing the ability of society as a whole to progress equitably. When the same development is done in an institution of higher learning, the ability of that new information to extend beyond the university halls is simplified. To put it another way, faculty engage in research as a public good. ²

In public administration, it is easy to look to our origins as a discipline to understand why we engage in research. For example, in the infancy of public administration education in the United States, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research engaged in research to find the most efficient and effective way of doing a task (Stivers, 2002). In addition, the Bureau established its training school to pass the research process to a new generation (McDonald, 2010). The Royal Institute of Public Administration was established in the United Kingdom for a similar reason (Farrell et al., 2022).

As researchers, we are taught that the research we conduct influences the state of practice within the field. This influence comes through one of two processes. As shown in Figure 1, the first process follows the belief that what we research influences practice by impacting what we teach. Research improves our understanding of the world around us, which affects what we, as faculty know, informing what we teach in the classroom. The challenge behind this process is that it can be extensive and misaligned. The time between engaging in research and publication can be extensive, often taking years from concept to publication. At the same, the courses we teach and the research we engage in are not always perfectly aligned, furthering the lag in the transfer of knowledge from research to student.OPEN IN VIEWER

The second process, as shown in Figure 2, follows the expectation that those from the field of practice read the research we publish. This model follows that we engage in research and publish the outcomes, which are then read by those in practice, leading to a new round of research. Just as with the first process, however, this, too, has failed. There are a number of barriers that stand in the way between practitioners and our research. The biggest of these is the paywall. Depending on the journal and the type of access sought, practitioners can expect to spend between $12 and $75 for a single article. The cost is further complicated by the uncertainty of whether the article provides the information needed by the practitioner. Abstracts rarely provide the level of detail that a practitioner would need to make an informed purchase, making the purchase of access risky and costly. A second barrier is there in terms of quantity. Hundreds of public administration journals publish more than 10,000 articles a year. A person with an average reading speed looking to stay up to date would spend an estimated 417 days reading nonstop to get through the literature published in the given year. Given the concerns we have about burnout and retention of public employees (see Eshuis et al., 2022; Humphrey, 2021; Yang and Guy, 2021), expecting a practitioner to wade through the ever-growing haystack is highly impractical. A final barrier is that the way we, as academics, tend to write is not accessible to those outside the academy (see Badley, 2020). We may hope practitioners learn by reading our research, but we have set ourselves up for disappointment by limiting their engagement ability.OPEN IN VIEWER

The truth about our research is that most of it will have little to no effect on the field of practice. Currently, the Scopus index includes 229 journals listed as “public administration.” The index includes more than 41,000 journals, publishing an excess of 2.5 million articles each year. If we consider the reach that research tends to have, focusing on traditional topics and avenues within public administration may be misguided. A number of studies have found that only about half of all research articles published are never read except by the authors, reviewers, and editors (Evans, 2008; Jago, 2018). If we look at how often articles are cited, an estimated 44% of published research is never cited (Beaulieu, 2015). An article with 10 citations is in the top 24% of cited research, and an article with 100 citations is in the top 1.8%. All this to say, we are producing an extraordinary amount of work that is getting no attention.

Making meaningful impacts

In the section above, I argued that our current approaches to research do little in terms of having an everyday, real impact on the governments and nonprofits surrounding us. What I would suggest instead is that if we want to make a meaningful impact, we should take a second look at the environment where we work. Specifically, we should look at our programs and classrooms and engage in pedagogical research.

Pedagogical research centers on improving the classroom and program experience. Examples of this include how we can manage or align a program with the needs of the community around us, how we effectively convey material and prepare graduates, and how to connect with students across all the different ways they learn. Just as with more mainstream research, quantitative and qualitative methodologies can be applied to pedagogical questions to improve the outcome of the graduate program experience. Ultimately, more effective teaching means we can better prepare students for the experiences that they will face in their careers (Haruna, 2022; Yan et al., 2022). Moreover, better-prepared students lead to better-managed public organizations. In turn, producing more effective, efficient, and equitable services, which are some of the goals of public administration (see Norman-Major, 2011).

Who among us cannot look at their educational journey and point to a teacher who made a difference? An effective teacher can relay the course material so that the student can best grasp and apply it (see Stronge, 2018). As teachers, however, we are ill-prepared to teach MPA students. The average MPA is a nontraditional student, meaning they have not come directly from their undergraduate coursework into the postgraduate world. Doctoral students tend to be more traditional because they have entered their postgraduate studies directly after graduating with their undergraduate degrees. This distinction is important as not all students learn in the same way (see Cercone, 2008; Dabbagh, 2007; McDonald, 2021). For example, someone who is 30 and has been out of school for nearly a decade will learn differently than someone that went straight through. Yet, as faculty, we tend to teach in the same style we learned. This means that how we teach our students may not be the most effective manner. Research that studies how the material can be conveyed across learning styles and subject matter makes us better teachers.

Not only does pedagogical work improve our effectiveness in the classroom, but it can also have a more measurable impact on the field than traditional avenues. For example, when I started working on this manuscript, the current issue of Teaching Public Administration had more than 3130 reads for an average of 348 reads per article. Not only does this readership data defy the odds of academia, as discussed earlier, but it also exceeds the average number of reads for articles in the most recent issues of the leading journals of our field, including Public Administration Review. Furthermore, in terms of citation rate, both Journal of Public Affairs Education and Teaching Public Administration, the two pedagogical journals of the field, have impressive Scopus Cite Scores, placing them high in the rankings. Moreover, in many subfields, such as my own of public budgeting and finance, the Cite Score for the pedagogical journals outperforms the traditional journals.

When these individual impacts are taken together, faculty engaged in pedagogical research are more likely to be effective teachers with improved learning outcomes. And their pedagogical research is more likely to be read and cited than their other work. This leads to the conclusion that engaging in SoTL-related research is a good place to start if you have a meaningful impact on the field.

Concluding thoughts

Several years ago, I was highly encouraged by a senior scholar in the field to stop focusing on pedagogical research. They suggested that I should focus on research topics that matter and publishing in peer-reviewed journals. While I disagree with their beliefs, I understand their origin. The stereotype around SoTL work has existed for some time and it can be difficult for people to overcome their longstanding bias. We can and should, be trying to raise the discourse of pedagogical research. Rather than discouraging the focus, we encourage new generations of scholars to ignore the brainwashing. We must hold pedagogical research to the same quality standard as more traditional research areas to reduce or even eliminate the stereotype. This would go a long way towards helping others accept the research as being among its equals. Research in the area is essential. When I hear from my former students about how their careers are progressing, it is what we did in the classroom, not the papers I have written, that they point to as having an impact. This is a direct outcome of my pedagogical work.

While this piece focuses on why we should be doing more SoTL research, I do not mean to be overly critical of our research’s ability to influence. Instead, I see these as challenges that we can work to overcome. For example, there is good work being conducted within the field on how to broach the academic-practitioner divide (see Ancira et al., 2022), the introduction of journals such as the Journal of Social Equity and Public Administration, Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, and Journal of Behavioral Public Administration has helped to increase the accessibility of our work through open access. The Government Finance Officers Association is even taking these efforts one step further by establishing Public Finance, an open-access academic journal that requires accessibility in writing.