000 01727pab a2200157 454500
008 180718b2001 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100 _aDenhardt, Robert B.
245 _aThe big questions of public administration education
260 _c2001
300 _ap.526-34
362 _aSep-Oct
520 _aFollowing Behn's observation that scientists in other fields understand the big questions of their disciplines and focus attention and their discussions on those questions, public administration scholars have attempted to identify the "big questions" in public management and public administration. In this article, I suggest that scholars in public administration should also be attentive to the big questions of public administration education, those timeless and enduring concerns that speak to the basic perspectives that we bring to the educational process. Specifically, I identify four big questions: Do we seek to educate our students with respect to theory or to practice? Do we prepare students for their first jobs or for those to which they might aspire later? What are the appropriate delivery mechanisms for MPA courses and curricula? What personal commitments do we make as public administration educators? I argue that these big questions in public administration education are far more connected than we usually think, and by posing these questions in terms of processes of human development we can at least provide a framework through which we might develop more coherent answers to these big questions, answers that recognize and build on the diversity of our students and our faculty. - Reproduced
650 _aPublic administration
773 _aPublic Administration Review
909 _a50216
999 _c50216
_d50216