Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education: Insights from Asia 9811658633, 9789811658631

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Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education Insights from Asia Edited by Sreeja Nair · Navarun Varma

Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education

Sreeja Nair · Navarun Varma Editors

Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education Insights from Asia

Editors Sreeja Nair Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore

Navarun Varma Residential College 4 National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore

ISBN 978-981-16-5863-1 ISBN 978-981-16-5864-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgments

This book has benefited from the insights of several scholars. We are foremost thankful to all the chapter authors for their timely and rich contributions. Particularly, we appreciate the authors for drawing on personal experiences from in-and-out of class teaching and reflections from their own research trajectories in framing their chapters. Editing this book spanning multiple disciplines and expertise has been a huge learning opportunity. We wish to record our thanks to the editorial team at PalgraveMacmillan for their patience and timely guidance to our queries. We thank Vishal Daryanomel for the early discussions on the proposal and the book project, and to Anushangi Weerakoon, Preetha Kuttiappan, and Aishwarya Balachandar for coordinating the final editing process. We are immensely grateful to our families—to our parents, to Swameeka, Thayan, Prashant, Karuna, and Siddharth, for their encouragement and support.

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Contents

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Introduction Sreeja Nair and Navarun Varma

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Part I Key Trends in the Policy Education Landscape 2

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Disruption and Public Policy Education Across Asia: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Climate Crisis, and Covid-19 Nancy W. Gleason and Sara M. Pan Algarra What Can Pedagogic Theory Tell Us About Improving Instructional Design of MOOCs for Public Policy Education? Scott Victor Valentine

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Learning by Doing, Reflecting, and Teaching R. J. Wasson

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Building Public Policy Capacity Through Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling Education in an Undergraduate Residential College Setting Bee Choon Yong and Lakshminarayanan Samavedham

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The Prevalence of Big Data Analytics in Public Policy: Is There a Research-Pedagogy Gap? Nihit Goyal, Ola G. El-Taliawi, and Michael Howlett

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CONTENTS

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Social Media Analytics for Policy Studies Dedy Permadi and Treviliana Eka Putri

Part II 8

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Selected Cases of Pedagogical Approaches and Strategies

Bridging a North–South Epistemological Divide in Public Policy Research and Education Vishal Narain Potential of a Serious game in Teaching and Learning of Systems Thinking and System Dynamics in a Multi-disciplinary Classroom Navarun Varma and Wei Liu Learning About LERN (Land and EnviRonment Nexus): A Case Study of Effective Pedagogy for Out-Of-Classroom Teaching Lynette Yuen Ling Tan, Navarun Varma, and Naviyn Prabhu Balakrishnan

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Teaching Comparative Public Policy Comparatively Liang Ma and Chun-yuan Wang

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Policy Learning Through Fieldwork Engagement: A Geography Classroom—fieldwork Assessment on Issues of Water for Policy Understanding Nathaniel Dylan Lim, Yan Kai Heng, and Diganta Das

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Gaps, Propositions and Insights for Policy Education: A Synthesis Navarun Varma and Sreeja Nair

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Naviyn Prabhu Balakrishnan is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Student Life at Residential College 4 (RC4), National University of Singapore. He has been in RC4 since its inception and was Director of Studies & Student Life in the early years of RC4. Being part of College Management, Naviyn played an active role in developing the curriculum, and out-of-classroom learning platforms in the forming years of RC4. Naviyn has won Annual Teaching Excellence Awards once, and Residential College’s Teaching Excellence Awards thrice continuously and placed in RCTEA Honour Roll. Naviyn teaches Systems Thinking and System Dynamics modules that are related to Diseases and Healthcare in RC4. Game-based learning, transferability assessment, and group model building are his pedagogical research interests. Naviyn’s disciplinary research interests involve mathematical modeling, optimization and their applications in societal issues. Diganta Das is an Associate Professor at Humanities and Social Studies Education, Nanyang Technological University. His research interests focus on relations between the production of smart cities, high-tech space making in Asia, public policy and mobility, changing dynamics of the urban waterscape in Asia, and issues of liveability and sustainable urban development. He is currently involved in several research projects. In one ongoing research project, he examines urban waterscapes, and how changing urban dynamics and global aspirations affect the waterscapes of Asian cities. He has written several journal articles and book chapters ix

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on issues of the urban/peri-urban water crisis in Indian cities and the changing waterscapes related to Asian urbanism. Ola G. El-Taliawi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Public Affairs, Carleton University—Canada. Her research focuses on comparative public policy with specific emphasis on asylum and gender policy. Nancy W. Gleason is the Inaugural Director of the Hilary Ballon Center for Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor of Practice in Political Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. In her role she guides faculty in the pedagogy of liberal arts education which transfers interdisciplinary competencies for a digital economy. Previously, she directed the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and served in the Global Affairs Majors as a Senior Lecturer. She also taught at Tufts University, USA for six years. She is the editor of Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Springer, 2018) and coeditor of Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education: Lessons from Across Asia (Palgrave, 2020). She holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. from George Washington University. Nihit Goyal is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands. His academic program focuses on comparative public policy for a sustainable energy transition using a combination of computational social science, qualitative analysis, and quantitative techniques. Yan Kai Heng is a Graduate from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he received his B.A. (Education) in Geography with distinction. His research interests include environmental and water resource management, geographical inquiry, and the geographies of education. Michael Howlett‚ FRSC is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He specializes in public policy analysis, political economy, and resource and environmental policy. His most recent books are Policy Consultancy in Comparative Perspective (2020), Studying Public Policy (2020), Designing Public Policies (2019), and The Policy Design Primer (2019).

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Nathaniel Dylan Lim is a Graduate from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he received his B.A. (Education) in Geography with the highest distinction. His research interests include the everyday politics of water resource management, geographical inquiry, and the geographies of education. His B.A. thesis has been awarded the highest performing undergraduate coursework in the Social Sciences: Anthropology & Cultural Studies category in the Global Undergraduate Awards 2020. He also co-authored a book chapter on water insecurity and vulnerability based on an ethnographic study in Hyderabad, India. Wei Liu is a Guest Research Scholar at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. He joined the Risk and Resilience (RISK) Program at IIASA in 2012 and is currently leader of the Governance in Transition research area. Trained in ecology and social sciences, he collaborates with academia, NGOs and government and combines hard and soft systems modeling with stakeholder participatory processes and citizen science approaches on research related to resilience and sustainability transitions of complex socio-techno-ecological systems. His current research projects, mostly funded by international programs such as H2020, include community resilience in the Himalayas, nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation in Europe, social-ecological impacts of infrastructure development in Southern Africa, and anticipatory governance of emerging technologies such as synthetic biology. Liang Ma is a Professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy and Research Fellow at the National Academy for Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China (RUC), China. Before joining RUC he was Research Fellow (2012–2015) and Senior Research Fellow (2015–2016) at the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. in Public Administration from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. His research interests include public organizational innovation, government performance management, and digital government. His research has appeared in Governance, Public Management Review, Public Administration, and many other journals in English and Chinese. Sreeja Nair is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She is an Inter-disciplinary

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Policy Researcher specializing in Environmental Policy and Governance. Her research interests lie in studying processes and tools of governments for designing policies under uncertainty, focusing on the interplay of science and politics. She is the author of ‘Rethinking Policy Piloting: insights from Indian agriculture’ (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Vishal Narain is a Professor, Public Policy and Governance, MDI, Management Development Institute Gurgaon, India. He holds a Ph.D. from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. His academic interests are in interdisciplinary analyses of Public Policy Processes and Institutions, water governance, peri-urban issues and vulnerability and adaptation to environmental change. He is the author of Public Policy: A View from the South (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He received the S R Prize for the Best Book on Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (2002– 2003) for his book Institutions, Technology, and Water Control: Water Users’ Associations and Irrigation Management Reform in Two LargeScale Systems in India (Orient Longman, 2003). He has been consultant to several international and regional organizations such as the FAO of the United Nations, Bangkok; ICIMOD, Kathmandu; the Asia Foundation, New Delhi and IWMI, Colombo. He has recently co-edited Climate Change Governance and Adaptation: Case Studies from South Asia. Sara M. Pan Algarra is a rising Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Scholar, an award to pursue the M.A. in Global Challenges: Law, Policy and Practice at the School of Law of Swansea University. She graduated with a double major (B.A.) in Social Research and Public Policy and Theater at New York University Abu Dhabi. She holds related professional experiences in Venezuela, Canada, India, Italy, Ecuador, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. She was elected Youth Mayor of the Chacao Municipality in Venezuela working in local youth governance between 2010 and 2014. She studied at the United World College of India and is a Dalai Lama Fellow from the University of Virginia. She is the editor of the New York University Abu Dhabi children’s book publication Where Is Our Home? (2020). Dedy Permadi is a Faculty Member of the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada. He received his Ph.D. from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research area includes international relations and public policy studies, primarily focusing on

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comparative politics and digital policy. He is currently serving at the Ministry of Communications and Informatics, the Republic of Indonesia, as Spokesperson and Minister’s Special Advisor for digital policy and human resource development. Treviliana Eka Putri is a Researcher at the Center for Digital Society (CfDS), a research center in the Faculty of Social and Political Science at Universitas Gadjah Mada. The center focuses on digital issues and their socio-political impact on societies. She is also a junior lecturer at the Department of International Relations at Universitas Gadjah Mada with a focus on security studies. Her research interest includes cybersecurity, social media, and the utilization of big data in social science studies. Lakshminarayanan Samavedham is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He also provides leadership to the Institute of Applied Learning Sciences and Educational Technology (ALSET)— a NUS Research Institute that focuses on the science of learning and learning analytics. Over his 20 years at NUS, he has served as Director of the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL) and as the inaugural Master of NUS Residential College 4. His research interests are in Artificial Intelligence, Modeling, Optimization, and Control as applied to Chemical and Biomedical Systems. In his free time, he likes to indulge in classical fine arts with a spiritual orientation. Lynette Yuen Ling Tan is the Director of Studies and Associate Director of Student Life at Residential College 4 (RC4), National University of Singapore (NUS). She has been teaching at university for over 20 years both in the UK and locally, where she is at present Senior Lecturer at NUS. Lynette teaches Systems Thinking at RC4 where her module explores the philosophies and work of the Systems Pioneers and empowers students to be humane change agents as they navigate global issues that are critical in the twenty-first Century. Lynette’s other teaching and research interests include Hollywood and Singapore Cinema, Gender Studies, and Post-colonial Studies, and she has also published on Gamification in Higher Education, student motivation, and higher order learning skills. Scott Victor Valentine is a Professor and Director of Research Promotion at Kyushu University’s Institute for Asian and Oceanian Studies and a Director and Senior Circular Economy Specialist at KPMG Australia. He

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is chair of the Australian Circular Economy Hub’s advisory committee and a committee member of Standard Australia’s Circular Economy ISO working group. Prior to these roles, he was Professor and Associate Dean of Sustainability and Urban Planning at RMIT and Assistant Dean of Research at the LKY School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Navarun Varma is the Assistant Director of External Programmes and Lecturer (Resident Fellow) at Residential College 4 (RC4), University Town College Program, National University of Singapore (NUS). Navarun’s academic interests are in environmental policy and governance, systems thinking and social-ecological resilience, and education for sustainable development. His fieldwork and public policy research experience helps him to innovate pedagogies to connect theory and practice and mentor students for learning inter- and transdisciplinary skills. He teaches modules on disaster resilience and water governance in Asia and also designs out-of-classroom teaching and learning programs in RC4. He is on the editorial board of International Journal of Water Resources Development. He won the Residential Colleges’ Early Career Teaching Award in the Academic Year 20/21. Prior to joining NUS in 2017, he was a Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, New Delhi, India) and was a part of many national and international collaborative projects related to climate change and development. Chun-yuan Wang is a Professor at the Department of Police Administration and Director of General Education Center, Central Police University. His research interests include crisis management, strategic management, and policy analysis. His research has appeared in Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, Administration and Society, and many other journals in English and Chinese. R. J. Wasson is an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Emeritus at Australian National University (ANU). Before joining the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2011, Professor Wasson was Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dean of Science and Head of the Department of Geography and Human Ecology at the ANU, and then Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and International at Charles Darwin University, Australia. He has taught and researched at Sydney University, Macquarie University, University of Auckland, Monash University, and the ANU. He was trained in geomorphology and his research interests are: quaternary palaeoenvironmental reconstruction; causes of change in river catchments; environmental history; extreme

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hydrologic events in the tropics; cross-disciplinary methods; and the integration of science into public policy. He has done research in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Malaysia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Myanmar, and Thailand. From 2011 to 2018, he was a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Water Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS where he focused on flood risk in relation to climate change, human vulnerability to floods over long periods in India and Thailand, and the political economy of disaster management in India and Thailand. Bee Choon Yong enjoys her varied career at the National University of Singapore since 2010. She is currently a Senior Manager at the Office of Human Resources (OHR), National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to her appointment at OHR, she was the lead administrative staff at the Residential College 4 and the NUS Teaching Academy. Before joining NUS, she had many years of experience in journal publishing as an Editorial Manager of the Annals of Academy of Medicine, Singapore. Her interest includes gardening, reading, and K-dramas.

Abbreviations

4IR ABM ANU ASEAN CPP CSIRO DRR EBPM EIPM HKUST IBL ICT ILO ILS ISPP JSDP LKYSPP LSE MOOC MPA MPP NASPAA NGO NIE NTU NUS

Fourth Industrial Revolution Agent-Based Model Australian National University Association of Southeast Asian Nations Comparative Public Policy Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Disaster Risk Reduction Evidence-Based Policy Making Evidence-Informed Policy Making Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Inquiry-Based Learning Information and Communication Technology Intended Learning Outcome Index of Learning Styles Indian School of Public Policy Jindal School of Government and Public Policy Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy London School of Economics Massive Open Online Course Master’s in Public Administration Master’s in Public Policy Network for Schools of Public Policy Affairs and Administration Non-Governmental Organisation National Institute of Education Nanyang Technological University National University of Singapore xvii

xviii PKU SDM SNU ST VARK WEF

ABBREVIATIONS

Peking University System Dynamics Modeling Seoul National University Systems Thinking Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kinesthetic World Economic Forum

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3

Fig. 9.4

Fig. 9.5

Text Network Analysis on Students’ Leadership Experience Survey Data Topics in big data research in governance and policy Percentage of policy programs offering big data courses Country-wise scientific production for big data research on governance and policy Institutional network of big data research on governance and policy The role of social media in enhancing accountability and transparency Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualizationNumber of variables identified by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 1 AY 19–20 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization Identification of feedback loops by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 1 AY 19–20 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualizationNumber of variables identified by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 2 AY 19–20 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization Identification of feedback loops by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 2 AY 19–20 Human agency in pre and post-game conceptualization for both semesters of AY 19-20- Percentage of teams identifying at least 1 human agency variable

86 103 108 110 112 138

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.6

Fig. 9.7

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8

Fig. 10.9 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2

Comparison between post-game conceptualization and model formulation- Number of feedback loops identified by each project team in Semester 1 AY 19–20 Comparison between post-game conceptualization and model formulation- Number of feedback loops identified by each project team in Semester 2 AY 19–20 SOLO taxonomy Example 1 of photovoice from Mukhteshwar Example 2 of photovoice from Mukhteshwar Example 1 of photovoice from Nainital Example 2 of photovoice from Nainital Example 1 of photovoice from Jim Corbett Post trip infographic by a student group Infographic used by students to publicize the Mobile Application project Application of photovoice (PV) in NUS-RC4 STEER The framework of the CPP course design Flowchart of the Comparative Public Policy course

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179 192 196 197 199 200 201 203 205 206 217 219

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table Table Table Table Table Table

3.1 3.2 3.3 9.1 9.2 9.3

Table 12.1 Table 13.1

Representative public policy graduate-level programs in Asia Felder and Silverman’s learning style dimensions Seven guidelines for effective formative design Connecting theory to better course design Pedagogical steps using Forest at risk Comparison of Model validation Summary table of policy testing and reflection on adaptive management Stages of fieldwork Summary of chapters from Part II

21 44 52 54 173 178 181 229 247

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Introduction Sreeja Nair and Navarun Varma

The Changing Landscape of Policy Education The landscape of education is witnessing many changes as the world becomes increasingly interconnected and digitized. Policy teaching, research and practice have not been immune to these developments. Some traditional pedagogical approaches and tools may need to be adapted and new ones that are relevant would need to be embraced for education in this digital age (Gleason 2018) and to tackle some of the unprecedented policy challenges of the twenty-first century (Brik and Pal 2021). Pedagogical innovations have been seen in various disciplines, building on existing teaching practices or under conceptualization and trial among

S. Nair (B) Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] N. Varma Residential College 4, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_1

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scholars active in research, teaching, and designing policy programs. These innovations in curriculum design and novel learning outcomes for public policy can range from skill development in modeling and computational techniques for policy design and evaluation to means of knowledge brokerage for policy practice. Besides new learning outcomes, there are innovations in teaching activities and student learning evaluations ranging from use of technology, fieldwork, and classroom-dialogue to bridge the gap between theory, practice, and education. There is a closer link between public policy pedagogy and practice today than ever before, with many practitioners also undertaking policy courses to upgrade their skills. Practitioners can also be resource persons themselves for education and training and require relevant tools to embed learners in their contexts. This book highlights emerging evidence from experienced educators and policy researchers in Asia on key trends that have dotted the landscape of policy education in the past decade and documents their first-hand experiences in studying and implementing some promising pedagogical approaches and tools in line with these trends. While the insights shared in this book are from Asian universities and policy context, we believe that these hold value for policy education beyond Asia as well. Pedagogical innovations are needed to continue keeping the education systems relevant to citizens and society at large (Paniagua and Istance 2018). A similar logic applies for policy programs across the world especially given the emergence of strong populist and anti-government movements being witnessed in many countries that stand to threaten the relevance and contribution of public policy schools (Knott 2019). The focus of education systems and nations worldwide is also increasingly becoming geared toward what is popularly referred to as, the twentyfirst-century skills. These include collaboration, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, digital literacy, and adaptability, among others. Innovative ways of teaching and imparting these skills, and achievement of intended learning outcomes vary across different education systems, and remain very much a work in progress (Herodotou et al. 2019). Similarly, a different set of topics and skills for the twenty-firstcentury policy learners are being proposed for the policy curricula to consider (Rubaii 2018). Curiosity for example in seeking better answers to existing problems and understanding the basis for policy decisions is a less explored variable, but one that can potentially help policy practitioners improve service delivery to the public (Hatcher 2019). Similarly, the idea of service learning and community engagement as part of policy

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curricula can help generate awareness and passion among students toward policymaking as a profession (Woo 2019; Wukich and Siciliano 2014). In order to maintain and advance the value brought by policy education in future, innovations in curricula is most critical (Evans et al. 2019). It is also acknowledged that given the variety of pedagogical approaches available for educators, it is hard to standardize a set of courses for policy teaching. Rather, there are guidelines and sign posts of what could form part of a policy program and curriculum (Deleon and Steelman 2001). Policy sciences as a field draws from diverse disciplines from which it can, and often must borrow and adapt. Changes in political order and turbulence in the real-world of policymaking affects the design and development of policy education, and mandate that policy educators keep pace with innovations in pedagogies to train a community of researchers and practitioners accordingly. This is true of challenges such as climate change, disruptions brought about by digital technologies and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (Brik and Pal 2021). The intent behind policy education is to train individuals with the tools required to improve policymaking. Typically subjects that policy students receive training on within policy programs include economics, statistics, politics and law, among others, to equip them to take on varied roles in academia, as well as in the government, non-governmental agencies, not-for-profit organizations and the private sector. Policy education is an all-encompassing term that “bridges the gap between the ‘experts’ and the people” (Prabhu and Mohapatra 2012). That is to say that policy education should help us to see not only the answers to policy issues from a scientific or technical angle, but also in moral and political terms. With new content emerging in policy studies research as well as in policy teaching and pedagogy development independently, educators have an opportunity to blend traditional education styles with innovative pedagogical approaches and tools (Scott 2015). A need for such blending is also argued for balancing positivist and post-positivist discourses for public policy analysis (Foster et al. 2010). Universities have played a pivotal role in training policy scholars and practitioners (Bice and Coates 2020; Bice et al. 2018). The complexity of policy issues facing decision-makers in the twenty-first century call for a rethinking of how content from policy theory and practice is taught, be it to university students and/or practitioners. More than fifty policy schools were set up in Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Latin America in the past two decades. Looking at some

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numbers, over fifty policy schools were established in Asia, Latin America and Africa and the Middle East in the past two decades (El-Taliawi et al. 2021). This trend has caught the attention of policy scholars wanting to study the pattern of this expansion and any changes it may have brought to the content of policy education (He et al. 2016). Some scholars have identified this trend as an example of ‘internationalization’ in the policy sciences (Fritzen 2008; Besharov and Oser 2013). Policy education is also inevitably going to be impacted by the changes brought by technological disruptions to higher education in general. The expansion of massive open online courses, micro degrees and Virtual Reality tools for online learning is a indication. In addition, higher education is also embracing the concept of lifelong learning and skills upgradation to adapt to job market shifts responding to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.1 In the same vein a focus on industry partnerships and job-readiness of students are influencing the design and delivery of policy courses (Manwaring et al. 2019; Haigh and O’Sullivan 2019). There are several new pedagogical tools, techniques, and approaches which are in various stages of development and trial in Asia. A study examining policy education trends in East Asia identified three challenges for policy education in this region—lack of contextualization of policy theory and practice in course content, low teaching capacity, and under-representation of policy analysis (Wu et al. 2012). Technological advancements have also created a global market for public policy education and research and, more importantly, for collaborations between policy schools and traditionally data-intensive fields such as engineering and computer science (Knott 2019). The future of the field and that of the public policy school is also in a state of flux (Anheier 2018). Some argue that the structure of policy schools of the future and their sustenance lies in being comprehensive. This is in a bid to continue to provide graduates who can take on varied roles in government and non-governmental agencies, conduct research across

1 Death of the classroom: technology and the future of education in Asia. Shinae Baek, 17 November 2017. Retrieved from https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/death-of-theclassroom-technology-and-the-future-of-education-in-asia.

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disciplines, and to provide education across the career lifetime of individuals, starting from undergraduate to executive education to practitioners (Knott 2019). Apart from issues around access, quality and affordability, higher education systems today also need to gear up for the challenge of performance accountability as an expectation placed by policymakers from these systems (Hillman et al. 2015). While considering these dynamics of contemporary policy education, this book does not intend to cover policy research methodologies or epistemological debates surrounding policy education or practice. Instead, we intend this book to be a resource for educators and policy researchers to understand key trends influencing policy education and take prompts for curriculum design for relevant policy modules at the university level or policy capacity development programs gaining insights from some innovative pedagogies which have been tried and found to be effective in selected Asian universities.

Motivation and Approach The disciplinary boundaries of policy schools and policy education itself are rather fuzzy (Knott 2019; Mead 2013). Policy degree offerings compared to other disciplines, can emanate from policy schools and departments or non-policy schools and departments. Furthermore, policy courses can be offered as part of a variety of policy degree programs, including public policy degree offerings, policy specializations and concentrations or sub-fields in public policy (for example management studies with a concentration in public policy) (El-Taliawi et al. 2021). We purposefully thus adopt a broad definition for policy education in a bid to reach a larger audience of policy educators and consider policy education as as a larger set of programs including independent public policy degree programs. We focus on policy education at the tertiary level which includes courses that target policymaking within the curriculum at undergraduate and higher levels in universities, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary modules within universities targeting public life and realworld problem solving, and communication of new knowledge to policy researchers and practitioners in capacity building programmes. A book of this nature called for an amalgamation of experiences of educators and researchers who have been active in policy teaching as

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well as practice in Asia. This book brings together chapters that closely examine emerging evidence from Asia related to their current pedagogical applications and exploring how these may continue to develop in the region in future. The term pedagogies as used in this book refers to configurations of teaching and learning and their interaction. Various pedagogical approaches can be observed across education systems today. The pedagogies have increasingly shifted toward being “learner-centred” (Paniagua and Istance 2018). In policy think tanks across South and Southeast Asia, we have observed and been part of the richness of empirical research of what works and does not work as methodologies and policy strategies. We have also witnessed the urgency of funding agencies as well as policy scholars to communicate this research to policymakers. As educators, we also observe the increasing demand of policy practitioners to share experiences and their anticipations to university students as well as their peers in different policy courses. Although such needs and demands are established, the means to communicate different policy relevant content to different audiences is still a gap. With over a decade of our engagement with policymakers in Asia, the motivation for this book is borne out of the disappointment of missed opportunities to impact policy and education from our research owing to lack of communication means, inability to customize available means to context and sustain relationships beyond project tenure. As policy researchers and educators ourselves, two key questions that motivated us while developing this book were: – What learning outcomes are expected for learners for advancing policy studies in the twenty-first century and, – What pedagogical strategies can help in achieving these learning outcomes? The invitation for chapters was based on certain criteria keeping in line with our outlook for the book. These authors have collaborations with or are based in Asian Universities, they have been active in both policy teaching and research in Asia and are either teaching or conducting research on policy theory, practice and/or education. Invited authors were asked to respond to the following questions for developing their chapters:

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1. How is the content of your chapter relevant for public policy and its teaching? 2. How have you taught or how can this content be taught to the target audience (students/practitioners, level of education/ type of module)? 3. What learning outcome can be envisaged or observed from teaching of this content? 4. How is this content and its teaching to the target audience likely to evolve in future, especially in Asia (opportunities and challenges) The chapters cover the experiences of authors in working with students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as professional programmes such as executive education, training and capacity building for mid-career professionals and practitioners. While these approaches and tools appear promising, some of these are still in their initial stages of development. The book concludes with a Synthesis drawing insights from all chapters, arguing for the need for an integrating framework for linking content and skills needed to teach this content.

Organization of the Book This book is organized into two parts. Chapters in Part I cover key trends in the policy education landscape and in Part II cover selected cases of pedagogical approaches and strategies and their application in Asian universities. Part I: Key Trends in the Policy Education Landscape Gleason and Pan Algarra focus on Disruption and Public Policy Education across Asia in Chapter 2 and review how a variety of disruptions brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), climate change, and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the work and training of public policy professionals. A major change in the education landscape also impacting policy education has been the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), discussed in detail by Valentine in Chapter 3 focusing on its potential for policy education and issues surrounding retention of participants. Another trend that while not new, is relevant and continues to be critical in current times is that of evidence-based policymaking. In a

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reflective piece from praxis, Wasson in Chapter 4 discusses the nature of evidence-based policymaking and the ways in which scientists can present themselves to policymakers, and “broker” the knowledge gained in an honest manner. Continuing the thread of disruption and complexity in the twenty-first century, Yong and Samavedham highlight the need for higher educational institutions to find ways of preparing future leaders capable of negotiating this complex environment, in Chapter 5. They present the idea of building public policy capacity through Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling Education in an undergraduate Residential College setting in Singapore. With a massive increase in digital data availability in all spheres of policy and governance in the past decade and advanced data processing capacities there has been a focus on analytical methods and approaches for utilizing this data to improve our understanding of policy issues as well as governance (Puron-Cid et al. 2016; Jarrar 2017). We bring in focus on two approaches within this trend—big data analytics and social media analytics. Goyal et al. in Chapter 6 examine whether public policy education has kept pace with the growth of big data research in the field, with a specific focus on the Asian context. Permadi and Eka Putri in Chapter 7 explore the role of Social Media Analytics for Policy Studies. They use results from a public perception survey of internet users in Seoul, Jakarta, and Singapore to map the communication patterns and engagement between citizens and government through social media platforms. Part II: Selected Cases of Pedagogical Approaches and Strategies Part II of this book brings in cases of tested or in-trial pedagogical approaches and strategies from specific policy programs in Singapore, China, Taiwan and India. Discussion of these tools and practices is situated in the larger trends identified within chapters in Part I, as discussed above. In Chapter 8 Narain brings experiences from teaching a policy course to mid-career civil servants in India to draw attention to a North–South epistemological divide in public policy research and education. Varma and Liu in Chapter 9 present the use of games and simulations as teaching tools for enhancing learning of concepts and skills useful for a collaborative and adaptive response to real-world problems. In doing so they share their experiences from teaching systems thinking and

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system dynamics for disaster resilience in a multidisciplinary undergraduate module in Singapore. Similarly, Tan et al. in Chapter 10 reflect on the use of a pedagogical approach comprising of application of a participatory action research tool, scaffolding and collaboration with science-policy boundary organization for facilitating deep learning of complex policy issues among undergraduate students in Singapore as part of a study trip to the Western Himalayas. In Chapter 11, Ma and Wang introduce an innovative pedagogy using online platforms to teach comparative public policy by exposing students to different policy contexts of China and Taiwan. In Chapter 12, Lim et al. talk about policy learning through fieldwork for university students in Singapore. The focus of the discussion is on inquiry-based capacity to acquire classroom concepts and understand everyday water experiences and urban water policy in two Indian cities. Chapter 13 is the Synthesis chapter where we reflect on the messages from each of the chapters and draw insights for policy education. The focus of the chapter is on the quest for an integrating framework for knowledge of policy content as well as its teaching in Asia. We believe that the key messages drawn in this chapter will be relevant for universities and think tanks in Asia and other parts of the world engaging in policy research in the global South. The book indicates the major trends that are driving changes in public policy education in Asia and a repertoire of pedagogies to prepare educators and policy program designers to teach for better impact in learning and policy practice. The primary market for this book is universities, targeting policy students in a variety of programs from undergraduate to PhD levels. The book can be used in curriculum design in public policy schools and business schools for graduate programs on Public Policy and Public Affairs and Administration, and policy-relevant courses in university faculties of Science and Social Sciences more broadly. The book will be very useful for designing multi and interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate policy courses as well as in liberal arts education. Apart from curriculum design the book has a potential in professional development courses for teachers in tertiary level of education and hence the Centers for teaching and learning within Universities can be a good audience. Some insights from the book will also hold relevance for policy think tanks within and outside universities in Asia where it can be used by course developers to design capacity building and leadership programs for practitioners and bureaucrats.

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References Anheier, Helmut K. 2018. “On the Future of the Public Policy School.” Global Policy 10 (1):75–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12599. Besharov, Douglas J., and Jennifer Oser. 2013. “Teaching in Today’s Global Classroom: Policy Analysis in Cross-National Settings.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 19 (3):381–387. Bice, Sara, and Hamish Coates. 2020. “Public Servants for All Places: Competencies, Skills, and Experiences in a Globalized Policy Environment.” In The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant, 1–18. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Bice, Sara, Avery Poole, and Helen Sullivan. 2018. “Conclusion: Five Emergent Themes for Public Policy in the Asian Century.” In Public Policy in the ‘Asian Century’, 337–343. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Brik, A. B., and Pal, L. A. 2021. Introduction: Futures, Now and Then. In The Future of the Policy Sciences. Edward Elgar. Deleon, Peter, and Toddi A. Steelman. 2001. “Making Public Policy Programs Effective and Relevant: The Role of the Policy Sciences.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20 (1):163–171. El-Taliawi, O. G., Nair, S., and Van der Wal, Z. 2021. Public policy schools in the global south: A mapping and analysis of the emerging landscape. Policy Sciences, 54 (2): 371–395. Evans, Angela M., Jenny Knowles Morrison, and Matthew R. Auer. 2019. “The Crisis of Policy Education in Turbulent Times: Are Schools of Public Affairs in Danger of Becoming Irrelevant?” Journal of Public Affairs Education 25 (3):285–295. Foster, Richard H., Mark K. McBeth, and Randy S. Clemons. 2010. “Public Policy Pedagogy: Mixing Methodologies Using Cases.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 16 (4):517–540. Fritzen, Scott A. 2008. “Public Policy Education Goes Global: A Multidimensional Challenge.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 27 (1):205–214. Gleason, N. W. 2018. Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (p. 229). Springer Nature. Haigh, Yvonne, and Siobhan O’Sullivan. 2019. “Introduction to the Special Issue of Teaching Public Policy in Australia.” Teaching Public Administration 38 (1):3–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0144739419879481. Hatcher, William. 2019. “Teaching Curiosity in Public Affairs Programs.” Teaching Public Administration 37 (3):365–375. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0144739419858702. He, Alex Jingwei, Allen Lai, and Xun Wu. 2016. “Teaching Policy Analysis in China and the United States: Implications for Curriculum Design of Public Policy Programs.” Policy and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pol soc.2016.11.003.

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Herodotou, Christothea, Mike Sharples, Mark Gaved, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Bart Rienties, Eileen Scanlon, and Denise Whitelock. 2019. “Innovative Pedagogies of the Future: An Evidence-Based Selection.” Frontiers in Education 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00113. Hillman, Nicholas W., David A. Tandberg, and Brian A. Sponsler. 2015. “Public Policy and Higher Education: Strategies for Framing a Research Agenda.” ASHE Higher Education Report 41 (2). Wiley. Jarrar, Y. 2017. “What Is the Role of government in the Digital Age?” World Economic Forum [Online]. Available from https://www.weforum.org/age nda/2017/02/role-of-governmentdigital-age-data. Knott, Jack H. 2019. “The Future Development of Schools of Public Policy: Five Major Trends.” Global Policy 10 (1):88–91. Manwaring, Rob, Josh Holloway, and Brian Coffey. 2019. “Engaging Industry in Curriculum Design and Delivery in Public Policy Teaching: A Strategic Framework.” Teaching Public Administration 38 (1):46–62. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0144739419851155. Mead, Lawrence M. 2013. “Teaching Public Policy: Linking Policy and Politics.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 19 (3):389–403. Paniagua, Alejandro, and David Istance. 2018. Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments: The Importance of Innovative Pedagogies. Educational Research and Innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing. Prabhu, Swapna S., and Niranjan Mohapatra. 2012. “Public Policy Education: Global Trends in Theory and Practice.” Indian Journal of Public Administration 58 (2):173–183. Puron-Cid, Gabriel, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, and Luis F. Luna-Reyes. 2016. “Opportunities and Challenges of Policy Informatics: Tackling Complex Problems Through the Combination of Open Data, Technology and Analytics.” International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age (IJPADA) 3 (2):66–85. Rubaii, Nadia. 2018. “Bringing the 21st-Century Governance Paradigm to Public Affairs Education: Reimagining How We Teach What We Teach.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 22 (4):467–482. https://doi.org/10. 1080/15236803.2016.12002261. Scott, C. L. 2015. The Futures of Learning 2: What Kind of Learning for the Twenty-First Century (p. 14). Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Woo, Jun Jie. 2019. “Service Learning and Public Policy Education.” In Educating For Empathy: Service Learning in Public Policy Education:1. Singapore: World Scientific. Wu, Xun, Allen Yu-Hung Lai, and Do Lim Choi. 2012. “Teaching Public Policy in East Asia: Aspirations, Potentials and Challenges.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 14 (5):376–390.

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Wukich, Clayton, and Michael D. Siciliano. 2014. “Problem Solving and Creativity in Public Policy Courses: Promoting Interest and Civic Engagement.” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (3):352–368. https://doi. org/10.1080/15512169.2014.921625.

PART I

Key Trends in the Policy Education Landscape

CHAPTER 2

Disruption and Public Policy Education Across Asia: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Climate Crisis, and Covid-19 Nancy W. Gleason and Sara M. Pan Algarra

Introduction Disruption is the new normal, and public policy education should prepare a new kind of bureaucratic thinker to stay relevant. The fourth industrial revolution, the climate crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic are upending how societies and communities function. How we govern ourselves needs to become more agile as a result. The world is at the beginning of fundamental shifts in work and life due to the emergence of several key technologies related to the 4IR (Gleason 2018). Advanced technologies are augmenting what is possible for cognitive intelligence. These technologies—constantly interacting with each other—include robotics,

N. W. Gleason (B) · S. M. Pan Algarra New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE e-mail: [email protected] S. M. Pan Algarra e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_2

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artificial intelligence (A.I.), the Internet of Things, distributed ledger technology, augmented reality, virtual reality, drones, the 5G network, and 3D printing. As the automation of cognitive processes becomes possible most pattern-based tasks will be automated. This issue is as significant for garment factory workers as for radiologists, administrators, and policymakers. Automation does not necessarily mean that everyone will lose their job, but it means that the tasks done inside jobs worldwide are changing. Such transformations require competencies previously underemphasized in employment tasks. Disruptions and vulnerability are especially prevalent across Asia. The coastal cities across the region and the hundreds of millions of people who live in these densely populated urban settings are vulnerable to the climate crisis and Covid-19-related impacts. The One Belt, One Road initiative also provides important context to significant shifts underway that demand resilience and creativity from bureaucrats and public servants. Public policy education needs to adapt in kind to produce creative and cognitively agile graduates. Looking at 4IR disruptions on public policy work, in particular, is helpful because it impacts employability at a pace easier to interpret than climate change. The changes coming to governance mean that those educated to be policy analysts and public servants should be digitally literate and adaptive to changing norms. The automation of pattern-based work means that new rules about how societies govern themselves will have to be developed from cybersecurity to digital rights. For example, the collection of big data from government-owned tracking technologies and software require public servants to understand privacy norms and information security protocols deeply. There are ethical challenges for societies that public policy experts will need to interpret and manage daily, relating to data use and many other issues. In some societies, the social contract between tax paying and government accountability may be considered as traditional incomes disappear for many. Furthermore, the private sector is now more than ever, an essential collaborator on these issues since firms hold the wealth and productivity benefits of automation and control many of the technologies that are shaping our future. Public policy education focuses on public administration and management skills that prepare policy analysts for work in governance fields in both the public and private sectors. The academic discipline of economics has traditionally been heavily emphasized in policy work. The complexities of the climate crisis, demographics, urban planning, and the 4IR mean

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that no single academic discipline can fully prepare public policy work professionals. Today, a robust public policy education is interdisciplinary. It draws from international relations, law, ethics, public finance, sociology, and statistics. While there is no one way to offer public policy education, different approaches help prepare different professionals (Bardes and Dubnick 1979). The theoretical and practical training provided should educate graduates to address today’s complex governance challenges with an information technology lens. Higher education enrollment has grown significantly since 1991 (Maclean and Pavlova 2011). Between 2005 and 2009, enrollment in higher education in China and India grew by 21% and 25%, respectively (UNESCO Institute of Statistics 2010, as cited in ibid.). Parallel to the massification of higher education, there has also been a growing focus on aligning higher education with vocations and skills required for more employability (Maclean and Wilson 2009, as cited in Maclean and Pavlova 2011). The vocationalization of higher education and public policy training serves as another motivation to revise whether public policy programs provide curriculums and pedagogies for students to meet the skills required by the 4IR, the climate crisis, and health emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic. This chapter reviews ways in which the specific disruption of the 4IR is altering what is required of impactful public policy education in nations across Asia. It also places such relevant discussion in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global climate crisis as examples of how public policy education can become more useful to address these major disruptions to how people live and work. People who help govern during disruption need to be prepared for creative solutions that can be applied within constraints. The necessary cognitive ability is best developed through interdisciplinary education that enables familiarity with many different wicked problems. For instance, to address climate change challenges, it is required to understand the actionable nodes of the complex scientific context. Similarly, with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is helpful to be familiar with the pathogens, how they spread, and preparing for large-scale procurement and distributions of vaccines. This chapter argues that digital literacy with algorithms and automation enables a public servant to combine this knowledge into creative problem-solving during a disruption. Public policy training adapted to a constantly disrupted context will enable more effective governance by agile public servants.

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Whereas some schools within the geographic context of Asia are developing undergraduate programs on public policy, this chapter focuses on graduate education as most institutions across Asia provide specific public policy training at this tertiary level. The first section of this chapter dives into what public policy education means, providing examples of how graduate-level policy programs have incorporated courses connected to the 4IR. The second section examines what the 4IR is and its impact on public policy education. This section also analyzes the notion of interdisciplinarity within graduate training in public policy further. The third section looks at how public policy education must change because of the 4IR, focusing on digital literacy, giving examples from graduate courses taught in programs across Asia. The chapter concludes with specific recommendations for public policy graduate programs to navigate more effectively in times of global, regional, and local disruption.

Public Policy Education Across Asia Public policy is what governments do to address issue areas relevant to a given population. Public policy involves the construction and implementation of laws, projects, and regulations that govern a particular issue area, and they generally seek to consider benefits and burdens to the public. The public policy process entails agenda setting, policy formulation and making, implementation, and evaluation (Ramesh et al. 2010). Public policy is the outcome of government processes that distribute resources. For example, public policy can deliver health care and detail the bureaucracies which implement a welfare system for a given population. Public policy is at the core of dealing with climate change crises and emergency contexts such as the Covid-19 pandemic. How a country responds medically and socio-economically to the pandemic is, at large, within the jurisdiction of public policy. Hence, those who work in public policy need to be trained to anticipate the benefits and burdens of a given direction, help with successful implementation, positive messaging to the public, and evaluate the policies implemented. In theory, policymakers are trained to avoid as much as possible negative externalities and draw from a range of options to make decisions relevant to the public at different levels, from the local to the global. Many schools worldwide look to the United States (US) models of public policy graduate education and the network that supports them for structural and curricular design inspiration. This trend also exists in

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Asia (Kuo and Kuo 2012; Jung 2018). However, as Jisun Jung (2018) explains, while the influence of the Western Anglo-Saxon approach is evident in Asian higher education, the way higher education has unfolded in Asia varies with local history and culture. Considering the case of South Korea, Jung (2018) sees in its current higher education model a hybrid between country-specific approaches and external influences—from other countries in Asia and the United States. When analyzing the public policy education system in Taiwan, YuYing Kuo and Nai-Ling Kuo (2012) look at how the United States has influenced this system’s development. Considering the 2008 General Information and Standards for Professional Master’s Degree Programs of the United States-based Network for Schools of Public Policy Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), the scholars evaluated the curriculum of Master’s programs on public administration and policy in Taiwan (Kuo and Kuo 2012). The standards considered in common were (ibid., p. 399): A. Application of quantitative and qualitative techniques of analysis: policy and program formulation, implementation, and evaluation, and decision-making and problem-solving; B. Understanding of the public policy and organizational environment: political and legal institutions and processes, economic and social institutions and processes, and organization and management concepts and behavior; C. Management of public service organization: human resources, budget and financial processes, and information management, technology applications, and policy. The analysis suggested that Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) and Master’s in Public Policy (MPP) programs in Taiwan should put a larger emphasis on offering modules that concentrate on economic and social backgrounds, contextualized to the country (Kuo and Kuo 2012, p. 399). They concluded that the US approach to public policy and administration training has influenced Taiwan’s curriculums (Kuo and Kuo 2012). Nonetheless, they acknowledge that although this is an indicator of globalization, localization becomes even more critical. Most of the MPAs and MPPs under the study offered public budgeting and financial management modules. However, the content has been adapted to Taiwan’s

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context, considering budget design, approval, and auditing (ibid.). This study on undergraduate and graduate MPP and MPA programs in Taiwan set the ground for the importance of providing context-specific courses and drawing attention to the US’s influence over public policy and administration training in Asia at large. While building on suggestions to adapt to contemporary times of disruption in relation to the 4IR, the climate crisis, and Covid-19, Asian schools would simultaneously inspire and motivate schools in other regions to consider—contextually—these required changes as well. The NASPAA set new accreditation standards of quality in 2009. However, these have been criticized for failing to recognize the importance of digital literacy to support electronic government or EGovernment approaches (Ganapati and Reddick 2016). E-Government entails the application of digital technologies for public services. EGovernment in changing bureaucratic systems (Pors 2015). Scholars Ganapati and Reddick (2016) make a formal call for public policy education to value digital skills to stay relevant properly. This is because social services are being delivered electronically, transportation is being automated, education software is changing public education requirements, and how finance is conducted is entirely disrupted. Overall, public policy education is fundamental to good governance. It is a field that within the models explored in this chapter is taught in graduate education. Nonetheless, there are emerging programs in Asia offering early training on public policy. For instance, Yale-NUS College in Singapore has a Global Affairs major in which undergraduate students graduate with the foundations of public policy in a global setting. New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates offers the Social Research and Public Policy major with foundational courses on public policy and a wide range of skills for research application within the field. Undergraduate programs can also learn from the recommendations for content and pedagogies made in this chapter, although its focus is on graduate education. We examine eight public policy programs in Asia that have courses that connect to the 4IR requirements of digital literacy and other relevant areas. Table 2.1 gives an overview of some of these programs providing the names of courses, the major or program title, whether a core or elective component in the curriculum is included and/or expected for graduation, and the year the program was first offered. Table 2.1 provides examples of how some schools have decided to include courses related to the 4IR such as those on E-Government, as well as data modeling. Public

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Table 2.1 Representative public policy graduate-level programs in Asia Institution

Country

Course

Major

Core/elective

Opening year

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) Seoul National University (SNU)

Singapore

Quantitative Research Methods for Public Policy

Master’s in Public Policy (MPP)

Core (4 modular credits)

2004

Statistical Analysis of Public Administration Hong Kong Quantitative Analysis and Empirical Methods

Global Master of Public Administration (GMPA) MPP

Required methods course

2011

Required core course

Information not available

India

MPP

Required core course

2009

United Introduction Kingdom to (UK)/China Quantitative Analysis OR Applied Regression Analysis India Data Indian Modelling School of and M.S. Public Policy Excel (ISPP) AND Data Sources and Indian Datasets

Double Degree in Public Administration and Government

Core. Included in the second leg of the program taught at LSE

Information not available

One-Year Program in Policy, Design, and Management

Yonsei University

Master’s in Public Administration (MPA)

2018 Listed as three week-long skill workshops in the curriculum Not a core module Unspecified 1962

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (JSDP) London School of Economics (LSE) and Peking University (PKU)

South Korea

South Korea

Statistics and Quantitative Analysis

EGovernment

(continued)

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Table 2.1 (continued) Institution

Country

Course

Major

Core/elective

Opening year

Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Singapore

EGovernment and Information Policy

MPA

Special seminar

Information not available

policy students are being trained to apply statistical methods and robustly use related software programs, to develop relevant coding skills. It is paramount that public policy students graduate with the capacity to understand data sets and deal with such information to make decisions and evaluate the policies they implement. Moreover, as governments transition to E-Government platforms for more efficiency within the system, policymakers must understand the nuances and complexities of providing public services online. However, only two out of the eight programs offer a course on E-Government. Public policy practitioners need to be unskilled to comprehend and apply knowledge of digital privacy and cybersecurity. Not only are governments transitioning to E-platforms, but the Covid19 pandemic has pushed governments and the private sector to transform their services and routines using virtual spaces and tools. This sudden push made the digital divide in societies more visible. The digital divide refers to gaps in access to the Internet. In the Southeast Asian region, only Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia have more than 80% Internet penetration (Jalli 2020). The rest of Southeast Asia shows a significant digital divide. In 2019, Vietnam had an Internet penetration of 38% (Freedom House 2019a). In Indonesia, almost 44% of the population lacks access to secure and stable Internet (Freedom House 2019b). As education transitioned to an online setting, students who were not provided access to the Internet were left behind. Policymakers across Asia are to be trained with the knowledge and capacity to address the digital divide and a deeper understanding of the consequences of digital exclusion in the era of the 4IR. For instance, the Indian School of Public Policy launched in 2019 follows a “comprehensive training philosophy and the curriculum will be a blended design of the theory, perspectives, and best-practices of public policy from around the world, augmented with technical, managerial, and

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leadership skills” (ISPP 2020). Public policy practitioners with robust technical and managerial knowledge on the digital gaps and the best practices to address them would respond better to contemporary needs connected to accessing secure and stable Internet. Equality in this technological era is also pertinent to the digital world. Although one observes a trend in including data analysis and technical education, as well as more specific training on issue areas such as E-Government, MPPs, MPAs, and so on, can evaluate whether the foundational courses and electives are covering the required training to confront 4IR challenges. Online teaching of public policy and administration through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) has gained popularity in recent years. It has been further spurred on by Covid-19 induced remote instruction and social distancing measures. Public policy-related online education can have advantages for mid-career professionals (Christensen et al. 2013). Nonetheless, MOOCs have yet to be accepted in the professional realm as a legitimate credential by human resources metrics for the most part. However, public policy courses cater to these audiences in growing numbers, providing more education spaces that adapt and are more flexible toward the schedules, needs, and resources professionals have. Whether MOOCs will garner real legitimacy relative to expensive and well-branded hybrid degrees where people are mostly online but briefly face-to-face remains to be seen. This includes degrees such as the Global Master’s in Administration and Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, which has typically enrolled students worldwide, including across Asian countries.

What Is the 4IR, and How Does It Impact Public Policy Education? The 4IR entails the emergence of new and advanced technologies interacting with each other and augmenting what is possible for cognitive intelligence. These technologies include robotics, A.I., the Internet of Things, distributed ledger technology, augmented reality, virtual reality, drones, 3D printing, and an emerging 5G network that will enhance capacities of all these technologies. Together these technologies automate pattern-based work and make redundant many of the skills currently performed in the workplace by humans. Across the many different economies in Asia, the rollout of these technologies is happening at different levels and time frames. Nonetheless, all nations will be impacted

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by the automation of work, particularly their bureaucracies, and the way governance is performed domestically and internationally is being augmented. How public benefits are determined and distributed is being automated. The data collected by governments is ballooning and requires new analytical skills. Food production and agriculture are changing, and new regulations on safety and access are required. All industries are being impacted. Bureaucratic and governance experts in all types of regimes need to be prepared to address such changes. With the Covid-19 pandemic, education across all levels has also been transformed by using the Internet, and although countries plan to return to in-person teaching and learning, access to the digital will remain a basic need. Public policy education across Asia needs to respond accordingly to the needs and the complexities imposed by transformations in all sectors and public services, from education to food security and healthcare. Automation and digitalization are areas that policymakers should be trained to address with real-case scenarios, experiential learning, and technical and digital literacy. Currently, public policy education has focused on diplomacy and the geographical and historical relevance of being a global citizen. These issues remain important. Nonetheless, it is a necessary but insufficient information transfer inside the discipline. Even the field of diplomacy in itself, particularly through the lens of digital diplomacy, calls public policy practitioners for more understanding of the Internet and the virtual world. Digital diplomacy entails the use of Internet platforms by countries, through foreign ministries and embassies, to address foreign policy agendas, and develop an image and reputation (Manor and Segev 2015, as cited in Adesina 2017). Even the emphasis on diplomacy currently made in public policy education requires a deeper understanding of the technical complexities and opportunities the Internet and A.I. warrant. The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic exemplify how crucial technical knowledge is to make more effective decisions. Technology and public policy go hand in hand (Baker 2018). Alan Shark, Executive Director of the Public Technology Institute (PTI), in Technology and Public Management (2015) advocates for technological tools as essential enablers for public agencies (ibid.). Shark’s approach to the diffusion of information technology throughout public administration is a useful framework for the pedagogies used to train administrators, including policymakers. “Public administrators have new tools that require an entirely new appreciation for what these tools can do and how they can be constantly improved as new situations and opportunities

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arise” (Shark 2015, p. 21). Those trained to work in public administration should understand the wide range of technologies that govern their work and make it function, including information technology. The financial world functions digitally, bureaucratic responsibilities such as taxation are managed online, and policymakers get most of the data informing their policies digitally. Most public communications take place virtually. The services that policymakers provide are mostly dependent on technology tools (Shark 2015). Technology tools in communication and management make the provision of internal and external services and responsibilities by public administrators possible. The governance of technology has changed (ibid.). Hence, it would be a mistake not to include robust training in public policy schools on these technologies and their implications because there is a real demand in society for this learning type. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Public Policy Education Aaron Wildavsky, founding dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, had the task of establishing one of the first graduate schools of public policy in the United States. Wildavsky envisioned a graduate-level public policy curriculum that emphasized analysis over raw subject matters and on exposing students to public policy across diverse fields including health, education, and transportation (Wildavsky 1979). Although the emphasis was not on an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach per se—similar to the one that characterizes liberal arts education—Wildavsky already considered in 1969 that public policy practitioners had to learn about policy applied across multiple fields. Students had to develop a robust capacity to analyze cases across sectors. In the late 1990s, a discussion about interdisciplinary undergraduate education in public policy was already taking place at the University of Southern California (USC) (Harrington and Sundeen 1998). Even though it was not in Asia per se, US programs have largely influenced public policy graduate training in Asian schools (Kuo and Kuo 2012). What makes such a discussion at USC relevant to the interdisciplinarity idea is that the undergraduate curriculum for public policy was drawing from a liberal arts approach, combining economics, political science, quantitative methods, and computer applications (ibid.). Public policy is multidisciplinary by nature (Fukuyama 2018). The notions of government and governance do not exist in one particular field. However,

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this multidisciplinary feature cannot only be embraced at a surface level while educating public policy practitioners. The ongoing disruptions of the new decade require not only a basic familiarity with multiple disciplines from economics to environment and education but rather a robust understanding. Public policy students should also learn about how these disciplines interconnect with each other. This is why an interdisciplinary approach is essential. Training about diverse disciplines cannot take place in silos. When faced with real-case scenarios, students should develop transferable skills to analyze the interconnections between science, public health, finances, and security when it comes to a crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Embracing the multidisciplinary nature of public policy ultimately entails adapting its teaching and learning into more interdisciplinary pedagogies. The 4IR, the climate crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrate how policymakers have to be able to analyze and make decisions about problems that are as important to science as they are to politics. A public policy graduate in this new era should understand scientific knowledge to make effective and well-informed decisions for instance on the environment and complex algorithms of distributed ledger technology. With the rise of cryptocurrencies in the financial sector, governments have been faced with the question of regulation. For example, Japan has regulated cryptocurrency exchange businesses since April 2017 through the Payment Services Act (Umeda 2018). MPP and MPA graduates can indeed pursue further specialization in particular fields from public health to economics and cybersecurity, to develop specific knowledge and skills. That specialization should not diminish interdisciplinarity to ensure broad knowledge, cognitive agility, and the propensity to learn. If practicing public policy is about the act of governance, and if governing entails making decisions across many different sectors in society, then policy advisors cannot be isolated from these sectors. Scholars Alex Jingwei He et al. (2017) conducted a comparative study between public policy programs in the United States and China. Focusing on curriculum design and pedagogies, they found that although policy analysis requires interdisciplinary approaches, “most faculty members who teach such courses may have been trained and have worked in specialized fields, such as economics and political science” (Mead 2013, as cited in He et al. 2017, p. 388). Despite the fact that instructors are expected to adapt into more interdisciplinary methods, the scholars found that “in

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reality it is inevitable that what and how they teach will be heavily influenced by their training and academic background […]. Such challenges may be more pronounced in Chinese institutions” (ibid., pp. 388–389). This is because the development of public policy higher education in the United States has been longer than in China (He et al. 2017). To integrate an interdisciplinary approach to public policy education, schools can apply real-case scenarios, simulations, and experiential learning opportunities. They can also design courses that put sectors in conversation with each other. For example, LKYSPP in Singapore offers the “Education, Economics and Policy” module (PP5196) which combines the field of education policy with theoretical and empirical tools of economics. Major topics include, “the monetary and nonmonetary benefits of education; educational inequality with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; and policy issues such as compulsory schooling, girl-friendly schools, and school choice” (NUS 2015). Moreover, the examples used in the module are drawn internationally. Hence, the student completes the course having strengthened a global citizenship competency—which generally speaking is the current emphasis In public policy associated with diplomacy—and, more interdisciplinary and relevant to the disrupted global context that the world confronts.

How Can Public Policy Education Adapt to Disruption in the 4IR? The automation economy requires a literacy of the digital (Shark 2015; Baker 2018). This is a challenge for policymakers as it is for the new policies that need to be created to respond to contemporary complexities in Asia. The World Economic Forum (WEF), which focuses its policy research on the 4IR, has called for agile governance, arguing that policymakers and managers need to navigate change (World Economic Forum 2017) rapidly. Another point emphasized by the WEF is that new governance models should anticipate that the responsibility for governance does not lie purely with the public sector. The private sector can help protect citizens from disruptive elements of emerging technologies (Elmi and Davis 2018). Governments need to maintain social cohesion and be prepared to welcome new types of businesses and business models. This requires public servants to adopt new technologies quickly and regularly (Lye 2017). Advocates of innovation in education regarding the 4IR

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remain optimistic about the potential for adaptability to change in Asia. Scholars Rosaline M. Lee and Yanyue Yuan (2018) show this optimism by analyzing China’s innovation education with regard to the 4IR. Considering their analysis through the lens of public policy, one can see the importance of remodeling public policy training innovatively to produce professionals who can live up to the changes brought along by globalization and the 4IR. Nadia Rubaii (2016) discusses pedagogy changes in terms of what should be taught and how it impacts globalization in twenty-first-century governance. Current and future public administrators will be better prepared to work effectively across international and intercultural differences if faculty and programs model those forms of decision-making and inclusion (Rubaii 2016). These programs should also emphasize training students to respond to uncertainties and change and transform traditional hierarchical silos of government bureaucracies into collaborative shared-power networks (ibid.). Rethinking public policy education is imperative in light of the major disruptions of the 4IR, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the climate crisis. Other scholars have already advocated for changes in the way public policy is taught. For instance, Francis Fukuyama (2018) has done so considering US programs. Fukuyama has elaborated on how the dominance of economics in public policy education is problematic because it is overpowering what should be a multidisciplinary program. The argument is that merely being skilled in policy analysis for a public policy practitioner is inadequate for implementing changes in the real world. As such, public policy has shortcomings that need to be dealt with. Training should adapt to the new digital, technological, scientific, and socio-political knowledge and skills needed in today’s world. This is important because individuals are increasingly interested in public policy education. Those seeking such professional training should receive one that aligns with future employers’ tasks (governments, international organizations, non-profit and private sectors, among others) would assign. This demand for public policy education is also connected to a growing interest in public affairs in undergraduate courses. Jerry Mitchell (2018) analyzes the current structure of public affairs undergraduate education and the opportunities for developing programs and challenges of understanding what public affairs is about. Courses emphasizing social media and information management in the digital age are key opportunities for public affairs undergraduates (Mitchell 2018). Public affairs education at the undergraduate level is suggested to make more connections between the digitalization of

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societies. Public policy training, which is interrelated with public affairs, should also integrate education about how the digital age has transformed how government and related stakeholders function. It is also important for public policy practitioners in the 4IR to develop a robust set of analytical skills transferable across governance sectors. Brittany Haupt et al. (2017) studied local government managers’ perceptions of the core competencies recommended by the NASPAA. This chapter has previously indicated how the US model for public policy and administration training has influenced programs in Asia. The study highlights how MPA programs should emphasize core competencies in terms of applying critical thinking and analytical skills to the decisionmaking process (Haupt et al. 2017). These skills regarding quantitative and qualitative analysis are central to address the challenges brought by the 4IR, the climate crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic that public policy practitioners are already and will have to confront in the recent future. The National University of Singapore (NUS), a top higher education institution in Asia, made computational thinking compulsory in 2018, inclusive of learning programming competencies, for all students regardless of their fields (Pells 2018). To develop strong analytical skills the MPP program at LKYSPP, NUS requires as part of its core curriculum 4 modular credits respectively on “Quantitative Research Methods for Public Policy 1” (PP5406) and “Quantitative Research Methods for Public Policy 2” (PP5407). Students learn analytical skills dealing with different sets of data and real-world policy scenarios, and they are also trained to conduct policy evaluations through research methods (NUS 2016). As stated in the module’s description, “the focus is on rigorous quantitative evaluation tools. These will be taught using case studies and datasets that will allow students to identify the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and learn how to apply them to a policy problem of their choice” (NUSMods 2014). This methodological training is important for graduates to apply to studies they read in the future. With algorithms and fake news, it is essential to understand how knowledge and evidence-based findings are created. Across the many different governance structures and demographic demands in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), actions are being taken to prepare for the 4IR. For example, in Malaysia, a comprehensive plan for shifting education competencies, altering metrics, and messaging the most relevant habits of mind, has been well underway for some years now. There is always more to do, and implementation

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challenges are meant to exist, but the conversations are unfolding, and actions are underway (Wiriyapong 2019). In Singapore, the SkillsFuture Singapore has been launched to reskill and upskill its human capital, emphasizing resilience in the face of change. This is particularly important because of the scale of the challenges confronted in ASEAN, occurring alongside and in relation to climate change and the climate crisis. The first step is to acknowledge and recognize that these challenges exist, to make public policy efforts to address them. Public policy practitioners and administrators should receive a cutting-edge and real-based education that matches the needs of the 4IR, and the overall context of disruption societies live in today. Developing strong digital literacy is then fundamental. Digital Literacy A key competency for public policy education across Asia and around the world is digital literacy. Digital literacy, which refers to fluency and understanding of the digital. Proactive governments like Singapore have pushed the agenda of creating a smarter bureaucracy and offering multiple courses on digitalization and data analytics to its prospective and/or current civil servants. While universities elsewhere seem to involve some data analysis as a part of training their students, this trend does not seem to be adopted, acknowledging the 4IR yet. With the modernization and growth of regional economies, institutions might step up to meet the demands posed by 4IR and reallocate their resources to nurture betterprepared policymakers and bureaucrats. This requires robust analytical skills acquired through digital literacy. For example, the Indian School of Public Policy (ISPP) has two 3-week long skill-workshops in their curriculum titled “Data Modelling and M.S. Excel” and “Data Sources and Indian Datasets,” which make the skills even more contextualized (ISPP 2020). The Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (JSGP) in India offers a course on “Statistics and Data Analysis” as part of its MPP program (JSGP n.d.). In order to increase the digital literacy of bureaucrats, the basic approach is to teach public policy and administrators how to use software programs. Nonetheless, this approach does not guarantee an ability to learn new software in times of continuous change. The training should be done on the basis of technical adaptability, and on application. How are the software programs relevant to the services bureaucrats provide?

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This relevance and adaptability are best taught through real-case scenarios that are connected to the needs of specific communities, countries, and regions. To gain digital competencies, programs in Asia are already taking steps to include more real-life learning into the classroom, either virtually or in person. Programs are also offering courses that align with data analytics skills required to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the 4IR. For example, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Hong Kong integrated the Quantitative Analysis and Empirical Methods module as part of the required core courses. It teaches skills and tools to apply, collect, and analyze data to effectively develop and manage policies. The LSE-PKU Double Degree in Public Administration and Government requires students to take either the “Introduction to Quantitative Analysis” course, which covers the foundations of descriptive statistics and statistical examination and inference, or the “Applied Regression Analysis” course (LSE 2018). This class is concerned with the deepening understanding of the generalized linear model and its application to social science data. The only caveat is that these courses are only offered during the second year at LSE in the United Kingdom, and not in China. One class that aligns closely with the needs the 4IR presupposes for public policy education is the “Statistical Analysis of Public Administration” course at Seoul National University in South Korea offered through its GMPA (SNU 2016). It deepens on data analytics applied to governance. Scholars Yildiz et al. (2016) examine the evolution of E-Government courses in Turkish public administration programs and the problems that instructors need to solve to improve instruction. Accessing qualified instructors is a concern for the institutionalization of E-Government courses across programs in Turkey. The current use of I.T. in public organizations is rife with problems, as such, public administration graduates and others in related fields cannot be inadequately prepared to enter the workforce in the absence of a robust I.T. education. I.T. training is crucial to social service delivery (ibid.). Courses on E-Government can provide students with more skills to understand the implications of providing government services online. Other schools can draw on SNU’s content and contextualize their cases to make them more relevant. The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore offers another module in its MPA program titled “E-Government and Information Policy” (PM8125 Special Topic) (NTU 2012). Among the areas that this module includes are: Contemporary related challenges and trends;

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“how to use the Internet to extend government service online”; “how to transform operational and bureaucratic procedures”; “how governments around the world are deploying information strategies”; “I.T. issues and national security”; and “recent developments in E-Government and information strategy in Singapore and China” (NTU 2012). The course blends practice and theory. NTU’s course is another example that could be adopted and adapted for other contexts in the region. When it comes to digital literacy and I.T. training for public policy and administration practitioners— defining the competencies becomes a central challenge to the relevance of such education (Ni and Chen 2016). Anna Ya Ni and Yu-Che Chen (2016) explain that the three parts of I.T. competence are “knowledge, skills, and personal attributes” (p. 197). The scholars outline what students must develop under these three competencies at individual, organizational, and professional levels. While proposing their model for IT-related curriculums in public administration and management, the scholars contend that programs that do not acknowledge the relevance of I.T. competence. Furthermore, digital literacy “may fail to prepare students for the practical reality of I.T. as an integral and strategic element of public service” (Ni and Chen 2016, p. 205). However, they also acknowledge that the model requires more empirical research to understand its effects on the ground when applied to relevant academic contexts. Another critical issue to consider is that digital literacy is not evenly distributed across genders in the professional world (Gleason 2018). The 4IR is likely to cause women without digital literacy to fall further behind as technology advances (ibid.). This means that the gender disparities at play now in relation to digital literacy skills are projected to widen between the genders in tasks or jobs that require such knowledge. Big Data Literacy Awareness and critical thinking about big data are fundamental to thriving in the 4IR (Sander 2020). Such awareness involves evaluating what big data are, and how they function. The 4IR requires that public policy practitioners be trained with digital literacy applied to interrelated fields, from public health to cybersecurity and E-Governments. They also must develop an ability to use Information Technology and to understand and deal with big data. Big data encompasses “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage,

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and analyze” (McKinsey Global Institute 2011, as cited in Mergel 2016, p. 232). Governments today deal with large datasets such as census data and datasets generated through the interactions in the digital world between individuals and governmental entities. Ines Mergel (2016) argues that “MPA programs should therefore focus on the managerial aspects of innovative data initiatives and redesign their curricula in response to I.T. innovations in the public sector” (p. 231). MPA and practitioners in related fields should be taught about the variety, veracity, variability, and big data visualization. Mergel further explains that “a shift from offline to online interactions among citizens, as well as between citizens and government, have led to the creation of new types of data sets” (2016, p. 234). The three primordial competencies that public administrators are suggested to develop in their graduate training to work with big data are outlined by Mergel et al. (2016) in Mergel’s article on big data in public affairs education. These competencies are (Merge 2016, p. 234): A. Managing and processing large accumulations of unstructured and semistructured data; B. Analyzing that data into meaningful insights for public operations; C. Interpreting that data in ways that support evidence-based decisionmaking. To develop these competencies, students should be taught about privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility of big data, particularly in governmental matters (Mergel 2016). The curriculum should also include the ethical, technological, process, organizational and institutional change, and analytical dimensions of big data (ibid.). Mergel also proposes a syllabus for teaching big data in the public sector. Although this proposal is not necessarily tailored toward a specific context within an Asian country, the cases proposed could vary, as well as the context-specific readings. However, in substance, the modules cover foundational areas of big data that should be considered in any public policy, affairs, and administration school curriculum. These modules include: Big Data: Introduction, Concepts, Definitions; Big Data’s Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity; Big Data Ethics; Value Proposition of Big Data; The Technological Dimension (“cloud computing, sensors, machine-to-machine communication”); Predictive Analytics (“potential and current use of big data insights”); the Process Dimension (“crowdsourcing citizen insights

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to create innovation for government”); Organizational Alignment and New Organizational Structure; Smart Cities and the Internet of Things; Big Data in Government (“open data, social media data, administratively collected data, scientific data”); Big Data in Politics (“Political engagement, social movements, uncovering online networks, elections”); Big Data in Public Health (“Predicting pandemic outbreaks, tracking infectious diseases, assessing health implications, using sensors, implementing mobile health applications”); and the Data Analysis Practicum, including “social network analysis for social scientists” and “introduction into NodeXL for social media data collection and analysis” (Mergel 2016, pp. 239–245). Big data in public health, for instance, which is fundamentally relevant to the Covid-19 pandemic and future possible health emergencies. Courses on big data should not be confused with foundational classes on data analysis methods and statistics. This is because big data is not always “clean” and it is in nature, “messy” (Mergel 2016, p. 246). As such, Mergel offers a comprehensive set of suggestions to address gaps in MPA programs regarding big data. These suggestions can be expanded to public policy graduate programs such as MPPs and others outlined in Table 2.1.

Conclusion The 4IR and the automation economy have brought new technologies that are transforming the way societies function and the educationneeded to fit in (Gleason 2018). Higher education at large requires substantial change, students across disciplines must be prepared to use and learn how to use emerging technologies (Penprase 2018). Public policy cannot be an exception, but rather a pioneer in implementing such changes. Jobs are changing and the way individuals communicate, how the new generations relate with each other, how food is produced, how transactions are made, and even how people move is disrupting public policy. The Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on how vulnerable humanity iswithout more action to achieve sustainable development. It has made it more visible how far we are from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Agenda 2030, and how emergency response worldwide is fractured. This global context is an call for transformation. Public policy practitioners are primary stakeholders in actions to address the challenges outlined. Without policymakers, the SDGs would not exist, and sustainable development would be farthere from being

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ascertained. Public policy advisors and managers have an opportunity to influence how 4IR technologies are regulated. With public policy playing such an important role, then we need education to align with the content and skills needed to address these shifts. Disruption of various kinds in Asia and across the globe means public policy education to stay updated and relevant. As scholars Rupert Maclean and Margarita Pavlova (2011) contend, “creating a fruitful and dynamic partnership between [higher education] and society at large has become one of the basic missions (together with teaching and research) of universities” (p. 327). This chapter suggests ways in which graduate public policy training in Asia can be adapted toward making changes aligned with contemporary societies’ needs related to the 4IR, the climate crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions. Technology should be applied for big data analytics in public policy classrooms. Students should develop more agility (Gleason 2018), a better ability to pivot and walk away from plans that are not working, long-term planning that is adaptable to disruption, a deeper understanding of futuristic modeling, and more creativity applied to real-case scenarios in the classroom.. Given that the scale and depth of societies’ challenges do not fully match the skills and competencies present in graduate public policy education, this chapter offers improvements to digital literacy and more emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning as potential enhancements to public policy education. .

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Elmi, N., & Davis, N. (2018). How Governance Is Changing in the 4IR. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/agile-governance-cha nging-4ir-public-private-emerging-technologies/. Accessed 2 June 2019. Freedom House. (2019a). Vietnam. https://freedomhouse.org/country/vie tnam/freedomnet/2019. Accessed 27 August 2020. Freedom House. (2019b). Indonesia. https://freedomhouse.org/country/ind onesia/freedom-net/2019. Accessed 27 August 2020. Fukuyama, F. (2018, August 1). What’s Wrong with Public Policy Education. The American Interest. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/08/ 01/whats-wrong-with-public-policy-education/ Ganapati, S., & Reddick, C. G. (2016). An Ostrich Burying Its Head in the Sand? The 2009 NASPAA Standards and Scope of Information Technology and E-Government Curricula. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 22(2), 267–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2016.12002245 Gleason, N. W. (2018). Introduction. In N. W. Gleason (Ed.), Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (pp. 1–11). Singapore: Springer Nature. Harrington, M., & Sundeen, R. A. (1998). Undergraduate Education in Public Administration: The Right Place. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 4(3), 215–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.1998.12022029 Haupt, B., Kapucu, N., & Hu, Q. (2017). Core Competencies in Master of Public Administration Programs: Perspectives from Local Government Managers. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 23(1), 611–624. https://doi. org/10.1080/15236803.2017.12002272 He, A. J., Lai, A., & Wu, X. (2017). Teaching Policy Analysis in China and the United States: Implications for Curriculum Design of Public Policy Programs. Policy and Society, 35(4), 385–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polsoc.2016. 11.003 ISPP. (2020). Programme. https://www.ispp.org.in/programme/. Accessed 3 September 2020. Jalli, N. (2020, March 17). Lack of Internet Access in Southeast Asia Poses Challenges for Students to Study Online Amid COVID-19 Pandemic. The Conversation. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-lack-internet-access-sou theast-asia.html JSGP. (n.d.). M.A. Public Policy. https://jgu.edu.in/jsgp/courses/ma-publicpolicy/. Accessed 3 September 2020. Jung, J. (2018). Higher Education in Korea: Western Influences, Asian Values and Indigenous Processes. Journal of Asian Public Policy, 11(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17516234.2017.1299898 Kuo, Y. Y., & Kuo, N. L. (2012). Taiwan’s Public Policy Education: US-Style? Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 14(5), 391– 409. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2012.724963

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CHAPTER 3

What Can Pedagogic Theory Tell Us About Improving Instructional Design of MOOCs for Public Policy Education? Scott Victor Valentine

Introduction The advent of massive open online courses (MOOCs) holds great promise for enhancing access to public policy education, particularly in developing nations. Through online access, learners around the world can access courses which are designed by well-reputed professors and, which are, in some instances, certificated—allowing the learner to cobble together completion of MOOCs in the pursuit of accredited university degrees. In addition to broadening geographical access, MOOCs also exhibit two noteworthy temporal affordances—in most cases, learners can join courses when they want and often enjoy a degree of flexibility in regard to the pace at which they progress through these courses. The global accessibility of MOOCs also exposes users to new perspectives, enriched by

S. V. Valentine (B) Institute for Asian and Oceanian Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_3

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socio-cultural diversity that is typically associated with MOOC participants (Breslow et al. 2013). Finally, it merits note that many MOOCs available today can be taken for free, thereby helping to attenuate the economic tyranny that all too often prohibits learners from progressive access to education (Schuwer et al. 2015). These benefits notwithstanding, access to education is clearly not the penultimate goal of MOOCs. The aim is to educate; and herein lies the rub. Most MOOCs currently exhibit high rates of learner dropout. Researcher Katy Jordan from the UK’s Open University runs a website that tracks completion rates from 217 MOOCs.1 According to her data, in general, completion rates range from 5 to 40% and the data shows an apparent inverse correlation between student volumes and completion. Although slightly dated, Breslow and colleagues assert that for edX courses, which in many respect represent leading edge MOOC course development, completion rates are consistently under 10% (Breslow et al. 2013). This implies that learners might be coming to MOOCs in droves, but also leaving the courses prematurely, thereby failing to gain the most from the courses. In recognition of this, many researchers have investigated features of MOOCs to determine what turns learners off. Some attribute attrition to the lack of teaching presence (Jung and Lee 2018), the lack of challenging activities (Gütl et al. 2014) or social isolation (Yang et al. 2013). Although there are many nuanced interpretations wrapped up in such analyses, one can conclude that much of the attrition research points to one overarching cause under which all these sub-drivers can be grouped—students drop out of MOOCs because the experience fails to meet expectations (Allione and Stein 2016). How then, can MOOCs be designed in a manner which will engage the policy student (including policy practitioners learning in a MOOC environment) and sustain participation? This is the question which constitutes the central focus of this chapter. In order to shed light on this question, two prominent themes of pedagogic research will be critically examined— cognitive learning theory and constructivist theory. These two areas are commonly considered to be core areas of pedagogic research (Schunk 2012). Other themes related to pedagogic theory such as behaviorism, motivation theory and information processing theories were excluded 1 The following website was accessed on 20 September 2018: http://www.katyjordan. com/MOOCproject.html. Data was current up to June 2015.

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from the analysis due to word limits and a belief that some of the more salient aspects of these theories eventually migrate somewhat into the thematic areas under analysis for this chapter. In order to collate insights, a literature review was undertaken using the online databases Science Direct and Scopus. The databases were searched using the key words “MOOCs”, “cognitive learning theory”, “learning styles” and “constructivism”. Articles extracted for reference were chosen based on their perceived relevance to the study. In total, approximately 130 articles were consulted. The structure of this chapter works inward out, commencing with the mind of the learner. Section “Cognitive Learning Theory and Learning Styles” explores cognitive processes that influence learning. In particular, the section will introduce three learning style taxonomies and explore the implications of these theories for MOOC design. Section “Constructivist Theory” moves beyond the learner to examine insights from constructivist theory and examine how exogenous influences impact instructional design. Finally, Sect. “Conclusion: Toward More Effective Instructional Design” concludes with a synthesis that aims to pull together the insights from the previous sections and create a loose framework for guiding better instructional design.

Cognitive Learning Theory and Learning Styles In the quest to understand how the mind processes information and how cognitive processes lead to learning, a number of researchers hone in on trying to identify dominant learning patterns or learning styles. Learning styles refer to the notion that “individuals differ in regard to what mode of instructions or study is most effective for them” (Pashler et al. 2008, p. 105). Many theorists contend that matching learning styles to instructional design can foster more engaged students, who will be less likely to drop courses in mid-stream and more likely to elevate effort resulting in enhanced learning (Cheong et al. 2014; Dale 2014; Soflano et al. 2015). There are numerous models that try and categorize preferred learning styles. Three of the more well-known taxonomies—developed by Fleming (Fleming and Baume 2006), Kolb (2005) and Felder and Solomon—all have contributions to make in relation to tailoring MOOC course design to learner preferences. Neil Fleming’s VARK model focuses on preferred modalities of learning, with VARK being an acronym for visual, aural, read/write and

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kinesthetic. The basic premise is that learners tend to exhibit dominant preferences for different modes of learning. Visual learners prefer graphical presentations; aural learners prefer to learn through auditory modes such as through lectures or discussions; read/write learners like to learn through read/write modes and kinesthetic learners prefer to learn through engagement and hands on experiences (Fleming 2001). There is some support for the utility of using this model for improving learner effectiveness (Marcy 2001), with better learning performance particularly linked to kinesthetic learners (Vaishnav and Chirayu 2013). There are at least two characteristics of the VARK model that have relevance for MOOC design of policy courses. First, if learners have different modal preferences when they learn, MOOCs—which by their nature are intended for mass markets—should be designed with variety in mind. Visual, aural, reading, writing and hands-on activities should all be incorporated into instructional design to ensure that learners are, at least to a certain extent, exposed to activities that they find to be most appealing. Second, with research pointing to kinesthetic activities as having the greatest impact on learning performance, special attention should be given to instructional design to incorporate hands-on activities (Vaishnav and Chirayu 2013). It follows that activities that force students to direct context-specific analysis or manipulate the learning space might enhance both effectiveness and enjoyment. Fortunately, in policy studies, the contextual nature of applied theory makes case-based and problem-based desirable and these types of activities allow incorporation of activities from each VARK realm. The second theory on learning styles is Kolb’s learning inventory which, shifts the conceptual focus from modes of learning to the processes underpinning learning. Kolb’s model characterizes learners as exhibiting one of four dominant styles: Diverging, Assimilating, Converging or Accommodating. Diverging-style learners prefer concrete learning experiences followed by reflective observation. Assimilating-style learners prefer abstract conceptualization of issues followed by reflective observation. Converging style learners tend to also prefer abstract conceptualization of issues but they prefer to process the significance of the learning event through active experimentation. Finally, accommodatingstyle learners exhibit a preference for concrete experience and active experimentation (Kolb 2005). Kolb further posits that dominant learning styles are consequential outcomes formed by influential environmental influences that include personality type, education specialization, career

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training, current vocation and a person’s capacity to adapt to suit different learning challenges (Kolb 2005). Although the Kolb model has also been subject of targeted academic critique related to concerns over the lack of correlation of learning styles to learning performance (Metallidou and Platsidou 2008), Kolb model supporters continue to experiment with refinements (Manolis et al. 2013) and even the tool for assessing learning styles continues to be refined (now in its fourth iteration) (Kolb 2013). Insights related to Kolb’s learning inventory also provide fodder for thought in regard to more effective policy MOOC designs. First, each of the learning preferences—Diverging, Assimilating, Converging or Accommodating—is characterized by a learning process profile which would benefit from different types of instructional design. For diverging-style learners, activities within MOOCs should have a concrete focus (e.g. A real life policy problem), incorporating elements that allow the learner to reflect on the significance of what they learned, perhaps through a discussion forum. The experimentation preference of converging-style learners suggests that MOOC design should allow learners to work collaboratively to discover new insights. Problem-based and projectbased learning designs that hold back on prescriptive solutions might hold appeal for these learners. The conceptual and reflective natures of assimilating-style learners suggest that MOOC designers may wish to also incorporate opportunities for learners to push the boundaries of synthesized learning perhaps through untangling the dichotomies that are common to public policy questions. For example, comparative policy challenges would induce this type of contradictory analysis. For accommodating-style learners, their practical natures combined with a bent for experimentation implies that attempts should be made within MOOC designs to incorporate activities which interface with the real world and allow learners to engage in real world inquiry. As a deliverable, tasking students with the design of concept maps would fit accommodating-style learners. At its core, the Kolb learning inventory highlights the same important insight conveyed by the VARK model—learners have different learning preferences and so, if designers wish to keep learners engaged by appealing to their learning interests, they need to incorporate multidimensional features into their instructional designs (Joseph and Abraham 2017). For policy MOOCs, this suggests that variety is the spice of life. The third theory of learning styles—Felder and Silverman/Soloman’s Index of Learning Styles (ILS)—also yields insights when it comes to

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Table 3.1 Felder and Silverman’s learning style dimensions Dimension 1

Dimension 2

Dimension 3

Dimension 4

Sensing Concrete thinker, practical, oriented toward facts and procedures

Visual Prefer visual representations of presented material, such as pictures, diagrams and flowcharts OR Verbal prefer written and spoken explanations

Active Learn by trying things out; enjoy working in groups

Sequential linear thinking process; learn in small incremental steps

OR Reflective learn by thinking things through; prefer working alone or with a single familiar partner

OR Global holistic thinking process; learn in large leaps

OR Intuitive abstract thinker, innovative, oriented toward theories and underlying meanings

policy MOOC design. The model is based on four dimensions that are defined by dichotomous learning preferences. Table 3.1 reproduces Felder and Silverman’s learning styles from Felder and Spurlin (2005) and describes dominant learning traits associated with each dimension. The Felder-Silverman ILS reflects a broader taxonomy for assessing learning preferences. It exhibits elements of preferred modality characteristic of the VARK model (i.e. visual vs. verbal) and it also exhibits elements of the Kolb model when it comes to preferred receiving style (i.e. sensing versus intuitive; active versus reflective) and preferred processing styles (i.e. active versus reflective; sequential versus global) (Soflano et al. 2015). However the fourth dimension—sequential versus global—represents a dichotomous learning preference that is not part of either the VARK or Kolb models. This fourth dimension represents competing perspectives that have ramifications regarding instructional design for MOOCs. A typical MOOC design is sequential in nature. Indeed, a purview of the MOOC offerings on edX makes it clear that non-sequential course designs are rare. Yet, Felder and Silverman caution that “global” learners are prone to being dissatisfied when expose to sequential course design (Felder and Silverman 1988). In response, global course design strategies—such as the use of concept mapping—should be introduced which enable learners to see the big picture at various points along the way.

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In conclusion, the literature underpinning learning style preferences points to one commonality that reflects a main tenet of Cognitive Learning Theory—different people interpret data and assign meaning to the data in different ways (Merriam et al. 2012). Learning style theory simply extends this to posit that learners have disparate learning preferences and that ignoring these preferences undermines learner satisfaction (Cheong et al. 2014; Soflano et al. 2015). Therefore, it follows that instructional design should be created in a way that either appeals to one type of learner to maximize their learning experience or ensures all students encounter activities that appeal to their learning preferences as a course progresses. Yet, when it comes to MOOC design, designers are not in a position to select the type of learner around which they design courses. Therefore, the latter proposition—that learning activities should be designed with a balance in mind—is really the only viable strategy for MOOCs at this stage of technological capacity and under existing course design budgets. Although intuitively it might seem that there is a valid criticism to be made that aiming for design balance and activity variety under-serves all learning preferences, insights from constructivism, described next, tell us a different story. As the next section suggests, a degree of dissonance is necessary to advance learning. In other words, the design-learning style interface does not need to be as harmonious as learning style theorists might purport (Hsu 2017). As one researcher puts it, “there is quite a difference between the way that someone prefers to learn and that which actually leads to effective and efficient learning ” (Kirschner 2017, p. 166).

Constructivist Theory Three Tenets There are three important tenets of constructivism that shed insight into the manner in which policy MOOC activities ought to be developed. The first tenet—shared with learning theory proponents—is that instructional design requires variety because each student possesses different worldviews developed through learner-specific environmental influences and different cognitive processes (Schunk 2012). Consequently, activities need to be designed in a way to address the numerous factors that positively impact and optimize the learning experiences for individuals with diverse backgrounds and abilities (Fleming and Baume 2006).

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A second tenet of constructivism highlights the importance of the study environment—contextual factors matter when it comes to learning (Greeno 1989). Consequently, instructional designers need to consider how design can shape the pedagogic environment to enhance learning effectiveness and at the same time inculcate skills in the learner to help them to also take control of their learning environments. This is particularly challenging in the contextually infused public policy realm. A third tenet relates to the social nature of learning—social interactions lie at the heart of learning because exogenous challenges to one’s worldview give rise to dissonance that can engender modification of worldviews and understanding (Hodson and Hodson 1998). Indeed, manufacturing dissonance lies at the heart of Vygotsky’s social constructivism theory (John-Steiner and Mahn 1996). This third tenet yields significant learning optimization opportunities for policy MOOC students because of the value and cultural differences that would yield contention over policy analysis. These three principles of constructivism—(i) learners start from different foundations and learn in different ways, (ii) the learning environment influences learning (Bandura 1986) and (iii) knowledge is truly only constructed by challenging engrained understanding—can serve as guides for constructivist instructional design. To this end, researchers from the University of Catalonia suggest seven strategies, described next, for MOOC design that align with these constructivist tenets (Guàrdia et al. 2013). Strategies for Aligning MOOC Design with Constructivist Pedagogy Strategy 1: Competence-Based Design Approach Since policy students will be drawing from what they learn in MOOCs to apply to their own contextually infused challenges, the goal of MOOC instructional design should focus more on inducing competence-based outcomes rather than on content-heavy pedagogy (Richards and Rodgers 2014). As Guàrdia and colleagues put it, “Learners need to learn in ways which can develop their capacity to solve situations that are commonly encountered in everyday life” (Guàrdia et al. 2013, p. 3). They argue that this is best achieved through contextual variation and situated learning, including approaches such as problem-based, case-based and projectbased learning. In public policy education, this can be achieved by slightly altering the political, social, economic, environmental or technological

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backdrop of a given policy challenge and then asking students to reflect on how the change would alter the policy analysis. Strategy 2: Learner Empowerment Too many MOOCs nowadays exhibit a teacher-centered approach to course design, characterized by video and lectures replete with embedded PowerPoint presentations (Siemens 2013). These recorded “master classes” position students as passive learners in an unmonitored environment (Guàrdia et al. 2013). Therefore, it should come as little surprise that students become bored. A further challenge that is unique to MOOCs is that high student numbers make it difficult for facilitators to undertake regular and extended one-on-one interactions with students. When these two barriers are considered in tandem, it should be apparent that policy MOOCs need to be designed, not with the teacher at the center, but with the learner at the center. Inviting students to analyze policy in their home countries that is important to them through the theoretical lenses provided in the course is a powerful way to shift content from the obscure and superficial to a learning experience that resonates deeply with a learner. Guàrdia and colleagues (2013, p. 3) define a “learner-centered approach” as consisting of active learners who are engaged in “the establishment of individual goals and a personal trajectory”, self-regulation, self-guided pacing and self-assessment functioning in conjunction with peers and interest groups that “promote student empowerment and engagement ”. One way to actualize this in practice is to have students define policy challenges that they wish to find answers for at the beginning of the course and then tie assessment to the capacity of the students to apply the learning to resolve their policy challenges. Strategy 3: Learning Plan and Clear Orientations A constructivist perspective characterizes learners as heterogeneous (SeinEchaluce et al. 2017), possessing varying levels of experience, competencies and time demands. By designing clear learning plans and learning goals, all students, at a minimum, will benefit from a shared understanding of what the course requirements are. In policy MOOC design, students can be guided through clear schedules that make it easy for students to track upcoming tasks, assignments and deadlines (Guàrdia et al. 2013). Most commercial learning management systems allow course designers to integrate reminders such as pop-up-windows and automated

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emails at crucial times to offset the reality that online students are often juggling other time demands and do not enjoy the benefit of in-class reminders and social interaction that often serve as fail-safes to keep students on track. One researcher at the University of Delft recommends a Learning Tracker which is a dashboard that students confront as they login to a course that provides the learners with insights into comparative progress to date (Jivet 2016) and monitor upcoming time demands. Strategy 4: Collaborative Learning Social constructivists hold that negotiation, structured conflict and disagreement create conditions for learning (Johnson and Johnson 1979). To enable this, students must effectively engage in discussions that draw out contention and then seek to reconcile competing views (John-Steiner and Mahn 1996). Vygotsky’s advocacy of dialectical thinking exemplifies the end goal—in the presence of a thesis and antithesis, the search for a synthesized position promotes learning (Mahn 1999). Indeed, dialectical analysis has been put forward as a key element to resolving wicked, global policy problems (Valentine et al. 2017). Many researchers also agree that when done correctly, activities that encourage greater social presence lead to enhanced levels of learner satisfaction (Richardson and Swan 2003), a contributing factor in attenuating MOOC. Related back to policy MOOC instructional design, activities should be designed to foster dissent and dissonance. Debates, peer critiques of stated positions, discussion topics that force students to choose from competing perspectives are all pedagogic strategies that can induce dissent. Yet, the activities need to be carried out in such a way that learners do not close themselves off to competing perspectives. To accomplish these ends, Guàrdia and colleagues (2013, p. 3) suggest that designers provide “clear netiquettes for participation in discussion forums or any other collaborative activity” and clarify participatory expectations by establishing “rules and parameters about quality and extension of course production and interventions ”. Another more concrete strategy is to have students write reflective journals after the exercises that reflect on how the competing perspectives can be synthesized. Strategy 5: Social Networking In constructivism, learning is, at its heart, a social process. Consequently, establishing conditions which foster positive relationships between

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students should not be overlooked. By engendering positive “social capital”, course designers can nurture goodwill between peers, which helps students to engage in controversial topics without experiencing interpersonal dissonance and disengagement (Oh et al. 2004). In this light, attempts should be made to inculcate the development of emotional intelligence in students to ensure that they can play a contributing role in facilitating a positive learning environment (Zins et al. 2007). This can be as basic as agreeing formal rules of engagement at the beginning of a course or providing regular tips on how to support effective peer learning. Guàrdia and colleagues recommend that MOOC designers can further support positive social networking by designing spaces such as chat rooms for social interaction. Assigning teamwork activities centering on small group interactions can also help build deeper ties. At the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, one of the capstone projects for students is a group analysis of a Singaporean policy challenge that is presented to a client who comes from either industry of government circles. This project is consistently rated by students as one of the most memorable learning activities because the analysis of a Singaporean policy challenge conducted by students who are largely from other nations encourages learning through cultural acclimatization. One other strategy that Guàrdia and colleagues recommend for improving social networking is to create a “feed forward attitude” that encourages students to share the work of others and make use of social networking apps (Guàrdia et al. 2013). This can be supported at the school level by designing social media pages for each program and designing incentives (prizes and awards) for most effective use of social media. Strategy 6: Peer Assistance Many constructivists believe that teacher-centered approaches to course development, render the opinions of teachers to be unassailable facts, thereby fostering learning by rote behavior. Knowlton (2000, p. 6) argues that when students “take more active control of their own learning, the knowledge that they discover is, in essence, created by the student. As a result, knowledge becomes more personally relevant to the student ”. Delegating the sense-making process to the students not only entrenches knowledge in MOOC environments, it also further exposes students to the competing worldviews of their peers siring the possible rise of collaborative dissonance that is instrumental to learning. In MOOC environments,

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enhanced student involvement takes on added important because oneto-one teaching contact adds to the cost of managing MOOCs and undermines the cost advantages associated with this platform of learning. Therefore, there is economic value associated with enlisting learners as peer assistance (Corneli and Danoff 2011). Guàrdia and colleagues recommend that MOOC designers explicitly integrate peer assistance into instructional design and ensure that students are both aware of their enhanced roles and rewarded for their efforts. Dougiamas and Taylor (2003) go as far as to suggest that learning communities, where learners foster the development of other learners, can also help attenuate insufficient facilitator presence. There are specific design strategies that can support peer assistance. Guàrdia and colleagues (2013) advocate that peer assessed discussion boards can be established to support collaborative inquiry. Even when it comes to the production of coursework and provision of formative feedback, peer review assessment activities can be designed to include students in the evaluation process. For example, a student in a policy MOOC might be allocated the task of preparing a policy analysis while another student is assigned the responsibility of ensuring the analysis reflects an effective understanding of the given policy context. One way to creating the learning community outlined in the previous paragraph is to employ previous graduates of a course as tutors for subsequent renditions of the course. This has the added benefit of helping a graduate entrench their learning. Strategy 7: Interest Groups As mentioned earlier, MOOCs attract huge numbers of students and many have disparate learning objectives and interests (Sein-Echaluce et al. 2017). In public policy MOOCs, one might find actual practitioners learning side by side with undergraduate students who have no real policy experience. While, in one respect, this enhances the learning process because it introduces learners to varied worldviews, this can quickly demotivate students if they are placed in discussion forums or in workgroups that do not at least share relevant interests. For example, placing an environmental policy student into a group of students investigating macroeconomic policy amplifies the possibility that the environmental policy student will lose interest in the contextual discussions that take place and, given the low switching costs associated with MOOCs, withdraw from the course.

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Guàrdia and colleagues recommend that this type of threat can be alleviated by creating course features which allow for small group discussion and exchange. Many learning management systems allow students to establish chat groups based on interests, culture, geography, language or some other attribute that might lead to more impassioned discussions. Of course, the caveat to this approach is that a degree of controversy or cognitive conflict needs to be induced into these special interest groups to ensure that shared interests or attributes do not lead to groupthink based on bounded rationality and information limitations, which can undermine learning (Sterman 2006). Although, Guàrdia and colleagues recommendations touch upon the importance of student-centered learning, it serves to tie some of these observations together by introducing recommendations from researchers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) who advocate in favor of enhanced self-regulatory skills to support constructivist e-learning (Beers et al. 2003). In particular, their emphasis on the role of formative feedback in supporting self-regulated learning, merits further examination in the next section because it also has MOOC design implications. Self-Regulatory Skills and Formative Feedback Beers and colleagues refer to the compilation of skills such as selfregulation, self-mediation and self-awareness that many consider to be instrumental for optimize learning performance as reflexive cognition (Beers et al. 2003). They suggest that instructional designers should integrate the cultivation of reflexive cognition skills into course design. In MOOC design, self-assessment of metacognition skills along with tutorials on how to improve these skills should be a formal part of precourse preparations. At the same stage, learners could be encouraged to clarify their learning expectations and to set learning goals. In MOOCs, where students do not enjoy high levels of teacher access, training the students to actively manage the learning process contributes to reduced attrition and better learning performance (Kennedy et al. 2015). Beers and colleagues also advocate for cognitive apprenticeship meaning that students should be coached and given formative feedback on their approach to learning (Beers et al. 2003). For stronger students, opportunities should exist to allow students to push themselves beyond the core curriculum. For weaker students, scaffolding should be developed to allow students to strengthen and reinforce areas of weakness (Moll

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Table 3.2 Seven guidelines for effective formative design

1. Help clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, and expected standards) 2. Facilitate the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning 3. Deliver high-quality information to students about their learning 4. Encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning 5. Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem 6. Provide opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance 7. Provide information to teachers that can be used to help shape teaching

2001). All of this can be provided through external links to supplemental material. Given the importance of formative feedback for helping students to take charge of their learning progress, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) recommend seven guidelines (Table 3.2) that course designers might wish to consider when developing more effective formative assessment for MOOC courses. Guàrdia and colleagues contribute to these recommendations as well with some added suggestions on how to operationalize formative assessment in MOOC environments where constraints on facilitator time constrain formative assessment. They argue that the design of rubrics, scales and automated feedback on quizzes can help provide feedback, in the absence of facilitator involvement. They also recommend the use of blogs or e-portfolios to help students review and reflect on what they learned and share learning progress and reflections with peers (Guàrdia et al. 2013). In policy MOOCs, one effective pedagogic strategy for encouraging students to reflect on their learning development during the course is to have students undertake a policy analysis at the beginning of the course and then have the same students critique their work and highlight their pre-course knowledge gaps as a way to entrench how much they have learned. To sum up the section, there are clear strategies that instructional designers can adopt to ensure that MOOC designs are aligned with principles of constructivism. When strategic design of the learning environment is combined with effective formative assessments, an environment for supporting the type of diversity that is characteristic of MOOCs will be established.

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Conclusion: Toward More Effective Instructional Design This chapter has merely scratched the surface in regard to strategies for improving policy MOOC appeal and effectiveness. However, it does demonstrate that there are some proven insights from mainstream pedagogic theory that can contribute to better policy MOOC design and avert instructional design failings that undoubtedly contribute to high student attrition rates. Many of the insights examined in this paper can be connected across an instructional design spectrum that begins with preparing students to succeed and then leverages progress in this regard to foster conditions to learn, which in turn lead to the selection of design features and elements. Table 3.3 summarizes how theory discussed in this paper connects to practice along this spectrum. In this concluding section, key insights will be extracted from the summary table to reiterate how policy MOOC design can be strategically managed to better motivate, educate and retain learners. Students need guidance on how to effectively manage time, how to engage with other learners in the course, how to self-assess their progress and how to refine strategies for learning to achieve self-designed learning goals (Beers et al. 2003). All of these tasks can be supported by precourse activities and in-course design features. Prompts can be created to remind students to self-assess their physical and emotional well-being prior to beginning their studies. Pre-study modules can be created to help students cultivate emotional balance, engage successfully with others and manage their learning progress. Time management can be supported through comprehensive schedule design and automated task reminders. In course assignments can be developed to encourage students to selfreflect on their learning and targeted questioning can help students to focus on metacognitive evaluation. Despite the wealth of research that supports the importance and value of preparing students in this way, most MOOCs barely scratch the surface in terms of providing such support. The analysis undertaken in this chapter also provided concrete guidance on and justification for the type of features and activities that should go into public policy MOOC design. Research from cognitive learning theory and constructivism point to the need for course designs which incorporate learner relevance, novelty, variety and physical engagement (Schunk 2012). This suggests that course design should include visual

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Table 3.3 Connecting theory to better course design Design element

Theoretical guidance

Examples: course design elements

Variety

Activities should be defined with variety to appeal to all learners

Hands-on

Kinesthetic activities (hands-on) enhance learning performance A degree of surprise and discomfort with activities should be balanced with familiar and desirable activities Focus on competency-based outcomes rather than content-heavy pedagogy Allow students to direct their studies and manage learning goals

Simulations, discussion tasks, collaborative assignments, wikis, learning portfolios, gamified activities, videos, audio recordings, reading-writing tasks, concept maps, Internet sites, apps etc. Problem-based learning, project-based learning, learning portfolios Design templates, core activities replicated, varied activities injected to keep the experience fresh

Balance

Competency focus

Learner empowerment

Collaborative design

Structured conflict and disagreement create conditions for learning

Social networking

Students need time to feel comfortable and supported by other learners

To do statements, simulations Learner directed objective setting, Learning Tracker, formative feedback tasks, reflective journals, clear schedules, weekly to do lists, task reminders, scaffolding links, learning communities, Q&A forums, peer assessment, supplemental tasks Netiquette, rules and parameter need to be set. Debates, discussion boards, peer assessment, gamified group activities, group wikis, team projects utilizing educational technology Student introductions, chat rooms, online student profiles, group ice breakers, feed-forward activities

(continued)

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Table 3.3 (continued) Design element

Theoretical guidance

Examples: course design elements

Peer assistance

Students learn through the process of teaching and peer collaboration Students come to class with different expectations and interests

Learning communities, peer assessment, student-led Q&A board Thematic study groups, theme-based discussion groups, interest-based activity segregation Reflexive cognition tutorials, learning coaches, assignment rubrics, weekly self-assessments, automated quizzes, formative feedback, peer learning communities, scaffolding links, concept maps

Relevance

Reflexive cognition skills

Students who self-regulate through setting study goals, assessing progress and revising study strategies exhibit better performance

and audio elements, reading exercises, writing exercises and exercises that induce movement and physical participation. YouTube videos, blogs, E portfolios, wikis, discussion forums, apps to manipulate information, concept maps, reflective journals, project-based assignments, problembased assignments, simulations, role-plays, active discussions and gamified tasks are all specific tools that can infuse diversity into course design and help appeal to a diversity of learners. Constructivism and motivation theory both highlight the importance of extensive social interaction for students to both maximize the learning process and enjoy themselves (Richardson and Swan 2003). This suggests that efforts should be made at the beginning of a course to socialize the group. Discussion forums can be built around student introductions and thematic chat groups can be designed to establish venues for collaborative learning along lines of common interest. Over the course of a MOOC, discussion forums, debates, project-based learning, many-group projects and peer learning communities can all be established to ensure that students have opportunities to engage with each other. Peer reviews and peer assessment activities can also be designed to allow students to play an active role in helping to educate each other. These observations should not be misinterpreted to suggest that insights from this paper constitute a panacea for effective policy MOOC

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instructional design. Indeed, the elements and relationships depicted in Table 3.3 constitute the bare bones of an emergent holistic framework for improving MOOC effectiveness. As research progresses and more scholars work on refining MOOC instructional design, this framework can evolve to a more prescriptive model and applied more specifically to the value-laden, contextualized challenges of public policy education. Yet, it should be clear from the analysis presented in this chapter that better student profiling, pre-course metacognitive skill development, more engaging design, task variety and collaborative learning can already make a substantial contribution toward the design of more impactful policy MOOCs.

References Allione, G., & Stein, R. M. (2016). Mass attrition: An analysis of drop out from principles of microeconomics MOOC. The Journal of Economic Education, 47 (2), 174–186. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Beers, M., Wilson, M., & Kearns, M. (2003). Contructivist e-learning methodologies: A module development guide. Burnaby, BC: British Columbia Institute of Technology. Breslow, L., Pritchard, D. E., DeBoer, J., Stump, G. S., Ho, A. D., & Seaton, D. T. (2013). Studying learning in the worldwide classroom research into edX’s first MOOC. Research & Practice in Assessment, 8, 13–25. Cheong, C., Filippou, J., & Cheong, F. (2014). Towards the gamification of learning: Investigating student perceptions of game elements. Journal of Information Systems Education, 25(3), 233. Corneli, J., & Danoff, C. J. (2011). Paragogy. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 6th Open Knowledge Conference 2011. Dale, S. (2014). Gamification: Making work fun, or making fun of work? Business Information Review, 31(2), 82–90. Dougiamas, M., & Taylor, P. (2003). Moodle: Using learning communities to create an open source course management system. Paper presented at the EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology. Felder, R. M., & Silverman, L. K. (1988). Learning and teaching styles in engineering education. Engineering Education, 78(7), 674–681. Felder, R. M., & Spurlin, J. (2005). Applications, reliability and validity of the index of learning styles. International Journal of Engineering Education, 21(1), 103–112.

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Fleming, N., & Baume, D. (2006). Learning styles again: VARKing up the right tree! Educational Developments, 7 (4), 4. Fleming, N. D. (2001). Teaching and learning styles: VARK strategies: IGI Global. Greeno, J. G. (1989). A perspective on thinking (Vol. 44). USA: American Psychological Association. Guàrdia, L., Maina, M., & Sangrà, A. (2013). MOOC design principles: A pedagogical approach from the learner’s perspective. eLearning Papers (33). Gütl, C., Rizzardini, R. H., Chang, V., & Morales, M. (2014). Attrition in MOOC: Lessons learned from drop-out students. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Learning Technology for Education in Cloud. Hodson, D., & Hodson, J. (1998). From constructivism to social constructivism: A Vygotskian perspective on teaching and learning science. School Science Review, 79(289), 33–41. Hsu, T.-C. (2017). Learning English with augmented reality: Do learning styles matter? Computers & Education, 106, 137–149. Jivet, I. (2016). The Learning tracker: A learner dashboard that encourages selfregulation in MOOC learners. Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Educational Psychologist, 31(3–4), 191–206. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1979). Conflict in the classroom: Controversy and learning. Review of Educational Research, 49(1), 51–69. Joseph, L., & Abraham, S. (2017). Instructional design for learning path identification in an e-learning environment using Felder-Silverman learning styles model. Paper presented at the 2017 International Conference on Networks & Advances in Computational Technologies (NetACT). Jung, Y., & Lee, J. (2018). Learning engagement and persistence in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Computers & Education, 122, 9–22. Kennedy, G., Coffrin, C., De Barba, P., & Corrin, L. (2015). Predicting success: How learners’ prior knowledge, skills and activities predict MOOC performance. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge. Kirschner, P. A. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles myth. Computers & Education, 106, 166–171. Knowlton, D. S. (2000). A theoretical framework for the online classroom: A defense and delineation of a student-centered pedagogy. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2000(84), 5–14. Kolb, A. (2013). The Kolb learning style inventory 4.0: A comprehensive guide to the theory, psychometrics, research on validity and educational applications. Philadelphia, PA: Hay Group.

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Kolb, A. Y. (2005). The Kolb learning style inventory-version 3.1 2005 technical specifications. Boston, MA: Hay Resource Direct, 200, 72. Mahn, H. (1999). Vygotsky’s methodological contribution to sociocultural theory. Remedial and Special Education, 20(6), 341–350. Manolis, C., Burns, D. J., Assudani, R., & Chinta, R. (2013). Assessing experiential learning styles: A methodological reconstruction and validation of the Kolb learning style inventory. Learning and Individual Differences, 23, 44–52. Marcy, V. (2001). Adult learning styles: How the VARK© learning style inventory can be used to improve student learning. Perspectives on Physician Assistant Education, 12(2), 117–120. Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2012). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide: Wiley. Metallidou, P., & Platsidou, M. (2008). Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory-1985: Validity issues and relations with metacognitive knowledge about problemsolving strategies. Learning and Individual Differences, 18(1), 114–119. Moll, L. C. (2001). Through the mediation of others: Vygotskian research on teaching. Handbook of Research on Teaching, 4, 111–129. Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and selfregulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. Oh, H., Chung, M.-H., & Labianca, G. (2004). Group social capital and group effectiveness: The role of informal socializing ties. Academy of Management Journal, 47 (6), 860–875. Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105– 119. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Richardson, J., & Swan, K. (2003). Examing social presence in online courses in relation to students’ perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Network, 7 (1), 68–84. Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning theories an educational perspective (6th ed.). Pearson. Schuwer, R., Jaurena, I. G., Aydin, C. H., Costello, E., Dalsgaard, C., Brown, M., et al. (2015). Opportunities and threats of the MOOC movement for higher education: The European perspective. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(6). Sein-Echaluce, M. L., Fidalgo-Blanco, Á., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2017). Adaptive and cooperative model of knowledge management in MOOCs. Paper presented at the International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies.

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Siemens, G. (Producer). (2013). Group work advice for MOOC providers. ELEARNSPACE. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2013/ 03/10/group-work-advice-for-mooc-providers/ Soflano, M., Connolly, T. M., & Hainey, T. (2015). Learning style analysis in adaptive GBL application to teach SQL. Computers & Education, 86, 105– 119. Sterman, J. D. (2006). Learning from evidence in a complex world. American Journal of Public Health, 96(3), 505–514. Vaishnav, R. S., & Chirayu, K. (2013). Learning style and academic achievement of secondary school students. Voice of Research, 1(4), 1–4. Valentine, S. V., Sovacool, B. K., & Brown, M. A. (2017). Frame envy in energy policy ideology: A social constructivist framework for wicked energy problems. Energy Policy, 109, 623–630. Yang, D., Sinha, T., Adamson, D., & Rosé, C. P. (2013). Turn on, tune in, drop out: Anticipating student dropouts in massive open online courses. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2013 NIPS Data-Driven Education Workshop. Zins, J. E., Bloodworth, M. R., Weissberg, R. P., & Walberg, H. J. (2007). The scientific base linking social and emotional learning to school success. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 17 (2–3), 191–210.

CHAPTER 4

Learning by Doing, Reflecting, and Teaching R. J. Wasson

Evidence and Policymaking While contributing to the basics of geomorphology (the study of landforms) and Quaternary studies (the study of Earth history over the past 2.6 million years) I have also focused on influencing government policymaking and aiding the implementation of decisions. Quaternary studies are a type of historical study that have many similarities with human history and environmental history. Therefore, I give weight to all forms of historical inquiry that aid our management of natural resources because historical records are an archive of the natural variability of Earth systems, help us to understand how current problems have arisen both biophysically and socio-economically, and can provide the material necessary for the evaluation of past policies.

R. J. Wasson (B) College of Engineering and Science, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_4

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I present below an account of some of my experience in attempting to influence policymaking, recognizing that it may appear to readers as rather idiosyncratic as for most of my career I was learning on the job and not taking much notice of the academic literature on the relationships between science and policymaking. Of course, much of that literature is a recent phenomenon and has provided a retrospective lens with which I can show its relevance to my own experience. And now a note on terms. I will employ the term ‘policymaking’ to encompass both decisions made within an existing policy framework and ‘public policymaking’ which refers to a new paradigm of management because in the literature on the use of science in natural resource management the distinction between policymaking and decision-making is often blurred. Most of my influence has been on decision-making and some on policymaking. Most scientists are likely to agree that Evidence-Based PolicyMaking (EBPM) is desirable, although another related concept has gained salience, namely Evidence-Informed PolicyMaking (EIPM). While EIPM may more accurately capture the role of science in policymaking, the two concepts can also be confusing because the difference between EBPM and EIPM is not always clear. Much has been written about the topic of EBPM, and Cairney (2016) has provided a particularly useful summary and interpretation of much of the relevant literature, an account of the political process that is public policymaking, and the various roles of scientific evidence in that process. Based on Cairney and my own observations, I offer the following. EBPM is not a description of the policy process. It is an aspiration that fails to acknowledge that evidence is only one component of policymaking, and often a minor component. Policymakers have to take into account a myriad of considerations, including identification of winners and losers, the likelihood of successful implementation, the political milieu in which they are embedded, the costs and benefits of a policy, the dovetailing with other policies, the reliability of scientific evidence in relation to other sources of information such as that coming from community members, and if and how the policy can be communicated to stakeholders. Policymakers operate in a world of considerable uncertainty and ambiguity but have to make choices about the highest priority issues. Scientific knowledge can reduce uncertainty but may not be able to reduce ambiguity (see Wasson 2016, for an example in flood hydrology), and can aid prioritization.

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But who are public policymakers? Cairney makes the important point that there are many people who fit this description, and the idea of centralized policymaking power in the executive of a democratic system is an over-simplification. There are many policymakers at different levels of government, with influence and/or policymaking power. There are also advocacy coalitions, containing policymakers and communities of interest outside the formal policymaking process, which may have different interpretations of the same evidence and the world. These interpretations can change, for example after a new government is elected or a focusing event (a window of opportunity for scientists and policymakers disposed to take their input seriously) occurs. Such an event may be an ecologic disaster or the signing of an international agreement that requires a policy response. The current COVID-19 crisis is also such an event. Many scientists claim that policymakers often ignore evidence or don’t use it effectively, by which they usually mean that it doesn’t have the overwhelming influence that they believe it should. And they also have a view that politics is pathological because it doesn’t use evidence at all and they cannot understand why their evidence is not the only basis for a rational policy choice, forgetting or ignoring all of the other factors that policymakers have to consider. Scientists also tend to view their work as being superior to all other forms of information, something that is not necessarily accepted by policymakers who often have to take account of community views and expectations. In the minds of some policymakers science is not necessarily more certain than other kinds of information, even though it is produced by a method that we claim is superior particularly because of inbuilt checks and balances (see Oreskes 2019, for a detailed account and debate about the process of science). But science will only have overwhelming influence if policy is being constructed in the mode of ‘comprehensive rationality’ (Cairney 2016) in which policymakers have a clear set of preferences, and they can gather and understand all of the relevant information and make choices based on that information; a very rare mode of policymaking. Much more likely is the mode of ‘bounded rationality’, where aims are unclear, there is limited information, and unclear choices. In such circumstances targeting science is extremely difficult. The major obstacles to EBPM and EIPM are that: much academic research has no policy relevance but is thought by academics to be valuable nonetheless, and some will press their view in the face of disinterest and even hostility; academics often do not know how to establish and

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use networks that include policymakers; relevant policymakers are often not identified within a diffuse array of policymaking; timely engagement often does not happen and advice is not provided in a timely fashion; evidence is not framed or presented in a language to meet policymakers’ aims; there is little attempt to involve policymakers in research and therefore limited ‘ownership’ of the results; there is poor recognition that policy is usually designed for the short term; that community acceptance of scientific evidence can add legitimacy and political value; that the beliefs of policymakers may be at odds with scientific evidence and so need to be carefully debated without arrogance; academics, and some technicians in government departments, produce unrealistically long ‘laundry lists’ of problems and putative solutions without prioritization; and so-called ‘wicked problems’ require knowledge from many disciplines, something that is still a major challenge for academic and research institutions. It is therefore important to identify the key actors (including government departments) in a policymaking environment, understand the policy networks at play and therefore identify where power lies, gain some understanding of the political, social, and economic context in which policymaking is occurring, and discover the most urgent problems that need a policy response and frame evidence accordingly. So, policymaking is a very complex business. Sending a scientific report to a government Minister’s office, for example, and then waiting for a policy response is unlikely to be successful. But if scientists wish to have influence on policymaking, they must learn something of how policy is made. This can be time-consuming, frustrating, unsuccessful, and sometimes rewarding, and is not something to be embarked on lightly. And it shouldn’t be a path for all scientists, especially those in the early stages of their careers whose focus should be on establishing their scientific credibility. However, over recent years I have noted that more young scientists wish to be in the policy fray, a trend to be supported by more established scientists (if they have the appropriate experience) who can team up with young scientists to influence policy. Some research organizations employ ‘knowledge brokers’, a step that can reduce the burden on practicing scientists and aid the link to policymaking. Another way to be of value to policymakers is to review large amounts of relevant literature and data, an activity best done by established scientists. Most policymakers rely on personal experience and expert advice rather than systematic reviews of the literature. Therefore, a credible

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review can be of value when the right moment arrives and can be published to add to a scientist’s Curriculum Vitae. In my view, it is essential that if a scientist takes the path of engagement with policymakers he/she should maintain their science simultaneously so that they are up to date, credible, and not so professionally isolated by unsuccessful attempts to influence policymaking that they have nothing to fall back on. I realize in these days of citation counts, H-indexes and all of the other paraphernalia of the neoliberal university and research institute (Busch 2014), this is a lot to ask.

What Role Do You Wish to Play? Pielke (2007) presents a typology of the roles that scientists can play (or not play) when connecting with policy and politics. In summary, Pielke identifies four possible roles. The first is the Pure Scientist, who focuses on knowledge generation without direct connection to policy and politics. Knowledge is made available for anyone to use through publication in scientific journals and books. The second is the Issue Advocate who aligns herself/himself with a particular cause, accepting that science must be engaged with policymaking but offers only one or a few policy options. They also publish their research thereby making it available to all who wish to access it. The third type is the Science Arbiter who aids policymakers wrestling with problems and the evidence they wish to use to reach a conclusion. Generally, they focus on policy questions that can be answered by science and remain above the political fray. The fourth type is the Honest Broker of Policy Alternatives, who clarifies and even expands the scope of policy choices well beyond those offered by the Issue Advocate. They usually do this as part of a group because to range over a wide range of options is difficult for an individual. Pielke notes that a diversity of policy options avoids issue advocacy. Scientists can play several of these roles at different stages of their careers or even simultaneously for different issues, a difficult balancing act. Some will appear to be playing one role while really playing another. The most common is the Pure Scientist who is actually, in Pielke’s language, a Stealth Issue Advocate. This role has the advantage of appearing to be above the political fray, wrapped in the credibility and apparent objectivity of science, while stealthily providing evidence to advance a particular policy option. All four roles can be valuable, but it is important for the individual to clearly identify which one(s) they wish to adopt. Clarity

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of role and purpose for the individual will be helpful if challenged, for example if called before a Parliamentary inquiry. I have mostly played the role of Honest Broker; at least in my mind. In the modern world of ‘post-truth’ with disdain for and/or rejection of a role in policy formulation for experts and science by political leaders in particular, there may be a need for a different but hopefully complementary approach to that described above. But first a little history. Jamie Vernon (2017), the editor in chief of American Scientist, which is a magazine dedicated to spreading information about a wide range of scientific subjects written in accessible language, wrote a short article entitled ‘Science in the Post-Truth Era’. He infers a disconnect between scientists and the public in the USA, noting however that their views are broadly compatible about the value of science. Nisbet (2017), writing in the same journal, calls for social change to combat the attack on science in the USA, a call that could be generalized to many countries. He calls for the mobilization of scientists and their organizations to combat economic inequality, promote affordable higher education, be prepared to debate concerns about science, and invest in non-profit media in a partnership between scientists and journalists to provide information widely; but does not make clear how some of these proposals will help combat the post-truth malaise. An example of the suggestion about media is The Conversation in Australia (https://theconversation.com/au; accessed 3rd June 2020) aims to do, but includes much more than science. These ahistorical articles fail to mention that science used to be more in the public domain than it is now with less disconnection between scientists and the public. Porter (2009), an historian of science, traces to the years following the Second World War the change of science into what he calls a technical field with little public connectivity. He argues that scientists have ‘…more and more preferred the detached objectivity of service to bureaucratic experts over the cultivation of an engaged public’ (p. 292). Science therefore has partially created the current problem that has been thrown into stark relief by populist politicians who, in some cases, don’t even value the expertise of their own bureaucrats. Porter (2009) notes that the technicality of science demanded levels of evidence that precluded anything but definitive public statements, and simultaneously policymakers and the powerful in society expected that scientists would not speak publicly about the policy implications of their work or about anything outside their specialist domain. Scientists now find themselves in a dilemma where rejection of for example, the science of climate

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change by powerful figures forces scientists to engage publicly, often to their cost professionally and personally. My own career has largely been about connectivity to bureaucrats although I have spent considerable time speaking at meetings of community groups (the public) concerned with catchment management. But I have not been involved in an attempt at broad social change which would more closely ally science and the public. Nor have I encountered denial of my research results, of the kind faced by climate scientists. In this new world it appears that more and more scientists are becoming Issue Advocates, and this is becoming the case in environmental science beyond climate change. But not all politicians and policymakers are in post-truth mode, so the recommendations presented here based largely on my own experiences still have salience.

Some Personal Experiences and Reflections Here I am in danger of appearing to be egocentric. But I believe that I can communicate more effectively by presenting my own experiences in a highly personal form. I also need to provide some context for my career, an indulgence that I hope will be acceptable. Catchment Management After a Ph.D. in Australia, a postdoctoral fellowship in New Zealand, a teaching position at Monash University when I began to acquaint myself with the Australian desert dune field, and a research fellowship at the Australian National University (ANU) where I launched a ‘blue sky’ project on the history and evolution of the Australian and Indian desert dune fields, I joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in 1982, having responded to an advertisement for a position to analyze how through time Australia’s environment had reached its current state. The first major project at CSIRO came about by invitation from the New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory authorities responsible for catchment protection, to determine the sources of sediment that was believed to be filling Lake Burley Griffin, an artificial lake in Canberra. I was asked to advise the New South Wales Soil Conservation Service (SCS) on targeting their efforts to reduce sedimentation in the lake. I collaborated with key people in the SCS, the ACT equivalent, and the New

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South Wales Department of Water Resources. We did fieldwork together and published together (e.g. Wasson et al. 1998). We calculated a quantitative sediment budget for a major sub-catchment, including identifying sources of sediment and its redistribution, which involved geomorphic analysis, historical documents, and a lot of ground survey. The historical component covered mostly the period since European settlement of only a few centuries, although it was contextualized by reference to the history of the last few millennia. The conclusion, subsequently confirmed by using geochemical tracers (Wallbrink and Fogarty 1998), was that channels and gullies are the dominant sources of the sediment in the lake. This project built on the earlier work and included a CSIRO employee, Wallbrink, and an employee of the New South Wales Department of Land and Water Conservation, Fogarty, another example of the joint efforts of a scientist and manager/scientist respectively. In a comprehensive account of the project, the New South Wales Department of Land and Water Conservation (2000) acknowledged that, although there had been recognition of serious riverbank and gully erosion from 1969, it was our work that allowed the SCS to refocus the soil conservation program onto the major sources of sediment. Many methods were used to stabilize the sediment sources, such as gully infilling and smoothing, flumes to divert water from gully heads, farm dams, banks along channels and gullies, and fencing and revegetation of riparian zones. Some attention was also paid to reducing surface erosion (by sheet and rill processes) on farmland as the farmers’ economic viability was also of concern. A subsequent program called Bidgee Banks (shorthand for Murrumbidgee Banks, the major river in the area) focused on fencing and revegetation of riparian zones (http://www.riverspace.com. au/item/bidgee-banks/; accessed 2nd January 2020), a policy that has become widespread in Australia, although I am not trying to take credit for its spread. That said, I advised many catchment management groups and government agencies around the country based on the Lake Burley Griffin catchment study and other similar studies done by the CSIRO group. The lessons I gained from this experience are as follows: focus on a problem that is exercising the minds of policymakers; involve policymakers in the research, or at least those who influence policymakers; talk to community groups to share the results of the work and build an advocacy coalition; use all relevant information and approaches, for example geomorphology, geochemistry, human and environmental history, and

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Quaternary studies; make links to the scientific understanding of collaborators, in this case soil erosion processes; and provide timely input to catchment planning (Wasson et al. 1989). All of these lessons can be found in Cairney’s account of how to influence decisions, with the exception of the second last, although Cairney had not written his book when our work was done. With colleagues at CSIRO I continued this work having discovered a new geochemical method for estimating the amount of surface soil in a river or reservoir (from erosion of hillslopes) and, by difference, the amount of sediment derived from gullies and riverbanks (Wasson et al. 1987). Application of this technique to the sediments in Burrinjuck Reservoir, downstream of Canberra, showed that over the past 60 or so years the major sources of sediment had changed from a considerable input of surface soil, during a plague of introduced rabbits that removed vegetation over large areas, to gully and channel bank erosion as rabbits were controlled, farming practices improved, and surface soil erosion rates declined. Also, the sedimentation rate in the reservoir had declined through time, a conclusion seized upon by some catchment managers to show that soil conservation was working. I had to offer the disappointing view that, while their conclusion was likely to be partly true, gullies and channels had begun to stabilize of their own accord. This was a result of an understanding of the evolution of gullies through time, and field observations in many catchments in southeastern Australia. At the invitation of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture, a group of us at CSIRO studied the major sources of sediment reaching Lake Argyle in the East Kimberley (Wasson et al. 2002) using the methods applied in the catchment of Lake Burley Griffin, including geochemical tracers and mineral magnetics. Once again, I ensured that we worked with key policymakers in Western Australia and involved government staff in the research. Because the Department of Agriculture had concluded that surface erosion was the main source of sediment, given that in places 30 cm of soil had been removed since the introduction of cattle, a herculean effort had been mounted before our research began to slow this erosion by contour bank construction and revegetation. Our results however showed that once again gullies and channels were the major source of sediment. Given the difficulty of controlling gullies and riverbank erosion, the Department

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concluded that the land they controlled was not valuable enough to stabilize so they destocked it after exterminating a vast number of feral animals thereby enabling natural revegetation. We also carried out a spatial source tracing study, based on subcatchments, of the Lake Argyle catchment, which enabled advice to be given to pastoralists in all parts of the catchment. The lessons from this experience were the same as those learned from the case of the Lake Burley Griffin catchment study. Our work had been appropriately targeted, key policymakers ‘owned’ the results, the conclusions were credible, and our reporting timely. I also spent some time explaining our results to landowners at a public meeting but more importantly they were used by officers of the Department of Agriculture in their ongoing work with pastoralists. At this point in the research, we were beginning to wonder if our techniques were valid because we kept getting the same answer: gullies and riverbanks dominated river sediment sources. We decided to explore the Darling Downs in southeastern Queensland where surely surface erosion dominates the sediment input to rivers given extensive areas of cultivation and highly erodible soils. The unpublished research results showed that surface soil dominated the sediment flux upstream of gully heads but within a few meters downstream of the heads subsoil from gully erosion dominated. An unpublished Ph.D. project came to the same conclusion in the New South Wales wheat belt. In the Daly River catchment in the Northern Territory, a communitybased catchment management group, the Daly River Management Advisory Group (DRMAC), asked for a report on sediment sources because local Indigenous groups had reported sedimentation of the channel after land clearing for agriculture and tree plantations. We concluded that while we couldn’t verify the claim that the river was infilling with sediment, channel widening was the major source of sediment in the river (although there are some spectacular gullies well away from the river) as a result of increasing rainfall and river discharge (Wasson et al. 2010). Clearing had had almost no effect, even though surface erosion rates were high, because the riparian zone was intact and trapped sediment coming from the cleared areas. A historical dimension was introduced by measuring geochemical tracers, used to identify sediment sources, in dated sedimentary deposits, to provide a longer history of surface soil input to the river, the results of which confirmed a one-off sampling of recently deposited mud.

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By the time this research was complete and a report prepared (Wasson et al. 2014), DRMAC had been dissolved (http://www.abc. net.au/news/rural/2013-07-31/drmac-canned/4855998; accessed 2nd January 2020). Had we moved faster we could have influenced a wellregarded community group. But we failed because, as Cairney sternly warns, we did not provide timely advice. The then Office of the Supervising Scientist for the Alligator Rivers Region (OSS), an Australian Government organization charged with oversight of environmental management of the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, wanted to know what would happen to a major wetland downstream should the mine mill tailings escape; part of a wide-ranging risk assessment. Most of our research in response to an invitation from the OSS was based on a study of the Quaternary history of the wetland (Wasson 1992). We decided to work out where natural sediment is deposited and at what rate in the wetland as an analogue for deposition of the tailings. While there were well measured suspended sediment fluxes for some of the rivers in the area, there were insufficient data to estimate the patterns and rates of deposition in the wetland. Many cores, pollen analysis by Robin Clark to determine the base of the freshwater section (beneath which were marine sediments that were of no value for our analysis), and radiometric dating provided the pattern of sediment deposition and its rate in the wetland. Then Ian Willett from CSIRO Division of Soils experimentally added tailings to samples of the natural deposits in the wetland to determine the chemical mobility of the pollutants. In this case we were working directly with the policymakers to meet their objectives. Our report is still being consulted as the final arrangements for stabilization of the tailings are being made. Extreme Floods Since experiencing the 2003 bushfire in Canberra and several tropical cyclones bearing down on Darwin, and with an abiding interest in the yet unresolved issue of the magnitude of processes that do most geomorphic work, I became involved in disaster research. I have focused on flood disasters in Asia after moving to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2011. I like to think of Australia as an Asian nation but that still

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requires building links with policymakers from culturally different backgrounds, some of which I had from previous projects while I was based in Australia. With my colleagues at the National University of Singapore and in India I began by establishing scientific credibility by producing long flood histories in the Himalaya (Wasson et al. 2013) and northern Thailand (Wasson et al. 2021) using palaeoflood deposits dated radiometrically, within the context of a critique of traditional flood forecasting approaches (Wasson 2016). This has provided a platform from which to organize workshops on Flood Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), an approach agreed to by many nations under the Sendai Framework (http://www.unisdr. org/we/coordinate/sendai-framework; accessed 4th January 2020). In March 2017, under the auspices of the Indian National Science Academy in Delhi, my colleague Ashok Singhvi and I organized a workshop on flood DRR in India. The workshop produced a very impressive (‘laundry’) list of recommendations, all of which were sent to India’s major national Ministries with some responsibility for disaster mitigation. Without follow-up with the Ministries, and prioritizing the list of recommendations, it is difficult to know if this activity will have much impact. Two papers have now been produced from the workshop in the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy (Jain et al. 2019; Wasson et al. 2019) with cross-referencing to a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (2017) on the performance of national government programs for flood control and flood forecasting. By this means we hoped to link our report to the highly critical findings of the supreme audit body of India, and therefore influence future decisions. But again, academic papers and workshop reports are unlikely to have much impact on policymakers without close working relationships. But DRR workshops may need to be more locally situated. To this end in September 2017 John Bray (a historian of Ladakh) and I helped organize a flood DRR workshop in Ladakh (trans-Himalayan India) that was largely driven by local people from government, NGOs, and the academy. The Ladakhi academic charged with writing the latest version of the Disaster Management Plan for Ladakh has already adopted five ideas from the workshop. While this is the result of heavy investment of time in finding the appropriate people to attend the workshop, and then helping with the logistics and discussion, it appears to have paid off by focusing on an issue of high local policy relevance, ensuring that Ladakhis drove the process, and including key Ladakhi policymakers in the exercise. A similar

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workshop in Assam in northeast India in November 2017 had less impact as key bureaucrats failed to stay, having turned up for the welcomes, but planning for higher degrees in disaster management was advanced. In Thailand, we have (Wasson et al. 2021) evidence for a flood in the Ping River, most probably in 1831CE, that was possibly forty times larger than any flood recorded in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city. After identification of key policymakers in government and NGOs, two symposia/workshops have had little impact. It is not clear why this has been the case, but the scale of the mega-flood, and the two of similar size in the preceding 400 years, may have been overwhelming. Or they didn’t believe us, or they had no idea how to respond to our results. Also, the style of the meetings may not have been appropriate, given that they were dominated by lectures by foreigners. We have yet to work out how best to engage with the flood managers in Chiang Mai.

Contributions to the Academy Apart from my ongoing contributions to ‘blue sky’ geomorphology and Quaternary studies, and engagement with policymakers, I have also written several papers and book chapters designed for academics interested in the role of history in the management and governance of natural resources, catchments, and floods. This has been an attempt to bolster the academic study of this approach. The first attempt was by Wasson and Clark (1985) that unfortunately used the phrase ‘environmental history’ when we should have referred to ‘history of the environment’ given that environmental history is an account of the dynamic relationships between people and the natural world. Wasson (1994), Wasson and Sidorchuk (2000), and Wasson (2006a) took this further and attempted to generalize a lot of research on catchment responses to disturbance in the first two papers while the third paper attempted to synthesize various pieces of research in the context of environmental history sensu stricto. Wasson (2012) provided further insights into the use of history for catchment management, this time by compiling data from analyses using isotopic data. Wasson (2002) synthesized a large body of research on the Gangetic Plain to suggest that natural resource management could benefit from a spatio-temporal approach, and Wasson (2006b) ventured into the enormous span of South Asian history to ask if conservation has ever trumped exploitation of soils in a society that at least rhetorically celebrates a

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conservation ethic with phrases such as ‘Hindu ecology’. The answer appears to be ‘no’. With regard to flood governance, history is critical in several ways. Wasson (2016) has followed many other researchers by arguing that traditional flood frequency analysis (FFA) is flawed, particularly because it relies on short records of floods. To overcome this limitation, and to test the idea that short records are unlikely to include the truly extreme events, a lot of effort has been invested in palaeoflood research (particularly by Vic Baker at The University of Arizona, and his students) including that by Wasson et al. (2013). While there has been some use of palaeoflood hydrology in the USA, Australia continues to use the traditional methods. The main reason for take up of non-traditional data in the USA appears to be institutional: one of the key government agencies that influences the management of floods is the United States Geological Survey which also generates palaeoflood records and has close working relationships with key universities where such research is also carried out. Newell and Wasson (2002) argued for the use of history in system dynamics approaches to flood governance, an idea now being explored in Assam, under the leadership of Navarun Varma, to attempt to understand current flood mitigation policies and their origins. This research is based mainly on human and environmental history, but there is a need for sediment-based Quaternary research. The construction of embankments to afford some protection from floods may have reduced the amount of sediment reaching floodplains. Eventually, the sediment accumulating in the Brahmaputra River channel may force it to rise higher than the floodplain with disastrous consequences during a large flood. Sedimentation rate changes both on the floodplain and in the channel are needed, requiring high-resolution dating and the sedimentary system analysis. It is not clear that this is an issue of concern for policymakers, but it should be brought to their attention even if they have immediately higher priorities.

Implications for Pedagogy I trust that readers will have stayed with me long enough to get to this section; after all, the book is about pedagogies for public policy education. There are three implications of my personal experience and reflections. The first is that case studies are required to teach environmental management. Of course, there are many case studies in the academic literature

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and government reports, but I contend that there is nothing more valuable than case studies that have involved the teacher as a researcher. Not only is each case study intimately understood, but their limitations are also known. Academic papers and government reports are usually written so that it doesn’t highlight the most serious limitations of the work although they may be mentioned. A teacher who is willing to expose the weaknesses in their own work provides a lesson that will be almost impossible to derive from published material. In published academic papers it is rare to see all of the difficulties of the interactions between scientists and policymakers exposed. For a scientist this would mean becoming an anthropologist or sociologist specializing in bureaucracies, most worthwhile pursuits by the way. In a pedagogic context the scientist can simply relate what happened without needing to contextualize their experience in the language and practices of social science if they don’t wish to engage with the literature on possible roles for scientists in policymaking. The second implication is that to be truly effective pedagogically the teaching must be cross-disciplinary, by which I mean the involvement of several branches of knowledge. There are many versions of this approach to research and learning, and a vast literature that cannot be summarized here. Suffice it to say that it can involve simple juxtaposition of different forms of knowledge, including what may be best described as local knowledge held outside the academy and government by people of many different kinds, or it can involve integration of different forms of knowledge. For integration a formal mechanism is required in my view, one of which is system dynamics which was briefly mentioned earlier. Wasson and Dovers (2005) provided an empirically-based account from one research institute of the challenges of what they called integrative research that involves more than one discipline. The key challenges are staff development, cross-disciplinary understanding, organizational requirements for collaborative research, integrative frameworks, and the tensions that arise within the political and economic operating environments of modern universities. There is insufficient space here to develop all of these issues, but it is important to note particularly that university structures, in the main, defeat attempts at deep cross-disciplinarity in research, research training and teaching. Disciplinary fiefdoms and hierarchies, examination practices, and funding models inter alia all conspire to defeat the crossing of boundaries. But there are some success stories, one of which I was involved in at the National University of Singapore

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where we taught a module on climate change to undergraduate students from every Faculty. It was hard work however to adequately cover climate science, economics, public policy, engineering, and political science. There is simply too much depth in each discipline and epistemological differences between them to achieve anything but a passing acquaintance with each. Nonetheless the students were at least exposed to a wide range of knowledge types and now if they wish they can explore them further. Potentially and actually more dangerous is cross-disciplinary research training. A Ph.D. candidate is unlikely to have complete command of several disciplines that are involved in the research and there will be a compromise to reduce one discipline’s component for example. Nonetheless, an examiner will be needed for that component who will not be impressed by his/her discipline’s treatment, thereby missing the research’s overall aim. There are no easy solutions to these difficulties, except perhaps the education of more cross-disciplinary specialists who have deep understanding of at least one discipline and a range of analytical frameworks they can use to reach out to collaborators in other fields. The third issue is the teaching of advocacy. In different words, how far can we go? Teaching the various ways in which individuals can interact with policymakers, according to Pielke’s (2007) typology, is straightforward. Also working through Cairney’s (2016) book would be a beneficial pedagogic approach. The teaching of issue advocacy and stealth issue advocacy, by showing how to operationalize these methods, is, however a different matter because of the appearance of aiding overtly political or covert methods. This would be particularly dangerous in some countries where there is tight political control on researchers. The approach suggested to deal with the post-truth era might not be welcome in such countries. The way forward may be to use role playing methods and/or debates in classrooms. With good students who are self-starters, this works as I discovered at the National University of Singapore but for problems different from those discussed here.

Conclusions From my own experience and the syntheses of Cairney and Pielke, I suggest the following. Focus on urgent problems that have been identified within a policymaking environment and to which you can contribute, but don’t be afraid to raise new issues that policymakers have not thought of. Try to understand the policymaking framework within which decisions

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will be made and identify the key people with whom to work. Frame your contribution in a form and language that the key people can use and provide timely input in a way that is agreed upon in advance. Make the uncertainties of your input clear, so that realistic assessments can be made about the veracity of your science. Use as many research tools as you can for the kind of problems discussed here, including Quaternary methods, human and environmental history, and process understanding so that your work is not too narrowly focused and is therefore more likely to be successful. If policy options can be provided, ensure that the list is not too long and is prioritized, with estimates of likely success. If you cannot do all of this yourself, team up with other scientists. If you want to get your message to a larger audience, and the political risk of doing so is acceptable, build coalitions of advocacy among for example community groups. Be clear about the role that you are playing, the default role to me being the Honest Broker. Accept that you may be a small cog in a large machine, that most policies are designed for the short term, and that your input will sometimes be ignored. If you want to stay in this game, try to stay positive even after a failure. The rewards can be exhilarating. And maintain your scientific credibility. All of the above suggestions still apply, even in a post-truth era because not all policymakers have been infected by this malaise. If, however, you are safe to do so, join in more public movements to shift opinion and bring about social change where evidence is once again important. The pedagogic implications of these thoughts and personal experiences lie in using case studies in which you participated or that you know well because these will be most engaging for students, take head-on the challenge of cross-disciplinary research and outreach to policymakers, and teach ways for researchers to engage with policymakers. The last two of these are the most difficult but they are worth the effort. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the editors for the invitation to contribute this chapter and their helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also wish to thank my many collaborators and policy collaborators over many years who, like me, have tried to improve the health of soils and water, with benefits we hope for all organisms, including people.

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References Busch, L. 2014. Knowledge for sale: The neoliberal takeover of higher education. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Cairney, P. 2016. The politics of evidence-based policy making. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Comptroller and Auditor General of India, 2017. Report No. 10 of 2017: Performance audit of union government schemes for flood control and flood forecasting reports of Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. http://www.cag.gov.in/content/report-no10-2017performance-audit-union-government-schemes-flood-control-and-flood. Accessed 4 January 2020. Jain, V., M. Beyene, L.S. Varay, R.J. Wasson, and S. Jain. 2019. Riverine flood hazard. Part A. Types, processes, and causative factors. Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy 85: 43–64. Nesbitt, M. 2017. Ending the crisis of complacency in science. American Scientist 105: 18–21. New South Wales Department of Land and Water Conservation. 2000. The Lake Burley Griffin catchment protection scheme 1965–1998. A short history. Sydney: NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation. Newell, B., and R.J. Wasson. 2002. Social system vs. solar system: why policy makers need history. In Conflict and co-operation related to international water resources: Historical perspectives, eds. S. Castelein and A. Otte. Paris: UNESCO. IHP-VI Technical Documents in Hydrology (TDH) No. 62 (SC2002/WS/53). http://hydrologie.org/BIB/Publ_UNESCO/TD_062_ 2002.pdf#page=8. Accessed 8 January 2020. Oreskes, N. 2019. Why trust science? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pielke, R.A., Jr. 2007. The honest broker: Making sense of science in policy and politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Porter, T.M. 2009. How science became technical. Isis 100: 292–309. Vernon, J.L. 2017. Science in the post-truth era. American Scientist 105: 2. Wallbrink, P.J., and P.J. Fogarty. 1998. Sourcing sediment in the Lake Burley Griffin catchment. Canberra: CSIRO Land and Water. Technical Report 30/98. Wasson, R.J. (ed.) 1992. Modern sedimentation, late quaternary history of the Magela Plain and mine tailings management, Alligator Rivers Region, N.T. (6 chapters, 17 contributors), The Office of the Supervising Scientist for the Alligator Rivers Region. Research Report 6, 322 pp. Wasson, R.J. 1994. Living with the past. Uses of history for understanding landscape change and degradation. Land Degradation and Rehabilitation 5: 79–87. Wasson, R.J. 2002. A longer-than-usual view of natural resource management on the Indo-Gangetic Plain: Towards a dynamic framework of analysis. In Land

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Use, historical perspectives: Focus on Indo-Gangetic Plains, eds. Y.P. Abrol, S. Sangwan, and M.K. Tiwari, 173–188. New Delhi: Allied Publisher. Wasson, R.J. 2006a. Human interaction with soil-sediment systems in Australia. In Soils and societies: Perspectives from environmental history, eds. J. McNeill and V. Winiwater, 243–272. White Horse Press. Wasson, R.J. 2006b. Exploitation and conservation of soil in the 3000 year agricultural and forestry history of South Asia. In Soils and societies: Perspectives from environmental history, eds. J. McNeill and V. Winiwater, 13–50 White Horse Press. Wasson, R.J. 2012. Geomorphic histories for river and catchment management. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 370: 2240–2263. Wasson, R.J. 2016. Flood forecasting under deep uncertainty and ambiguity: Alternative approaches. Policy and Society 35: 125–136. Wasson, R.J., and R.L. Clark. 1985. Environmental history for explanation and prediction. Search 16: 258-263. Wasson, R.J. and S. Dovers. 2005. Integrative research in the university context: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, The Australian National University. Journal of Research Practice 1 (2): Article M4. http://jrp.icaap. org/content/v1.2/wasson.html. Wasson, R.J. and A. Sidorchuk. 2000. History for soil conservation and catchment management. In Australian environmental history: Still settling Australia, ed. S.R. Dovers, 97–117. Oxford University Press. Wasson, R.J., R.L. Clark, P.M. Nanninga, and J. Waters. 1987. Pb-210 as a chronometer and tracer, Burrinjuck Reservoir, Australia. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 12: 399–414. Wasson, R.J., A.S. Murray, H. Crockford, and G.G. Caitcheon. 1989. Sources of sediment reaching Lake Burley Griffin. A progress report to ACT Parks and Conservation Service and NSW Soil Conservation Service from CSIRO Division of Water Resources, September 1989, 10 pp. Wasson, R.J., R.K. Mazari, G. Clifton, and B. Starr 1998. The recent history of erosion and sedimentation on the Southern Tablelands of southeastern Australia: Sediment flux dominated by channel incision. Geomorphology 24: 291–308. Wasson, R.J., G. Caitcheon, A.S. Murray, M. McCulloch, and J. Quade. 2002. Sourcing sediment using multiple tracers in the catchment of Lake Argyle, North Western Australia. Environmental Management 29 (5): 634–646. Wasson, R.J., L. Furlonger, D. Parry, T. Pietsch, E. Valentine, and D. Williams. 2010. Sediment sources and channel dynamics, Daly River, Northern Australia. Geomorphology 114: 161–174. Wasson, R.J., Y.P. Sundriyal, S. Chaudhary, M. Jaiswal, P. Morthekai, S.P. Sati, and N.A Juyal. 2013. 1000-year history of floods in the Upper Ganga catchment, central Himalaya, India. Quaternary Science Reviews 77: 156–166.

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Wasson, R.J., A. Brooks, J. Olley, J. Knight, and P. Rustomji. 2014. Erosion, sediment transport and deposition in the Daly River catchment: Implications for catchment management. TRaCK Reports, ISBN 978-1-921576-91-1. Darwin, Charles Darwin University, 20 pp. Wasson, R.J., V. Jain, A. Katuri, S.K. Lahiri, S. Parkash, A.K. Singhvi, N. Varma, P. Bansal, and C.J. Chuah. 2019. Riverine flood hazard. Part B. Disaster risk reduction in India. Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy 85 (1): 65–76. Wasson, R.J., Ziegler, A.D., Lim, H.S., Lam, D., Higgitt, D., Rittenour, T., Ramdzan, K. N., Chuah, C.J., Singhvi, A.K. 2021. Episodically volatile high energy non-cohesive river-floodplain systems: New information from the Ping River, Thailand, and a global review. Geomorphology 382: 107658.

CHAPTER 5

Building Public Policy Capacity Through Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling Education in an Undergraduate Residential College Setting Bee Choon Yong and Lakshminarayanan Samavedham

Background Singapore understands its limitations in terms of its size, location and due to lack of natural resources (hydrocarbons) and space for growing food (carbohydrates). However, it is also a country that believes in making the best use of its key natural resource, people, to build a thriving and

B. C. Yong Residential College 4, 6 College Avenue East, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] L. Samavedham (B) Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_5

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diversified economy with advanced technology, sharp business and political acumen working together as a system to build a resilient, increasingly self-reliant and confident nation. By all accounts, it is a success story in Asia for more than 50 years now. The education system here starting from primary schools and all the way up to the Universities has played a pivotal role in shaping human capital to meet Singapore’s economic growth ambitions. The National University of Singapore has its origins in a Medical School established in 1905. The National University of Singapore (NUS), in its present form, was formed in 1980 and today it is spread across 3 campuses in Singapore (Kent Ridge, Bukit Timah and Outram Park campuses). As the most comprehensive University in Singapore, NUS is highly rated by academics and employers for its education, research and enterprise. Along the way, NUS has been designing high-impact special academic programs—they serve as an experimental hotbed for pedagogical innovations, empowering students to also learn from out-of-class experiences with close interactions with faculty members and senior students. As one such innovation, NUS embarked on a plan to introduce a collegiate system within the traditional university. It is not a fully collegiate system like Oxbridge or Yale, where each student belongs to a College for the entire duration of their enrolled program. Recognizing that the out of classroom learning experiences significantly shape up the outlook and personality of university students (in addition to what is learnt in the classroom through the formal curriculum) and that the first two years of university life are the most critical (Astin, 1993), NUS began to offer a living and learning program through its five residential colleges (four of them are located at NUS University Town and one is located in the Kent Ridge Campus) taking, in all, close to 1280 freshmen each academic year. This number represents about 17% of the undergraduate intake each year. About 70–80% are local students. Students admitted into the residential colleges are offered a minimum of two-year stay at the College they get into. All residential colleges are set up to offer a vibrant curriculum that blends an interdisciplinary curriculum with co-academic activities so that students will develop as well-rounded individuals. They are empowered to leave their comfort zone and explore new grounds—a very important asset in today’s VUCA world where the need to un-learn and re-learn in short time cycles becomes critically vital. Rather than adding to the efforts of supplying talent to grow the economy, the Colleges were challenged to achieve higher outcomes of altering mindsets, developing social and

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ecological consciousness, and promoting constructive action to benefit the disadvantaged in the world community. The University Town College Programme (UTCP) Three of the residential colleges, namely Tembusu College (TC; established in 2011), College of Alice and Peter Tan (CAPT; established in 2012) and Residential College 4 (RC4; established in 2014) are located at NUS University Town. Each of these Colleges takes in 250 freshmen each year and with a two-year stay. Another 230–250 are Y2 students, ~ 50 are senior students and another ~ 50 non-graduating exchange students. Each college houses 600 students. The curriculum part of the residential colleges located at U Town is called the University Town College Program (UTCP)—a 5 module curriculum equivalent to 20 modular credits (students from Medicine, Dental and Law are given an alternative pathway where they need to read 1 module per academic year). Students who are admitted to residential colleges complete the University Level Requirements of 20 modular credits by registering in the UTCP. They benefit from small class sizes (typically 15 students; max. 18) that foster a high degree of interaction between the students and the Fellows and among students from multiple departments, living and learning together. The UTCP structure is the same across all the three U Town Colleges—one Junior Seminar, 2 Senior Seminars and 2 Ideas and Exposition Modules (IEMs). The Junior and Senior Seminars are offered by the Fellows of the respective Colleges while the IEMs are offered by faculty members belonging to the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC). RC4 chose to embed Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling (STSDM) into its curriculum as a way of understanding the nature of the world and human endeavors. Residential College 4 (RC4) The diversity and interests of faculty members who would serve as Fellows of the College should reflect the diverse group of students we admit to the College. As mentioned earlier, the UTCP curriculum focuses on multidisciplinary aspects and with our emphasis on STSDM which are inherently multidisciplinary in nature, our faculty members come from a range of disciplines—currently, we have faculty members with advanced degrees in Science (2 PhD), Economics (2 PhD), Social Sciences (1 PhD and 1

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Masters), English Language and Literature (1), Health Sciences Policy (1), and Engineering (2 PhD). Our adjunct and joint appointees have a background in Health Sciences Policy (1), Smart Buildings (1) and Mindfulness (1). We constantly remind ourselves to maintain the balance in faculty expertise and in the courses we offer—the tradeoff between the number of faculty with core strengths to develop an academically credible program (to prevent mission erosion) and the need for diversity (to cater to students who may not want a deep dive into ST/SD field) while keeping within the allocated budget were always paramount in our planning process. The RC4 College experience comprises of the following elements most of which have been discussed by Clancey (2018): i. In-class learning: This is affected through the UTCP. The UTCP modules taken for credits may include field work, visits to sites related to the module etc. ii. Out-of-class learning as a key element of residential living: These are non-credit bearing and is dominated by study groups featuring a wide range of topics selected each year by RFs that are of interest to our senior students, experiential learning opportunities through volunteering efforts, overseas community involvement projects, adventure-based learning trips etc. iii. Research as an independent learning and growth opportunity: Some of our students and all our Fellows engage in this activity. Research can be done as a Senior Seminar under the UTCP or outside such as an Independent Study Module. For students who would like to delve into real-life issues confronting Singapore and the world, the College has a projectbased module, namely, UTC2704 Projects in Systems Thinking and System Dynamics. This enables our students to engage in original work to understand and model some issues of relevance to Singapore society or beyond. This research has resulted in student-led, faculty supported publications at regional and international conferences, and a few have managed to get their work published in peer-reviewed journals. iv. Student Interest Groups: Students are encouraged to form interest groups (IGs) and sustain them at the College. These span areas such as musical expression, fine skills such as brewing coffee, making

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tea and baking, sports, games, Coding, Robotics and Drones, Adventure, Volunteering etc. v. Student Leadership and Self Governance: Under the House System, the College is demarcated into five Houses. Each House has 3 contiguous floors in the College Tower in which “local” student activities are organized. Each House has a House Committee whose members are elected by students belonging to the House and operates under the leadership of an elected House Head and House Vice-Head. Each House is supported by a reasonable budget made available by the College from its annual budget provided for by the University and is advised by its RF. At the College level, residents elect the College Students’ Committee and various subcommittees to conduct the student affairs at the College. A student leaders’ experience survey was conducted and a total of 28 student leaders (18 males and 10 females) completed the survey. Some words used by the student leaders to describe their experience at RC4 are depicted in the following results from text network analysis (Fig. 5.1). The most influential elements were identified to be “learn”, “people,” “time,” “experience” and “college” as evidenced by the degree of these words in the network as well as their centrality measures. It is very clear that the student leaders found their roles to be learning opportunities, to know and work with people (residents, staff, and faculty) and play their part in building the College by organizing events and activities. Of course, this involved investment of their time. A critical element for students’ intellectual and moral growth is to provide them opportunities to engage and learn from “differences” (Dey et al., 2010). The diversity should be not just at the macroscale but also in the microscale. Diversity is designed in each seminar section in terms of academic majors, gender, ethnicity etc. so that multiple views are espoused in classroom discussion, course projects etc. Outside of class, the assignment of student rooms and student interactions (among themselves and with faculty members) are also designed so that there is a mix of cultures. Such deliberate intermingling among groups help students and teachers understand how diverse opinions can emerge in discussions about any aspect of life and learn to live with or even appreciate alternate perspectives.

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Fig. 5.1 Text Network Analysis on Students’ Leadership Experience Survey Data

Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling In deciding on the focus of the formal curriculum at RC4, a natural choice was to build it around the grand societal challenges related to the environment, infectious and lifestyle diseases, food, energy, water, population and the strong coupling between these sectors. Given that we wanted to address these complex issues, we paid careful attention to a wisdom-filled sentence from one of Jay Forrester’s articles (Forrester, 1987) wherein he

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states that “Attempts to deal with nonlinear dynamic systems using ordinary processes of description and debate lead to internal inconsistencies.” Because complex systems are replete with nonlinear and dynamic behavior (besides other characteristics) it was clear we had to shift the ground beyond just discussion, debate and unfocused experiential learning opportunities. We deemed the discussion, debate and experiential trips to be very necessary but not sufficient conditions for good quality education. Mahbubani (2013) quotes an article authored by Singapore’s Prime Minister Mr. Lee Hsien Loong (and posted on the website of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in year 2010) in which PM Lee wrote “… And I discovered how systematic, analytic thinking could clarify issues and suggest creative solutions to complex problems. But my lasting lesson was that in a dynamic and demanding environment, public officers need more thorough preparation and effective tools for governance, to formulate policy rigorously, and in depth, to evaluate trade-offs and develop mitigation measures, and crucially to garner political and public support to turn ideas into results.” As stated above, our intention for the formal curriculum at RC4 is to enable its students to: (i) be aware of some powerful lenses with which to view societal problems, (ii) gain familiarity and practice with thinking approaches and (iii) get formally introduced to powerful computational tools to represent their best understanding of the phenomena. We have the firm belief that these will put them in the pathway to becoming the kind of policy makers that Prime Minister Mr. Lee Hsien Loong envisioned for the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP). In the long term, public policy is shaped not in Parliaments, Legislatures or Congresses but in the classrooms where policy makers, academics, and the general public receive their training. Classrooms, therefore, represent a high leverage point because small changes at this embryonic stage are likely to have much larger and more substantial effects than much larger changes at later stages. High school education and university education have created a much larger separation of humanist and science training than is desirable. To bridge that separation, social scientists with humanist tendencies need more mathematical training and social scientists with more scientific tendencies need more humanist training (Colander and Kupers, 2014). Such an increase in cross training (e.g. experiential and field learning, community model building, and game-based learning) along with an introduction to new tools and techniques (e.g. uncertainty

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analysis, big data and machine learning) will improve both policy discussion and policy making. From among the possible ways of doing this, STSDM has an incredible potential. In June 2013, the National Research Council in the United States came up with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do at various stages of the K-12 curriculum—the goal was to improve science education for all students. RC4 was conceptualized around that time and therefore the pioneering faculty at RC4 wanted to propose a Next Generation Social Science Standards (NGSoS) that would provide the framework to have a solid general education for students at the College. We were very mindful that the real public policy challenges lay in the social domain and it was very important to equip future policy makers with a powerful new lens, a set of formal tools and an education to use them well so that they may succeed in steering the global community toward successively better states. Within the NGSS, three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science were highlighted— disciplinary core ideas (content), scientific and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts—with scientific and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts designed to be taught in context. We adopted a similar philosophy in designing our college curriculum. Bajpai et al. (2013) discuss the elements of an impactful global public policy education program and mention multidisciplinarity, fostering an epistemic community and a focus on integrative problem solving as three of the key curricular elements. STSDM naturally lends itself to this (Peterson, 2004)—multidisciplinarity and integrative problem solving are inherent to the systems approach and is determined by the problem scope and the actors that are brought in to manage the problem, STSDM is completely against the reductionist approaches to problem solving (Meadows, 2009) and the field has its own vocabulary, language, methods and validation approaches (Sterman, 2000). The complex nature of the global/societal challenges is best understood and managed by bringing together the best available information and data from the different domains that relate to the problem, perspectives from multiple stakeholders who are/will be affected by the issue and then processed using formal approaches, involving mathematical representations that are solved using a suitable computer program. We would not be content with just appreciating a problem and analyzing options near it; we want to equip students with an introduction to a new, effective way of

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thinking, to use formal and scientific tools so that they can act constructively in designing, choosing and implementing options—we looked for a curriculum that will help them to best answer what to do, when to do and how much to do—the key elements of policy making. The leaders of the System Dynamics field have focused extensively on how the education of students could be made the most effective. For example, Richardson and co-authors in a series of papers (Richardson and Andersen, 1980; Richardson, 2014a, 2014b, 2015) have outlined a pedagogically sound procedure to introduce system dynamics modeling. Schaffernicht and Groesser (2016) proposed a system dynamics competence framework that consists of a qualified, expert-evaluated, empirically based set of seven skills and 265 learning outcomes. Among other things, this facilitates course design and evaluation of learning quality in students. Engaging millennials in the learning process only through reading and listening is grossly inadequate. There is a lot of emphasis on experiential learning—individual and group projects with data collected from the field or organizations is strongly encouraged and facilitated. We also realized, as noted by Meadows (2007), that the behavior of complex systems becomes a part of a student’s thinking only when reading and listening are augmented by games and computer simulations that involve the use of psychomotor skills and prediction-simulation-verification based cognitive processes (Sterman, 1992). It is also unrealistic to expect students to make correct inferences about a nonlinear, dynamic system using traditional and static teaching materials (Wheat, 2007). Thus, the use of computer software became an essential part of the teaching and learning process at RC4. Prof. John Richardson, a celebrated system dynamics expert and a resident faculty at RC4 in its first 4 years, evaluated a few available software that could be used by students and staff. Upon his advice that Vensim PLE (Personal Learning Edition made available by Ventana Systems, Inc., 2020) version was ideal for classroom use and learning of system dynamics, the College adopted the software. The College has a computer lab with 18 desktop computers running a near-commercial version of Vensim (Vensim DSS) and is used by some faculty for conducting senior seminar modules, research and advanced projects.1 1 Vensim is an industrial-strength simulation software for improving the performance of real systems. Vensim’s rich feature set emphasizes model quality, connections to data, flexible distribution and advanced algorithms. Configurations for everyone from students to professionals. https://vensim.com/vensim-software/

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The College faculty have also adopted games—not just computerbased games but also board games to engage students in collecting real data related to pandemics (Leacock, 2012), forests (Games4Sustainability, 2020) and climate change (Climate Interactive, 2015). All these games are employed by the respective teachers to get students to learn the cause and effect relationships between variables and the feedback loops that exist in systems (to create models) and to collect empirical data to validate the constructed models. The Forest@Risk game (developed by Games4Sustainability) helps students to learn the benefits of cooperation and cultivate trust so that a greater good can be achieved for the community. These are vital lessons for future policy makers. Some RC4 students engage in mock UN climate change negotiation sessions using the CROADS simulation (developed by Climate Interactive, the MIT System Dynamics Group, and Ventana Systems as part of a multi-organization effort). Armed with the tool, students conduct several rounds of climate change negotiations interspersed with the use of the C-ROADS simulator to examine the outcome of their climate change commitments. Besides providing students with practice in negotiation skills (with each group of 3 students representing a major region of the world), this exercise enables them to understand the key factors behind climate change and to formulate effective actions to stabilize the climate. Many of our faculty members subscribe to the view that games-based teaching could be an effective signature pedagogy at RC4. We wish for us and our students at RC4 to recognize important societal problems and the systems that bear upon them, the actors in the systems, the characteristics the actors care about and the connections between those characteristics. We also have modules at the College where we add the element of adaptation to the complex systems and examine complex adaptive systems (CAS) using a different set of tools. Beyond all these, we want our students to understand that policy design and analysis are to be done in the context of wicked problems. These problems are even difficult to define and, even if they are defined to some degree, they are inherently unsolvable in the usual sense. When wicked problems are successfully addressed/managed, it is usually because all stakeholders have come to an agreement on a compromise action plan that will be good for all to bear even though any of their initial objectives may not

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have been met. Understanding and agreeing to tradeoffs based on the best available scientific information and data is very useful for budding policy makers—at RC4, we are happy doing our small part in this “big education” process. A typical public policy curriculum is built on three pillars namely Political Science, Economics and Management. While RC4 is yet to have a faculty fellow with expertise in political science, all our junior and senior seminar modules include economics and management topics which are understood first and then represented using the language of systems thinking (e.g. causal loop diagrams) and tools of system dynamics modeling (e.g. stock and flow diagrams). Ghaffarzadegan et al., (2011) highlight five characteristics of public policy problems that make resolution difficult using traditional approaches (traditional approaches often take a linear (non-circular) view of the world and do not engage in depicting their current understanding via computer models and putting them to test and use). These are: (i) policy resistance, (ii) the need for and cost of experimentation, (iii) the need to achieve consensus between diverse stakeholders, (iv) overconfidence in decision-making ability, and (v) the need to have an endogenous perspective (the problems in most real-world systems are not due to external variables but due to the internal structures and the internal players that manipulate these structures). Our junior seminars educate the students about how real-world systems are characterized by many feedback loops with some of the links having long delays because of issues in sensing, processing and acting on the information or simply because the effect of actions can only be felt after some time. The detrimental effects of delays are taught using case studies and learnt via simulation examples under various contexts— these help students understand the reasons for oscillations instabilities that can develop in systems. More critically, because they understand feedback paths in systems, students understand how policy actions trigger feedback from the environment that could undermine the policy and at times making the original problem worse. A great lesson in policy making is to understand the phenomena of policy resistance—students learn that some straightforward policies could be in immediate benefits but lead to long-term misery for many of the stakeholders. Students spend considerable time learning about common systems archetypes and the solution archetypes (Wolstenholme, 2003, 2004) as well. This makes it possible for students to understand the common structures and behaviors that occur across domains. Students are thus

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empowered to transfer skills across multiple domains—a very important requirement for 21st-century learning and policy making. Central to our curriculum is the aspect of mathematical modeling of the understood part of any phenomena and its implementation on Vensim. Students are made aware of the mismatch between the constructed model and the real-phenomena it represents. We also take a “small-model” approach given the composition of our student cohort and also because overly disaggregated models do not serve any pedagogical or practical purpose at our students’ academic level. Students become aware that their analysis and policies are conditional upon the accuracy of the model. Learning about the weakness of the methodology is a strength in itself—students understand the need to be cautious, avoid overconfidence and also the need to continuously monitor the performance of the model and amend it when there is new data or a new understanding is developed. The utility of models in saving experimental effort and cost as well as giving policymakers the opportunity to engage in multiple scenario generation, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis leading to in silico policy design is also appreciated well by our students through multiple practice opportunities. As stated above, much of the modeling exercises in Senior Seminar classes are done via role-plays or by students working in groups and using the whiteboard or modern technology to share their ideas or mental models of phenomena. Though this does not go very far into the kind of consensus-building needed during professional practice, our pedagogical approach gives students a taste of the challenges they will face in the real world when solving even moderately complex problems. Using examples from Jay Forrester’s (Forrester, 1961) work on Industrial Dynamics and games such as the Beer game, we demonstrate to students that the problems in systems do not necessarily come from external factors but are often due to the actions of managers or actors internal to the system. This endogenous view is important as it teaches all of us a valuable lesson for life—i.e. to retrospect and examine internally to understand the misconceptions, biases and ignorance we carry rather than blame external factors for the failures we experience as individuals and as managers of systems we are embedded in. Many intellectuals acknowledge that the problems hanging over us today and what we are likely to experience in the future will be complex to say the least. In such a scenario, communicating complex matters with clarity, honesty, integrity and with counterintuitive insights become

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very important. The community of systems thinkers and system dynamics modelers have a very important role to play not only in the identification and analysis of the problems but also in communicating about it. One of the pioneers of the field and a powerful thinker, Meadows (1989) alerted the Systems Thinkers and System Dynamics modeling community to actively “seek out and cooperate with the public media and the skilled professionals whose job it is to communicate through the media.” In all our junior and senior seminars, there is a lot of emphasis on oral presentations and written reports—they are modulated to address the layperson rather than the subject specialists. Wu et al. (2015) proposed that building policy capacity is a function of three sets of skills and competences (political, operational and analytical) and three levels of resources and capabilities (systemic, organizational and individual). We hope that, through the STSDM focused curriculum and immersive learning environment in the College, our students will develop skills and competencies to be able to discern complex webs of interrelationships which are critical in the making of public policy.

Concluding Remarks We end this chapter by sharing some final thoughts and outlining a set of possible future paths for RC4. RC4’s Master has spoken a few times with some faculty members of the management team of LKYSPP to see if RC4 can have closer ties with them given our main goal of advancing the “future public policy makers’ pipeline” agenda. The relationship with LKYSPP continues to be a potentially significant and yet unrealized benefit for RC4. A closer tie-up will benefit RC4 students in the short term and public policy education in Singapore over the long term. Having a critical mass of faculty with expertise in System Dynamics modeling and interest in a wide range of societal issues including diseases, healthcare, sustainability, population, food, energy, natural and humancreated disasters, etc. and a sizeable group of students who can work on research projects (either within their modules or as a project module or as an out-of-class activity during their stay in the College), the stage is set for the RC4 community to produce sustained scholarly work and disseminate them via appropriate global forums. RC4 faculty could also engage in a new category of scholarship—the Scholarship of Mission (SOM)— i.e. scholarly work that improves institutional effectiveness in benefiting

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society. SOM falls under the umbrella of Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive (HIBAR) research (Whitehead et al., 2020) which focuses on solving actionable problems that address civic, business and global priorities. HIBAR research combines both inward-facing (academic), outwardserving (community) orientations and involves integration of fundamental and applied research to solve important problems The coming together of societal issues, developing community engagement, transferring understanding of the problem into mathematical model representations, and engaging public policy design & analysis could create a fertile ground for RC4 faculty and students. As teachers, we all hope that our students will take what they have learned and apply it in other contexts i.e., to develop their ability to transfer their learning. Transfer of learning should be one of the key goals for any faculty member to pursue—they should design curricula and implement learning activities to better foster transfer of learning. With students likely to pursue a “lifetime of careers” rather than “career of a lifetime” upon graduation, this transfer of learning becomes very critical as citizens will have to engage in just-in-time, lifelong learning . Policy makers in government departments, private organizations, service sectors and NGOs will also have to work across domains. Unfortunately, many faculty members are unaware of what transfer of learning is (Scharff et al., 2017), and few faculty members are actually trained in best practices for making learning transferable (Halpern & Hakel, 2003). At RC4, we think the transfer of learning is critical in a broad sense particularly to ensure that students are able to apply model building and validation skills in multiple contexts beyond what they learn in their junior seminar sections. Many of the faculty members teaching junior seminars come together to create a common class test where the exercises in model building comes from multiple fields such as diseases, energy, natural resources and disaster management. Not all faculty members are on board with this initiative but students have been found to do fairly well in the “transfer test” because this is made known to them at the beginning of the semester and they are mentally prepared for it. In future, one hopes that RC4 faculty members explicitly educate and evaluate students based on their ability to transfer their thinking abilities and modeling skills across domains and from the classroom to the society. As a College that is educating “systems citizens,” the College has, for long, wanted the Ideas and Exposition modules to explicitly help students learn how to communicate with the public using complex problems as the

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context. We are hoping that, in future, RC4 students will have the option of having one or both of their IEMs empower them with this important skill. Finally, we also believe that one of the Senior Seminar modules should be oriented toward System Dynamics modeling while the other Senior Seminar Module should focus on addressing social phenomena and issues using the framework of complex adaptive systems. While students may not need to develop agent-based models (ABMs) on their own, they must learn about it and also play/experiment with pre-developed ABMs so that they can develop insights, design and test policies etc. Acknowledgements The authors like to express their sincere thanks to past, present and future students of RC4 for their help in building the College and being willing to experiment with a different (perhaps also somewhat difficult) way of looking at societal and global issues. We are also grateful to the support from NUS Senior Management, faculty and staff of other Residential Colleges and Halls of Residence, and various NUS units that support learning and living at RC4. Above all, the support of RC4 faculty colleagues (pioneers, past & current Fellows, Adjunct Faculty and Joint Appointees) and staff (You Cheng, Hwee Fang, Si Min and Jing Fang) have been directly instrumental in bringing RC4 to its current state and putting it on a meaningful journey.

References Astin, A.W. 1993. What matters in college: Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bajpai, K., Fritzen, S.A., & Mahbubani, K. “Global public policy as a field of study: A view from Asia”, Appendix A In Mahbubani, K., Yiannouka, S.N., Fritzen, S.A., Tuminez, A.S., and Tan, K.P., (Eds.), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: Building a Global Public Policy School in Asia, pp. 159–177. World Scientific, 2013. Clancey, G., “The Curricular College Model of the National University of Singapore (NUS)”, Unpublished Report, 2018. Climate Interactive, World Climate Project: Climate Change Negotiation Simulation, 2015. https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/world-climate/ Colander, D., and R. Kupers. 2014. Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dey, E.L., Ott, M.C., Antonaros, M., Barnhardt, C.L., & Holsapple, M.A., “Engaging Diverse Viewpoints: What Is the Campus Climate

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for Perspective-Taking?” Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010. https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/core_commitm ents/engaging_diverse_viewpoints.pdf (Last accessed on 13th June 2020). Forrester, J.W. 1961. Industrial Dynamics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press. Forrester, J.W. 1987. Lessons from system dynamics modeling. System Dynamics Review 3 (2): 136–149. Games4sustainability, https://games4sustainability.org/gamepedia/forest-atrisk/ (Last accessed on 13th June 2020). Ghaffarzadegan, N., J. Lyneis, and G.P. Richardson. 2011. How small system dynamics models can help the public policy process. System Dynamics Review 27 (1): 22–44. Halpern, D.F., & Hakel, M.D., “Applying the science of learning to the university and beyond: Teaching for long-term retention and transfer”, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 35(4), 36–41, 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00091380309604109 Leacock, M. Pandemic. Quebec, Canada: Z-Man Games, 2012. Mahbubani, K. “Reflections of a founding dean”, In Mahbubani, K., Yiannouka, S.N., Fritzen, S.A., Tuminez, A.S., and Tan, K.P., (Eds.), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: Building a Global Public Policy School in Asia, pp. 1–39. World Scientific, Singapore, 2013. Meadows, D.H. 1989. System dynamics meets the press. System Dynamics Review 5 (1): 69–80. Meadows, D. 2007. A brief and incomplete history of operational gaming in system dynamics. System Dynamics Review 23: 199–203. Meadows, D. H., Thinking in Systems: A Primer. London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2009. Peterson, S., “Applying system dynamics to public policy: The legacy of Barry Richmond”, https://thesystemsthinker.com/applying-system-dyn amics-to-public-policy-the-legacy-of-barry-richmond/, 2004. (Last accessed on 13 June 2020). Richardson, G.P., and D.F. Andersen. 1980. Toward a pedagogy of system dynamics. System Dynamics: TIMS Studies in the Management Sciences 14: 91–106. Richardson, G.P., ““Model” teaching”, System Dynamics Review, 30(1–2), 81– 88, 2014a. Richardson, G.P. 2014. “Model” teaching II: Examples for the early stage. System Dynamics Review 30 (4): 283–290. Richardson, G.P. 2015. “Model” teaching III: Examples for the later stages. System Dynamics Review 30 (4): 291–299.

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Schaffernicht, M.F.G., and S.N. Groesser. 2016. A competence development framework for learning and teaching system dynamics. System Dynamics Review 32 (1): 52–81. Scharff, L., Draeger, J., Verpoorten, D., Devlin, M., and Dvorakova, L.S., Lodge, J.M., & Smith, S.V. 2017. Exploring metacognition as a support for learning transfer. Teaching and Learning Inquiry 5 (1): 78–91. Sterman, J. 1992. Teaching takes off: Flight simulators for management education. Or/ms Today 19: 40–44. Sterman, J. 2000. Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. Boston: Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Vensim Personal Learning Edition, Ventana Systems Inc., https://vensim.com/ vensim-personal-learning-edition/ (last accessed on 13 June 2020). Wheat, I.D. 2007. The feedback method of teaching macroeconomics: Is it effective? System Dynamics Review 23: 391–413. Whitehead, L.A., H.S. Scott, and J.E. Nelson. 2020. Re-invigorating HIBAR research for the 21st Century: Enhancing fundamental research excellence in service to society. Technology & Innovation 21 (2): 153–167. Wolstenholme, E.F. 2003. Towards the definition and use of a core set of archetypal structures in system dynamics. System Dynamics Review 19 (1): 7–26. Wolstenholme, E.F. 2004. Using generic system archetypes to support thinking and modelling. System Dynamics Review 20 (4): 341–356. Wu, X., M. Ramesh, and M. Howlett. 2015. “Policy capacity: A conceptual framework for understanding policy competences and capabilities. Policy and Society 34 (3–4): 165–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polsoc.2015.09.001.

CHAPTER 6

The Prevalence of Big Data Analytics in Public Policy: Is There a Research-Pedagogy Gap? Nihit Goyal, Ola G. El-Taliawi, and Michael Howlett

Introduction Digital technologies such as cellular phones, closed circuit television cameras, cyber-physical systems, internet of things, sensor networks,

N. Goyal (B) Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Singapore, Singapore O. G. El-Taliawi Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] M. Howlett Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_6

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unmanned aerial vehicles, and the worldwide web generate automated data, facilitate user-generated content, enable directed data collection by and pertaining to individuals, organizations, and governments (Chen et al. 2014; Sivarajah et al. 2017). The rapid diffusion of these technologies has resulted in an abundance of data and fueled the big data phenomenon in Asia and around the world. While its ethical, legal, and moral issues need to be borne in mind (Clarke 2016), big data creates possibilities that otherwise would not ¨ exist, for both research and practice. As Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier (2013, 10) have noted: big data allows users to do things at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one… by changing the amount we can change the essence. The authors highlighted three shifts associated with big data analytics: (i) the possibility of analyzing the entire population (rather than a sample); (ii) the ability to accept more measurement error due to reduction in sampling error; (iii) the change in focus from causality to prediction. These shifts affect both public policy practice and research. In terms of practice, the advent of e-government, information technology, and social media has signaled increasing reliance on technology for governance (El-Taliawi 2018) and the availability of new types of data based on citizens’ online presence. Such novel, but complex, data can provide public managers and policymakers with real-time insight into public opinion and citizen behavior (Mergel 2016). However, as Henry and Venkatraman (2015) have argued: big data will only be useful to government if it can be analyzed. Realizing this, illustratively, the United States (US) government created a Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012 to create tools that make sense of big data (Kalil 2012). Further, several federal agencies in the US have started using big data analysis in fraud detection, financial market analysis, government oversight, and other areas (Helms 2015). Yet, on the whole, the uptake of big data in governance and public policy has been slow (Giest and Ng 2018). Increasing the use of big data analytics in public policy research and practice will require the creation of a digital ecosystem. While for research this will entail increasing capacity and adopting an interdisciplinary approach rather than relying only on inductive research, for policy practice it will involve aligning it with organizational objectives and activities, adopting a stakeholder-focused approach, establishing a performance culture, enhancing expertise in big data and data science within the government, and addressing institutional bottlenecks (Downing and Liu

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2019; Giest 2017b; Janssen and Kuk 2016; Klievink et al. 2017; Yu-Che and Tsui-Chuan 2014). In either case, incorporation of big data analytics in public policy education can help realize its long-term potential. Yet, hardly any research has focused on increasing the prevalence of big data in public policy education. The objective of this chapter is to facilitate the uptake of big data analytics in public policy pedagogy (see also El-Taliawi et al.2021). To do so, we conducted a computational text analysis of research on big data in governance and policy to identify key themes in the literature and illustrate the opportunities, challenges, and applications of the phenomenon. Further, we analyzed the extent to which public policy programs and schools incorporate big data pedagogy through analysis of graduate course offerings at public policy programs around the world. Subsequently, we examined geographic and institutional variation in big data research and teaching within public policy, focusing especially on Asia as big data provides an opportunity for emerging economies in Asia to build capacity in policy analysis, address paucity of data and evidence for policymaking, and increase administrative effectiveness. Higher education institutions can, therefore, play a key role in harnessing this potential through big data research and education within public policy.

Themes in Big Data Research on Governance and Public Policy The data for this analysis was obtained using the following search query on the Social Science Citation Index of the Web of Science database: (artificial neural network* OR automated text analysis OR big data OR computational social science OR computational text analysis OR data science OR machine learning OR natural language processing OR opinion mining OR random forest* OR sentiment analysis OR support vector machine* OR text analytics OR text as data OR text mining OR topic model*) AND (govern* OR policy). The search was conducted on December 22, 2019 and returned 2,475 results. Publications without a publication date or publication source were removed from the dataset, resulting in a final dataset of 2,406 publications for analysis. We used topic modeling to analyze and cluster the literature on big data in governance and public policy. Topic modeling is an unsupervised text mining technique that uses statistical modeling to ‘discover’ latent topics in a document collection (Blei et al. 2003). Specifically,

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we employed structural topic model, a framework for incorporating document-level metadata in topic modeling in order to improve topic discovery and interpretability (Roberts et al. 2013). Structural topic model has been implemented as a software package in R (R Core Team 2019. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria) to facilitate data cleaning, model building, analysis, and visualization (Roberts et al. 2014). To prepare the data for analysis, we combined the text from publication titles and abstracts. Following the standard workflow in text mining, we converted all text to lower case, lemmatized it, removed numbers and punctuation, excluded ‘stop words’, extracted ‘n-grams’, and stemmed the text to enhance the quality of the model (Feldman and Sanger 2006). We selected the number of topics—an input to the topic modeling algorithm—as 9 based on a comparison of the held-out likelihood and semantic coherence of models with 3 to 25 topics (Wallach et al. 2009; Taddy 2012). Overall, we found that the research spans big data governance as well as the use of big data analytics for public policy (Fig. 6.1). The most prevalent topic, topic 4, focused on big data and digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, and their governance. Articles in this cluster highlighted the opportunities and challenges associated with big data and delve into its integration within businesses and/or governments. The overarching narrative was that while big data can influence decisionmaking and increase efficiency (Ilie-Zudor et al. 2015) and resilience (Ali and Golgeci 2019) in management, appropriate governance is necessary for developing and deploying new capabilities, processes, standards, strategies, and technologies to harness its potential (Brous et al. 2019; Lim et al. 2018; Hilbert 2016; Bates et al. 2014; In et al. 2019). This narrative could be observed in the case of smart cities, for example, which have received much attention in this cluster. While some scholars have adopted an information and communications technologies lens to examine the concept and argued for better integration between big data and smart cities (Ismagilova et al. 2019; Tachizawa et al. 2015), others have highlighted issues surrounding ethics, institutional complexity, and local government capacity in translating such a vision into reality (Giest 2017a; Kitchin 2016). Closely related to topic 4, topic 7 was the second most prevalent topic in the literature. While topic 4 focused on big data and digital technologies largely from an organizational perspective, topic 7 delved into the

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Fig. 6.1 Topics in big data research in governance and policy

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potential effect of computational social science and digital disruption on society. The key concerns of the literature in this cluster pertained to the ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding the increasing use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in different spheres. Beer (2017), for example, cautioned regarding the social power of algorithms and the rationalities they implicitly reproduce while Huq (2019) argued that the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system does not adequately address the racial dimension. Similarly, the use of learning analytics in education needs to be considered within the broader context of inequities between educators and researchers (Irby and O’Sullivan 2018) and the ethical and political issues involved in education data science (Gulson and Webb 2018). To deal with the challenges and upheavals brought about by disruptive digital technologies (Wang and Siau 2019), an interdisciplinary approach (Mansell 2017) that goes beyond positivism (Savage 2013) and addresses issues in computational epistemology, research methodology, and software technology is necessary (Bankes et al. 2002). Also correlated with topic 4, topic 8 focused on the intersection of big data and biomedicine and healthcare (Andreu-Perez et al. 2015; Krumholz 2014). While topic 4 was concerned with the issues surrounding the impact of big data at the organization level, topic 8 delved into issues at the individual level. For instance, emphasis on using big data even for improving health can sideline autonomy and privacy (Snell 2019), as shown by the absence of patient choice in collection, sharing, and use of electronic health records in various countries (Canaway et al. 2019; Ploug and Holm 2017; Kulynych and Greely 2017; Tsai and Junod 2018). With the rise of big data, data categorization will require re-evaluation and benefit or harm will need to be considered at the aggregate level, rather than at the level of individual datum (Rumbold and Pierscionek 2018). Moreover, public policy has an important role in protecting privacy (Acquisti et al. 2015; Roski et al. 2014) and emerging principles of data sharing in international health research—net societal benefit, the distribution of this benefit, respect for the individual, and public engagement (Kalkman et al. 2019)—can serve as a guideline for policymaking. In contrast to the above, topic 3 focused on the application of big data techniques for forecasting and prediction. Tkacz (2001), for example, used artificial neural networks to forecast long-run economic growth rate in Canada, while Schiltz et al. (2018) employed random forest to improve accuracy of school rankings in Italy. Scholars have found that machine

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learning techniques, such as classification and regression trees, support vector machines, and adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system autoregression analysis, can outperform panel-data and time-series statistical analysis in forecasting and prediction (Li et al. 2010; Azadeh et al. 2011; Crook et al. 2007; Hong and Fan 2016), although possibly at the cost of poor interpretability (Jones et al. 2015). This has been attributed to the ability of several machine learning techniques to incorporate nonlinearity better in the analysis (Babikir and Mwambi 2016). An ‘ensemble’ approach, which combines multiple machine learning techniques, has been found to further increase accuracy by decreasing variance and bias in the data. Adhikari and Agrawal (2014), for example, combined artificial neural networks with random walk to forecast financial time series while Szafranek (2019) used data preprocessing and bootstrap aggregation with artificial neural networks to predict inflation in the economy. While topic 2 was also about the use of machine learning for structured data analysis, it focused more on energy and environment. In comparison to topic 3, studies in this cluster were concerned less with forecasting and more with policy analysis, interestingly, often in the Chinese context. Illustratively, Wang and Tian (2015) used an artificial neural network to model the relationship between energy price, energy supply, and economic growth in China and to analyze different regulatory strategies. Further, studies in this cluster have also used machine learning for managing ‘green’ businesses. Wu et al. (2016), for example, demonstrated the application of artificial neural network for better inventory management while Sakoda et al. (2019) argued that data science can reduce food waste in the retail industry. Big data analytics has also been employed to incorporate big data-enabled targeted advertising into pricing policy for a green supply chain (Liu and Yi 2017), achieve more accurate customer segmentation for green industries (Du et al. 2018), and assess the trade-off between profitability and environmental footprint in green retailing (Shen et al. 2019). Research on governance and public policy has also used computational text analysis to analyze big data (Topic 9). In applications of big data analysis in political science (Grimmer and Stewart 2013), illustratively, Rice (2019) employed text analytics to examine requests for Congressional action by the United States Supreme Court while Law (2016) developed a structural topic model to examine constitutions of countries around the world. In another example, Windsor et al. (2018) examined the relationship of language to political survival by analyzing over 100

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speeches from nine authoritarian leaders from Middle East and North Africa using computational linguistics. Meanwhile, Rauh (2015) demonstrated the application of automated text analysis in the literature on European Union (EU) governance by examining the salience of the EU in the German Bundestag. In policy studies, scholars used text mining and topic modeling to investigate the framing of government support to art in over 8000 news articles in the US (DiMaggio et al. 2013), examine issue frames around used nuclear fuel in the US (Nowlin 2016), assess indirect agenda-setting power of the European Parliament (Kreppel and Webb 2019), and analyze the interplay between ideas and institutions in policymaking on biofuels in Europe and the US (Skogstad and Wilder 2019). While closely associated with topic 9, topic 1 focused on web data and social media data analysis using text mining, sentiment analysis, and network analytics. In an application of natural language processing, Leavy (2019) examined gender bias in media coverage of politicians in Ireland while, relying on web analytics, de Oliveira and Baracho (2018) developed tourism indicators for major attractions in Brazil. Scholars have also examined public opinion on polarizing issues such as hate speech and vaccination using sentiment analysis (Udanor and Anyanwu 2019; Okuhara et al. 2018; Nakada et al. 2014; On et al. 2019). In fact, Ku and Chen (2007) demonstrated the application of opinion mining, opinion summarization, and opinion tracking even on Chinese corpora. Further, Khoo et al. (2012) called for more nuance in sentiment analysis by also examining appraiser bias, type of attitude, manner of expressing sentiment, and object of appraisal. In an application of network analytics, Koltsova et al. (2016) have employed a community detection algorithm to identify communities by parsing over 15,000 posts by 2000 bloggers in Russia. The literature on big data analytics also emphasizes the use of spatial data for environmental policymaking, for example, using remote sensing (topic 5). Illustratively, Brandt et al. (2012) used remote sensing with support vector machines to measure forest cover change in China while Conrad et al. (2017) examined crop diversity in Uzbekistan using multisensor satellite imagery. Scholars also used satellite imagery and machine learning to not only environmental phenomena—such that the influence of various characteristics on tropical deforestation (Bax and Francesconi 2018)—or anthropogenic phenomena—such as the effect or rural and urban development on land use and land cover change (Guo et al. 2019;

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Pierri Daunt and Sanna Freire Silva 2019) —but also compare the direct effect of anthropogenic versus environmental change, for example on vegetation cover (Ohana-Levi et al. 2019). In an example of policy evaluation, Sung (2013) used remote sensing to examine the effectiveness of tree protection policy in mitigating urban heat island effect in the US. In an innovative study at the intersection of topic 3 and topic 5, Jean et al. (2016) analyzed an integrated dataset of satellite imagery and household surveys using a convolutional neural network to predict poverty in Africa. The final topic, topic 6, was distinguishable by its focus on high spatial or temporal resolution data. Several studies in this topic delved into transportation policy, for example, by mining hourly data to examine the relationship between weather and cycling (Zhao et al. 2018), using big data to examine variability in transit behavior (Long et al. 2016; Wemegah et al. 2018; Zhou and Murphy 2019), and using social media data with geolocation information to examine accessibility of public transport (Moyano et al. 2018). Elsewhere, concentrating on spatial granularity and social policy, Li et al. (2019) used a random forest model to identify characteristics associated with cardiovascular health at the neighborhood level in the US while Ellen et al. (2016) analyzed data on 1.4 million households to examine the effect of housing choice vouchers on residential location decision across school districts in the US. Finally, in an example of economic policy study, Blumenstock et al. (2015) used mobile phone usage data to infer socioeconomic status and reconstruct asset distribution at the neighborhood as well as national level.

Assessing Academia’s Response To assess the response of higher education institutions to this big data revolution, we analyzed the course offerings of over 120 educational institutions active in public policy worldwide. After filtering out institutions that did not offer a policy degree, we found only 30% of programs offered big data courses in their policy curricula, while 63% did not. The remaining 7% did not provide sufficient information on their websites to give a definitive conclusion (Fig. 6.2). Further, we found that big data offerings tended to take the form of courses, degrees and/or degree concentrations. However, most programs in our sample offered big data courses only. Less predominant in our sample were degrees and concentrations (7%). Examples of degrees and concentrations offered include: Master of Science in Policy Analytics,

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7% 30%

63%

Offer big data courses

Do not offer big data courses

N/A information

Fig. 6.2 Percentage of policy programs offering big data courses (Source Authors’ calculation)

and Concentration in Data Analytics and Program Evaluation. When we examined course titles, we found variations that indicated that no obvious standardized trend existed. Examples of course titles in our sample include: Decision Support System and Data Analytics for Public Policy; Big data and Government; and Evidence and Analysis in Public Policy with emphasis on big data and machine learning. While we originally set out to analyze course content in order to examine the pedagogical techniques used, we found that the majority of course syllabi were not available for public access on university websites. Content analysis of syllabi, conducted in the course of future research, can reveal the predominant techniques used by instructors, and the kind of pedagogical gaps that exist. The content of qualitative and quantitative research methods modules can also be analyzed in order to determine whether they offer big data techniques embedded in their course learning objectives. Further, offering core modules, as opposed to elective courses, in the use of big data analytics in policy analysis would reveal whether such techniques are increasingly being considered by policy programs as essential components of the skills needed to be imparted to students. The

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rate of student uptake of these courses may also be assessed by means of surveying. When we examined the scholarly literature on pedagogy, we found dismal attention given to the topic with regards to public policy education. For instance, the number of journal articles found on SCOPUS database when using the search keywords big data AND pedagogy AND public policy OR public affairs, without including any time or language limits, were 57. Only 12 among them were of actual relevance to the topic. This reveals that resources, including case studies and studies related to big data pedagogy that can inform teaching and which are specific to the policy field, are currently underdeveloped. Therefore, it is obvious from the above findings that while the use of big data as an analytical tool has begun to infiltrate government operations, its incorporation in, and for, policy education is trailing behind. According to Börner et al. (2018), higher education at large is currently undersupplying the technical skills needed for a data-driven economy, and discrepancies and delays exist between scientific research, job market needs, and educational content. Some of the challenges, mentioned by scholars, which are slowing down academia’s uptake of big data include access to datasets for teaching, the presence of software and computing capacity, and faculty training (Mergel et al. 2016; LeClair 2018). Some recommendations for bridging the pedagogical divide include: adopting an incremental and hybrid approach to infusing curriculum with data analytics through partnering with other departments; adding a standalone elective course while incorporating data analytic objectives in existing courses (Dzuranin et al. 2018); conducting a job market assessment to determine the learning objectives needed; how big data can and should be taught; and by whom; and what kind of infrastructure and faculty may be needed to support this initiative. This latter point is especially important to ensure that programs do not just follow fads, but actually provide the skills necessary based on matching of supply and context-specific labor market demand.

Country and Institutional Dominance in Research and Teaching Subsequently, we examined national and institutional variation in research and teaching on big data in governance or public policy. To identify the countries and institutions that have published prolifically on the topic,

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we used the earlier dataset consisting of 2406 publications on big data in governance or public policy. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the dataset extracting the information on authors and their affiliations for each publication in the dataset. The data was processed using the Bibliometrix package in R (Aria and Cuccurullo 2017). We found most research on big data from a governance or policy perspective has been conducted by a few countries (Fig. 6.3). The countries with highest scientific production included the United States of America (1880 publications), China (927 publications), the United Kingdom (586 publications), Australia (289 publications), and South Korea (214 publications). Other countries in the top ten were Germany (204 publications), Canada and Spain (182 publications), Italy (172 publications), and the Netherlands (150 publications). Outside the OECD, with the exception of China, the countries with the most publications in this dataset were: Taiwan (119 publications), India (91 publications), Iran (78 publications), Brazil (71 publications), and Singapore (47 publications). Meanwhile, South Africa (32 publications) and Kenya (16 publications) were the only African countries with more than 10 publications in the dataset. The trend was no different in Asia. Except for China and South Korea, countries in Asia have not been at the forefront of research on big data in governance and public policy. Apart from countries mentioned above, the only other Asian countries with 10 or more publications in the dataset

Fig. 6.3 Country-wise scientific production for big data research on governance and policy

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were: Japan (91 publications), Malaysia (37 publications), Pakistan (24 publications), Saudi Arabia (19 publications), Vietnam (16 publications), Thailand (13 publications), and Bangladesh (10 publications). In fact, the top 10 Asian institutions in this dataset are all from China, Japan, or South Korea: Tsinghua University (32 publications), University of Hong Kong (31 publications), University of Tokyo (28 publications), Wuhan University (28 publications), Sun Yat Sen University (27 publications), City University of Hong Kong (25 publications), Yonsei University (23 publications), Nanjing University (22 publications), and Seoul National University (20 publications) and Sichuan University (20 publications). While authors from over 2,300 institutions have published on big data in governance or public policy, only 284 institutions have five or more publications in this dataset. The top 25 institutions and their collaboration network are shown in Fig. 6.4. The institutions with the most publications were: Stanford University (54 publications), Harvard university (38 publications), University of Oxford (37 publications), University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania (35 publications each), Arizona State University (33 publications), Tsinghua University and University of Washington (32 publications each), University of Hong Kong (31 publications), and University of Queensland (30 publications). Outside of China, hardly any universities in the Global South have actively published on big data and governance or public policy. When we analyzed the geographic distribution of policy programs that offered big data courses in their curricula, we found predominance in the provision of such courses in North America (62%), followed by Europe (15%), with the remaining 23% dispersed in universities in Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America. This points to discrepancy in geographic prevalence between research on the topic and its teaching in higher education institutions. While China and South Korea are at the forefront of research on big data in governance and public policy, as mentioned earlier, this does not coincide with teaching practices. Our findings indicated that courses on big data are on offer in three countries: Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. With regards to institutional dominance, we also found that research output on big data does not coincide with teaching. For instance, among the universities that dominate publications on the topic, only 40% offer big data courses, degrees, or concentrations. This finding may be further corroborated with additional statistical analysis, but it appears to be in line

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Fig. 6.4 Institutional network of big data research on governance and policy

with Mergel’s (2016) finding that the top 10 ranked public affairs schools in the US have not yet incorporated big data topics in their curricula, and rely on neighboring disciplines, including political science, geography and computer science, to provide advanced informatics classes. As mentioned earlier, only three higher education institutions out of the nine Asian institutions included in our sample offered big data courses in their public policy educational content. Further, as opposed to some institutions offering concentrations in big data, the only stand-alone courses are offered in Asia, including ‘decision support system and data analytics for public policy’ course offered by Chiang Mai University’s newly established school of public policy.

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Conclusion While the emergence of big data has raised new concerns for governance and policymaking, it has also created opportunities for public policy research and practice. Public policy research, whether on the policy process or policy analysis, can benefit from the application of big data analysis to complement traditional techniques such as content analysis, cost-benefit analysis, econometric evaluation, opinion polling, and surveying. In this chapter, we examined the topics in the literature on big data in governance and policy research, and analyzed the extent to which big data is taught in policy programs in Asia and around the world. Although research on big data and governance or policy was slow to take off, the number of journal articles and conference papers on the topic has increased significantly over the last decade. The key themes in the literature on big data in governance and policy pertained both to its governance as well as to its application in policymaking. On governance, scholars have highlighted that big data will have implications at the individual (for example, confidentiality, privacy, and healthcare), organizational (for example, citizen/customer engagement, decision-making, inventory control, retailing, supply-chain management), and the state and societal level (for example, digital divide, inequities, smart cities, and surveillance). In policymaking, research has demonstrated the application of big data analytics to numerous areas, including the use of machine learning for forecasting and prediction, structured analysis in energy and environment policy, text mining in political science and policy studies, opinion mining to examine and aggregate citizen preferences, remote sensing for economic and environmental policy, and highly granular data for local and neighborhood policy. However, our analysis of over 120 institutions active in public policy indicated only about only 30% of these offer courses pertaining to big data analytics. There was high geographic variation in the diffusion of big data analytics in public policy pedagogy as well—while 60% of the programs in North America have courses related to big data, this number was about 20% or less in Europe and the rest of the world. Moreover, even institutions that have been actively publishing on big data in governance and public policy often did not incorporate it into their pedagogy. This is a worrying trend that suggests that policy research and practice are likely to miss out on the promise of big data. Thus, the potential of big data to fundamentally change public policy not only remains unrealized but is

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also unlikely to be tapped in the future if the status quo continues. This is particularly pronounced in Asia, since other than China and South Korea, policy research on the topic emanating from the region is scarce. Further, a minority of policy programs offer big data courses in their syllabi. This gap needs to be filled. First, more multi-country and multiinstitutional collaboration can potentially increase the diffusion of big data analytics in Asia. Second, multi-sectoral collaboration—especially involving fields that have been early adopters of big data analytics, such as communications, education, healthcare, management, and sustainability—can not only produce comparative research but also help identify potential applications in other areas. Third, we find that course syllabi for public policy courses in general and big data courses in particular are not easily available online. Opening up courseware can provide useful templates for institutions with lesser resources as well as scholars with expertise in traditional methods to engage with big data analytics and deploy it in research and teaching in new and innovative ways.

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CHAPTER 7

Social Media Analytics for Policy Studies Dedy Permadi and Treviliana Eka Putri

Introduction Government’s social media channels are utilized to promote interactions and communications with public. The utilization of these channels in city-level government can bring new insights to capture the aspects of transparency and accountability in policy implementation. Information and communication as an integral part of government-citizen interactions can be captured by analyzing government’s use of its social media. Nonetheless, this approach cannot be used on its own as it might miss the complexity of the context and situation where the study is located. For example, in a city where digital infrastructure and citizen’s digital literacy is still low, this approach might not be the most ideal way to capture government’s transparency and accountability as the interactivity can be

D. Permadi (B) · T. E. Putri Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia e-mail: [email protected] T. E. Putri e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_7

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very low. The trend in social media utilization in the public sector is a phenomenon that is of value to be explored by policy practitioners and academicians. Social media are often integrated with city e-government systems due to its nature: accessible, real-time, and efficient. These strengths can be employed to create more certainty in the political environment by providing clear and timely information. Social media can facilitate the collaborative model of e-government, where multiple stakeholders especially the public can participate in the policymaking process. Moreover, social media is usually tied to the concepts of accountability and transparency. This chapter presents a study that explored the correlation between social media and accountability and transparency. The chapter also discusses how social media analytics can be utilized to measure the extent of political communication, which is critical to the topic of government accountability and transparency. A plethora of data available on these media can be utilized to analyze public attitudes and responses toward the government’s policies and activities. For example, as our case studies will illustrate, social media analytics help us capture government’s political willingness to utilize digital platforms for policy efforts that boost transparency and accountability, and how citizens perceive the same. Public policy studies that rely on social media analytics are made more relevant considering how governments increasingly use digital platforms to conduct governance matters, hence forms of political communication get more diverse and create the need for social media analytics in relation to public policy. The first section of this chapter will discuss the relationship between social media and government accountability and transparency. The bottom-up and top-down communication aspects will then be discussed in the following sections in correlation with accountability and transparency that can be enhanced by social media. Implications for teaching in varied policy courses are also drawn in addition. For example, it is seen that transparency, an aspect best served by social media, also has an academic impact that allows researchers to examine internal policy process and urban politics.

Studying Accountability and Transparency There are multiple dimensions within the aspects of accountability and transparency (Martell 2007; Harrison and Sayogo 2014; Mabillard and

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Zumofen 2016). In the context of public policy, accountability refers to the obligation of government to answer to the public by informing about the use of public resources in ways that enable citizens to assess its performance (Harrison and Sayogo 2014). It is effective when citizens, acting individually in response to new information, vote out those who are politically responsible for bad policies (World Bank 2017). On the other hand, transparency can be defined as the publicity of all the acts of government and its representatives to provide civil society with relevant information in a complete, timely, and easily accessible manner (Cruz et al. 2015). The relationship between transparency and various dimensions of the quality of government is complex and nuanced (Cucciniello et al. 2016). In this contemporary era, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a significant role in enhancing both transparency and accountability (Harrison and Sayogo 2014; Cruz et al. 2015; Hardy & Maurushat 2017; Ojo 2019). It is assumed that ICT increases the scope and reach of transparency at less expense and potentially creates new opportunities for participation and accountability, owing to how it facilitates the flow of information with broader reach, being an easier and faster process, and offer more flexibility in its usage, a phenomenon also referred to as “technology-driven transparency” (Cruz et al. 2015). With regards to accountability, two roles are played by ICT-enabled citizen voice: informing upwards accountability and bolstering downwards accountability through either individual user feedback or collective civic action (Peixoto & Fox 2016). Traditionally, opportunity for the general public to become a party to the public policy making decisions by the government agencies is limited, which led to a decline in conviction and reliance of the public towards the government and their policies (Severo et al. 2016). Regarding this, the use of social media in the public sector should be seen as a paradigm shift toward greater citizen engagement and participation because it enables government to improve transparency, accountability, and open collaboration (Bonson et al. 2017). For instance, Landsbergen (2010) believes that social media tend to encourage trust and enhance social capital, an argument supported by Porumbescu (2016, 2017a), which found that greater use of public sector social media is positively related to satisfaction and perceptions of public sector trustworthiness—which is important as far as citizens’ participation in it is concerned (Janssen et al. 2018). The more frequently citizens access the public sector social media accounts to look for information about the government, the more positive their perception

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of government trustworthiness will become (Porumbescu 2017a). This trust also stems from citizens’ more positive view on the government’s transparency aided by social media (Song & Lee 2016). Which is why, analyzing the patterns of social media communication and data arising from social media activities help us uncover dimensions of policymaking, especially related to the relationship between government and citizens. Consequently, social media are able to enhance transparency and accountability (Sutton 2009; Katz and Halpern 2013; Harrison 2014). Similarly, Bertot and Jaeger (2010) argues that social media can be used to improve transparency and increase openness of the government to the public. Vice versa, a higher degree of citizen engagement with the government’s social media profiles is achieved by local governments that favor online transparency, which focuses more on interactivity than on mere activity (Haro-de-Rosario et al. 2016). Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook help policymakers to acquire more accurate data for policymaking purposes by eliminating time-delays and provide abundant topics of interest (Pfeffermann et al. 2015), especially since these platforms allow the accumulation of more authenticated user data in real time. Hence, by bringing out transparent data analytics, social media becomes an efficient tool for enhancing transparency in government working and increasing the communication between citizens and policymakers. Moreover, identifying patterns in social media communication and usage by citizens will assist policymaking process for the government, especially to see the general trend of what people’s aspiration as well as the effectivity of a certain policy. This contributes to the accountability aspect of public policy issues since, lack of public participation in various policymaking decision has been cited to be a major concern in formulating and evaluating such policies (Singh et al. 2020). In terms of the implication to the political communication, social media platforms also allow other people to know what we are doing by making ourselves visible (Margetts et al. 2017), supported by interactive engagement that is provided by the platforms (Kende et al. 2016). Similarly, Chan (2016) argued that social media is more conducive to disseminate mobilizing information that provides opportunities for individuals to participate in protests as calls to action can be disseminated more quickly. In other words, social media has an impact on the pattern of political communication within citizens, especially how certain ways of using social media can lead to higher political engagement (Kende et al. 2016), not only facilitating communication among the citizens but

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also between the government and the public. Communications, interactions, and activities that happen in social media generate data that can be analyzed; what we call social media analytics. According to Singh et al. (2020), social media analytics is beneficial to achieve efficient monitoring and controlling of governmental policies through public involvement, which in turn correlates to the concept of transparency and public policy accountability. Looking at the apparent correlation between social media use, accountability, and transparency, this chapter intends to answer two questions: first, how does social media use by governments influence government accountability and transparency? Secondly, how do social media analytics aid in understanding the level of accountability and transparency? To answer these questions, a public perception survey was conducted targeting internet users living in three cities: Seoul, Jakarta, and Singapore in the year 2014. The perception survey gathered a total of 1034 respondents. More than 95% of the respondents are permanent residents of these cities. Around 81% of the survey participants are youths or aged between 18 and 34. Since accountability, transparency, and political communication represent the flow of information among stakeholders in the policy process, this research focuses on the two aspects of the flow of information, namely bottom-up and top-down. These two directions of communication also show that social media can significantly impact the communication between government and its citizens, and hence, showcase the importance of social media analytics to study accountability and transparency. The Bottom-Up Aspect The first aspect of accountability and transparency being examined is the bottom-up aspect or citizen-driven, which represents the flow of information from “below” that is facilitated by social media (Moon & Welch 2005). This part discusses the pattern of social media use in Seoul, Jakarta, and Singapore with data acquired from a public perception survey to understand better how the relations between social media and public policy, especially the communication patterns conveyed from the citizens to their respective governments. In each city, the survey assessed several aspects relating to governance functions through social media, such as government website features, people’s reason to access government sites,

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their preferred e-governance platforms, and the patterns of bottom-up political communication such as conveying complaints or aspirations. Official websites of governments are an increasingly popular platform to be used, both as a means of two-way communication and information spreading. In the case of Seoul, the website and online features which are equipped with interactive and attractive icons and layouts, provided by Seoul government are crucial in enhancing the quality of public services. However, the survey shows that most Koreans in Seoul are not very interested in visiting the government’s website. The highest response regarding the reason for this is that the citizens don’t have any specific reasons to visit the website even though the website provides a variety of useful options for city residents and visitors. Similarly, the Singapore government has developed a sophisticated public service mechanism for Singaporeans to access, with interactive and attractive channels for communication. The major push for Singaporeans to visit the official website of the government is to keep abreast of the issues currently going on in the government, since the website shows updates on the ongoing political and bureaucratic issues. From this point of view, Singaporeans in general are curious on matters that are being dealt by their government, and how far their government has achieved intended outcomes. In contrast, around 76% of the respondents in Jakarta chose “wanting to know more about the vice-governor” as the primary motivation in visiting official websites and accounts. This survey was conducted in 2014, the year when Basuki Tjahja Purnama (Ahok) was presiding as Jakarta vice-governor—he gained fame for being very offensive in fighting corruption in the city, with stories frequently circulating in social media. The second most popular objective to visit government website is to monitor governments’ policies, supporting the hypothesis that social media usage by government positively correlates with transparency. As a communication platform between the government and citizens, official websites have the power to change or sway citizens’ perception toward the former. However, the level of social media and official website accessed by the citizens do not reflect their overall perception toward the government. More than 70% of Seoul respondents believe that they do not have any changes in perception toward the government after they visit and utilize the government’s official channels. The same applies for Singapore respondents, where the majority do not feel any changes in perception toward the government at all. Not only that, Singaporeans

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display a lack of motivation to participate in policy changes. This disinterest toward being involved in the general policy process indicates there must be something to be evaluated about the practice of democracy in the country. On the Freedom House index, Singapore’s democracy and internet freedom index is placed in a relatively low position with 51/100 score, categorizing it under the Partly Free category (Freedom House 2019). In contrast, 96% of the Jakarta respondents agree that social media, presumably the YouTube channel, contribute to the change in their perception to a more positive manner in viewing the government. Previous research on this topic has shown that forms of e-governance that are more commonly used to transmit detailed information such as egovernment websites are less effective at improving relationships between citizens and their government, resulting in an insignificant or negative association with respondents’ levels of satisfaction (Porumbescu 2016). This explains why majority of Seoul and Singapore respondents do not experience a change in perception after visiting websites, while Jakarta citizens whose main platform is YouTube feel the opposite. Official government websites are not the sole platform of political communication. The survey also pictures the media preferred by most respondents when they want to look for the government’s activities and policymaking. For example, citizens in Seoul prefer online news portals to look for information related to government activities and current policies. From this, it can be seen that the majority of people find the sources provided by their own government is less interesting or relatable to their own selves, thus diverging them from the option of choosing the official government website. The government’s Facebook and Twitter page is also not among the preferred media to assess government updates, with each chosen only by 10% and 9% respondents respectively. Similarly, in the case of Singapore, most of the respondents (63.37%) prefer to check the information through online news portals instead of government websites. Defying this trend, most of the respondents in Jakarta agree that the government’s YouTube channel is the easiest and fastest way to gather information about governance in the city. As discussed earlier, YouTube is becoming a major tool for the city’s government in promoting openness and transparency while at the same time inviting citizens to contribute to the making and implementation of the city’s policies. The YouTube channel leaves behind other media, including conventional media, possibly due to the former’s visualization aspect. The intention

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to utilize YouTube channel is justified by looking at the citizens’ highest preference in Jakarta. This is in line with a study which found that municipal governments have focused on using external social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, instead of developing its own tools or applications (Criado et al. 2017). In general, the three cities show similar patterns in which their citizens are willing to access the government’s online platforms to monitor and update activities or programs by their government or political leaders. More interestingly, websites and Twitter are among the most preferred media to make reports, complaints, or input to the government in all cities. These facts show that social media is crucial and preferable in facilitating political communication from the citizens to their government. This is supported by findings from prior study such as Porumbescu (2017b) that suggests how transparency may lead citizens to be more critical to the way their government carries out various functions and simultaneously give signal to the citizens that their public sector is making earnest attempts to advance citizens’ interests. Meanwhile, for the purposes of conveying complaints and aspirations, the majority of Seoul respondents prefer to visit the government’s website directly, or making use of the available complaint portal. Most Singaporeans, in contrast, feel that emailing to the government directly is the preferable method while visiting the government complaint portal comes in second. Participating in a demonstration and writing personal blogs, which include complaint-related posts, are shown to be the least preferable. The topic of bottom-up communication patterns from the society to the government in these three cities is interesting, as each of the cities uncovers their own unique stories due to the contexts of social composition, social-political culture, political behavior, issues, and the history of city governance. In Jakarta, the effective use of social media as a tool in addressing issues to be then formalized in the policy process is interesting, reflected from the success of their YouTube platform. In Seoul where sophisticated features of the official websites are utilized, participation is shown to be relatively low. In Seoul’s case, further studies on political behaviors and turbulences over the past years can possibly explain better the so-called anomaly derived from the survey results. Singapore also requires further study on the relation between the government and the people, especially with regards to the preservation of low freedom of the press.

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Despite these contextual differences, the development of internet infrastructure should always be prioritized to support the current achievements. However, advanced infrastructure development with the lack of enthusiasm of participating citizens might harm the overall democratization. In the case of Jakarta, where Internet infrastructure is not as good as Seoul and Singapore, the fact that citizens highly participate in the policy process is a unique case that could be explored more in future research. The Top-Down Aspect After examining the ways and methods used by citizens to connect and to communicate with the government, there should also be a further explanation of the ways the government enhances accountability and transparency and how two-way communication is forged between the citizens and the government in a pattern of communication that might create equal opportunity for both to contribute to the policy process. Whether or not there is a responsive behavior from both sides is crucial to determine the relations of social media use and the public policy process in these three cities. First, regarding citizens’ perception of their government’s motivation in using social media. Most of the respondents in Seoul (56%) believe that it is to gather inputs and feedbacks, followed by “encourage the public to participate in government’s programs and activities.” Although most (54%) also agree that social media can be utilized as a formal and institutionalized platform of official communication media between the government and the society in the future, they are not sure about the role of social media as an integral part of the policymaking process. The respondents in Seoul are found to be uncertain whether the inputs gathered through social media will really be considered in the policy process later. Nonetheless, in the case of Seoul, a study by Eom et al. (2018) found that public official’s role as a “bridging hub” in social media network contributes to enhancing government responsiveness by solving the problems of communication and information asymmetry between citizens and the local government. Similar to Seoul, in Singapore glimpses of citizen ignorance and pessimism is discovered from the survey. The government has practically developed the Internet infrastructure and social media strategy to inform the public on their performance and policies. However, the respondents in general have not yet felt a significant two-way communication

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being fostered between them and the government: most respondents believe that the government uses social media as a communication tool, however, they seem to be critical about whether this form of communication is being considered in the policymaking process. Only about 20% of the respondents agree and are well aware of the significant contributions they have given to the policy process by interacting with the government through online communication. A similar perception is also projected in the question about whether they think their comments might encourage the government to re-evaluate and change their policy, where most respondents admit that they are not sure. Another similar perception is also captured when the respondents are asked whether the use of social media by the government might be formalized as an official way to communicate with people, showing a pessimistic sentiment of the respondents (and arguably Singaporeans in general) about the relationship between themselves and the government. Jakarta shows a slightly different pattern from the other two cities. Citizens who have visited and watched the videos on the government’s YouTube channel seem to agree that their comments and contribution to the official channel might be classified as a contribution to the overall policymaking process. Respondents in Jakarta also show a strong interest to include public opinion expressed in social media into government’s policymaking processes. Most respondents (64%) strongly agree that social media accounts should be institutionalized and regulated to establish a better communication channel. Prior study found that in the case of Jakarta government’s YouTube usage, citizens with YouTube accounts demonstrated high-level political interests in the local government’s attempts to make government more open and transparent for the public, and that they tend to do cross-sharing of YouTube contents, suggesting that society was digitally interacting to support the government’s use of YouTube to improve government responsiveness (Reddick et al. 2017). This optimism underlines the need to reform the contemporary policymaking process in Jakarta, and give indications that citizens’ perception toward the government’s commitment can be influenced by what the governments choose to show through social media platforms. Among the many social media channels that the government has utilized, there is still skepticism from respondents representing general citizens of these cities. Singaporeans do not believe that the government seriously considers their voices on social media. However, people in Seoul are slightly more optimistic. They believe social media usage by their

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government is intended to gather inputs from the public and encourage public participation. Around 23% (compared to 20% in Singapore) of the respondents believe that the government values their voices in the policy process. On the other hand, netizens in Jakarta seem to be much more satisfied with what their government provide, believing that their voices through social media would be considered a source of policymaking. Despite the variety of other social aspects, respondents in all cities seem to agree on the value of social media as a formal communication channel to enhance transparency and accountability. They also argue that the importance of social media usage is even greater than the use of television or newspaper to publish the government’s agendas. Overall, the cases show that social media is also able to facilitate top-down political communication, especially when the government institutionalizes it as a formal channel in the policymaking process, proving the point that digital technologies offer opportunities for engaging in a wide range of civically oriented activities, each of which contributes to democratic engagement (Koc-Michalska & Lilleker 2017).

Social Media in Boosting Transparency Social media might also drive the openness of information that could be used by academicians to understand internal policymaking process and urban politics in general, employed as an alternative to the conventional ones. Yasseri and Bright (2013), for example, predicted the Iranian presidential election in 2013 by observing the number of Wikipedia viewers of each candidate during the campaign period, whose prediction was surprisingly close to the real result. This method aims mainly to understand the real-time analysis of public opinion and to recommend the appropriate policy to respond to the situation. Jakarta is feasible to be used as a case for this section: When Purnama replaced Jokowi’s position, in addition to impromptu visits, he also wanted to do e-field visit or use technology to monitor problems. Currently, the significantly decreasing intensity of the field visit is reflected in the YouTube analysis. By analyzing the videos posted on their channel, we can recognize what issues are prioritized by the government. In the case of Jakarta, for example, YouTube uploads show that field visit is no longer a priority approach, only contributing 2% of the total government’s activities. Analyzing YouTube channel is also beneficial to picture the relationship between the Governor and Vice Governor, the activities

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or responsibilities held by each of them, an issue especially interesting in the case of Jakarta. When Jokowi and Purnama lead Jakarta, their positions tended to be equal in the policymaking process. Whereas Djarot Syaifullah Hidayat, as the then-new Vice Governor, was not as popular nor as strategically significant in position as Purnama. In terms of the number of videos, the Governor contributes 79% of the total YouTube videos visitors of the government, Vice Governor contributes 20%, and others contribute 1%. More than 1.3 million viewers watched the Governor’s videos, and less than 200,000 viewers watched the Vice Governor’s videos during the second period of observation. In general, these facts reflect the pattern of the relation between the Governor and the Vice Governor, how they distribute power and responsibility, as well as the government’s priority programs, as validated by interviewees.

E-Government to Improve Transparency and Accountability The assumptions that have been built in this chapter are as follows: first, social media are able to integrate citizens in collaborative and deliberative political activity that leads to cooperation and partnership. Second, communication facilitated by social media depicts the changing interactions between the government and the public, where communication in the two-way scheme is facilitated. Third, both the government and the public have more space, chance, and opportunity to interact and control one another. Fourth, this new scheme may contribute to improving the government’s accountability, transparency, openness, monitoring activity, and anti-corruption movements. Fifth, at a practical level, social media can be utilized to publicize the political process; allow public to “talk back” if the government does not meet expected public needs; facilitate a faster spread of information; provide direct online contact; open the opportunity to articulate interest and deliver suggestion to the government; and serve tracking system to know the government’s progress. The cases in the three cities show that social media cannot facilitate all aspects of accountability. Referring to the World Bank (2016), accountability has two aspects, namely “answerability” and “enforcement.” Answerability refers to the obligation of the government to provide information about their decisions and enforcement means the institution responsible for accountability can sanction the offending party or remedy the contravening behavior. In this sense, social media can only

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facilitate answerability. In regard to the enforcement, social media can only lend its support from the technical side, such as facilitating the report and complain so that certain regulations can be enforced, and so on. Transparency is very close to the concept of answerability in accountability. Social media, again, might be able to enlarge the access to information and to facilitate people’s understanding of the decision-making process, in an online, real-time, quick, easy, cheap, and efficient way. Madsen (2009) calls this phenomenon “dynamic transparency” because it promotes a more dynamic process in making sure of government transparency, for example, by providing user-feedback category in which government can collect citizens’ view on mostly web- and mobile-based systems (Peixoto & Fox 2016). It can be contrasted with conventional transparency which is facilitated by non-online tools; for example, people accessing budget and financial reports manually, and so on. Therefore, social media can only enhance accountability in the “answerability” aspect and promote transparency in the “dynamic” aspect (see Fig. 7.1). This area reflects the place where flow of information, virtual openness, and complaint handling system are facilitated very well. On the other hand, social media has a limited capacity to support the enforcement aspect of accountability and conventional transparency. The role discussed above covers two aspects of accountability and transparency, namely bottom-up and top-down. The examination of the bottom-up aspect clearly shows that the public in the three cities believe that social media opens a wider opportunity to access information about the government and wider access to articulate their voices. Citizens use some governmental social media platforms to access information and monitor policy. It is something that is very limited when conventional media alone existed in the past. However, the limited number of people accessing social media owned by the government and lack of motivation to participate in policy process still become the biggest challenge. With regard to the top-down aspect, the three cities’ governments have used social media to communicate with their citizens and believe that this step is a part of their effort to enhance transparency and accountability. However, they differ in how they use social media. The nuance of accountability and transparency in all aspects can be clearly seen in Jakarta, but the nuance of “a more top-down flow of information” is found in Singapore and Seoul. Therefore, the nature of “two-ways communication” embedded in social media sometimes cannot be clearly identified simply because the government does not respond to the public’s

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Accountability

Transparency

Answerability Enforcement Dynamic Transparency

Conventional Transparency

Social Media

Fig. 7.1 The role of social media in enhancing accountability and transparency (Source authors)

comments, inputs, or complaints. Factors that may contribute to this situation may include infrastructural gap, communication deficits, and also the inadequacy of institutional and or political will from the government to utilize the ICT-based inputs and solutions (Asamoah 2019). The three-cities study also serves as an example that paying close attention to social media platform activity patterns provide us with the knowledge of citizens-government interaction, such as to what extent these interactions happen and how effective they are to disseminate information related to public policies. Additionally, transparency through social media might also benefit academicians. If the government uses social media intensively, academicians may be able to use the data from these platforms to analyze urban politics using big data analysis. The data can also benefit to support the citizen-centered governance in

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decision-making process (Ju et al. 2018). This chapter has shown some examples where data from social media can be utilized to understand various government aspects such as the relations between city leaders, priority programs, political debates, and so on. As shown by the case of Jakarta and its analysis of government’s YouTube channel content, we can employ social media analytics to pinpoint the popularity of public figures, which might be beneficial for the government to strategize their policymaking. Again, these cases are examples of how social media analysis might be employed to understand urban politics and public policy in this contemporary era better. Last but not least, the examination of the two directions above complements the discussion provided by Margetts et al. (2017) that pays attention to the role of social media in influencing communication among citizens. This chapter shows that in the context of political communication, social media might also influence the relations between the government and its citizens, and vice versa. In this context, social media become a tool of communication that is able to complement or even replace conventional ways such as visitation to the government office or phone call. However, it is important to acknowledge the challenges and impacts of ICT-based interventions, such as citizens’ accessibility toward the technology that may hinder the utilization of ICT-based initiatives run by the government, for example the case of Jakarta where we see a lack of utilization of advanced technologies in comparison to Seoul and Singapore despite high interest in political e-participation. In sum, there are significant proofs that show how social media might influence both horizontal and vertical political communication and enhance government accountability and transparency.

Social Media and Public Policy: Implication for Teaching in Policymaking This chapter concludes that there are significant relations between the utilization of social media and public policy in terms of its transparency and accountability. Empirical evidence drawn from this study suggests that well-maintained government’s social media channels are needed to promote interactions and communications within these channels. A topdown approach that is being delivered by the three city governments mainly focused on the aspect of information dissemination but lacking in the aspect of answerability and enforcement. This finding also calls for

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relevant public policy training and teaching in the utilization of the digital method for both policymakers and policy analysts. Teaching and training in this area would not only include cover aspects around social media management and communications but also how to utilize and analyze data from these channels for better decision-making, embedding the digital method as a tool and also digital data as a source for policy research. For policy students, findings from the study further highlight the importance of embedding the digital method as a tool and digital data as a source for policy research. It has accentuated the value of social media data for policy research, especially in analyzing public sentiments and opinions. This approach brings a technical consequence for university and education institutions to equip students with infrastructure to assist and facilitate students in applying this unconventional method of acquiring and analyzing digital data. On the other hand, practitioners or policymakers may also train specific divisions to maintain and monitor its social media platforms while also actively utilizing its findings to evaluate and formulate the government’s activities and policies. These research findings have been discussed in several activities and discussions conducted in the Center for Digital Society (CfDS) of Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta. The Center has since then conducted research related to social media utilization by governments and public figures. Assessing sentiment analysis toward specific policy can be drawn from citizens’ responses, the use of hashtags and words. These inputs can be very beneficial for public figures and government officials to implement their policies or use the inputs to tailor their future strategies and responses toward specific issues. Expected learning outcomes that can be envisaged from teaching and application of these materials are as follows: (1) ability to conduct policy research by utilizing digital publicly available data, (2) ability to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of policy analytical tools and sources, (3) ability to appraise and evaluate applied theoretical and empirical work in policy research, and (4) ability to apply skills and knowledge to analyze policy issues and formulate policy recommendations. All of these learning outcomes shall establish a set of critical thinking skills and are valuable

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to provide learners with the ability to perform and offer problem-solving solutions in real-world policymaking. In the era of rapid development of the Internet and social media, along with the high level of adoption by the public, especially in Asia, knowledge and understanding on social media and its value for policy theory and practice are also expected to develop more rigorously. Many aspects of this theme are yet to be explored within this area—for example, the utilization of digital data for predictive policing programs among other predictive analytics is still underdeveloped. Government programs on social media monitoring and management also need to explore the potential of these data to formulate future policy and for better public communication. Aside from understanding government and citizens relationship, the potential of social media in establishing citizen collective action forms another important area with important research implications for public policymaking. In conclusion, insights from this study signal the need for collaborative actions by the government, academia, and research communities to elaborate a framework in which could align empirical evidence and theoretical works around public policy and social media for better formulation of government policies and regulation in the future.

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PART II

Selected Cases of Pedagogical Approaches and Strategies

CHAPTER 8

Bridging a North–South Epistemological Divide in Public Policy Research and Education Vishal Narain

Introduction In this chapter, I draw upon the experiences of teaching a course “Fundamentals of Public Policy Analysis” to mid-career civil servants at the Post Graduate Diploma Program in Public Policy and Management at MDI, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India. The larger goals of the program have been to professionalize the civil services, equipping participants with the necessary skills, tools, theories and concepts relevant to public policy making and service delivery. In this chapter I draw on experiences and learnings from teaching the course, emphasizing aspects of pedagogy while sharing some examples of course learnings in terms of knowledge creation. This involved the application of theories, concepts

V. Narain (B) Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_8

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and ideas informing the public policy literature developed in the west to the Indian context. The target group in this program, by way of eligibility, has spent a minimum of seven years in the civil services and the background is predominantly in engineering and the natural sciences. Thus, there are two important pedagogical challenges: first, demystifying social science jargon and terminology and presenting it in a way that is amenable to being understood by the participants, and second, examining the relevance of the public policy literature—that has developed predominantly in the west—to a southern context. Teaching such a course generates opportunities for knowledge creation, as it helps address the larger academic question: is the public policy literature developed in the west relevant to explain policy processes in the global South ? Teaching this course provides an opportunity to bridge a north–south epistemological divide in creating knowledge about public policy processes. Teaching this course to subsequent batches from 2006 onwards resulted in the publishing of a book “Public Policy: a view from the South (2018, Cambridge University Press)”. When I started teaching this course in 2006, there was a dearth of material suited to the Indian (or more generally, global south) context. The library was full of books on public policy: however, they were written almost entirely by Western authors. The course on Public Policy Analysis was divided into five modules: conceptual groundwork for the analysis of public policy, models of policy processes, analyzing processes of policy making, analyzing processes of policy implementation and public policy monitoring and evaluation. The literature on these subjects was diverse and scattered through a number of books, journals and working papers. Given the background of the participants and a perceived need for reading material suited to their background and experience, I started writing lecture notes, or background papers on each of these topics, compiling the literature and comparing and contrasting different conceptual and theoretical perspectives on public policy processes and institutions. One background paper was produced for each module. These were distributed to the course participants over successive batches with a view to introduce them to the public policy literature. An overarching question guiding the course delivery was: as a practicing civil servant, how do you relate to the diverse theories, concepts and models of the policy process? Which of these do you find relevant in explaining your engagement with public policy? With each successive batch, the background papers were

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further elaborated and expanded with insights and examples from course delivery and class discussions and eventually took the form of the book “Public policy: a view from the South (Narain 2018)”; each background paper having been developed into a full chapter. The larger point that needs emphasis here is that teaching public policy to practicing civil servants in the global south provides an opportunity to create knowledge on public policy processes there, a body of work that is relatively underdeveloped. Thus pedagogy is not only an end in itself, but a means to an end, a larger goal of research and knowledge creation. The overarching element of the pedagogy was to introduce participants to concepts, theories and models of the policy process and draw upon their experience to substantiate this with examples. The classroom thus became a research laboratory. This is an important element of pedagogy also because practicing civil servants cannot be treated as raw, young students but need to be shown respect for their years of experience and learning. An important distinction throughout the course delivery was on the prescriptive and process dimensions of public policy (Hogwood and Gunn 1984): the reason for this emphasis was that practicing civil servants often come to such a program in the hope that they will be able to “make better policies” on their return. Thus their initial interest is in the prescriptive dimensions of public policy. Initial expectations from the course show some interest in learning some kind of recipe for good policy making, almost as if there is some kind of quick fix, or a set of ingredients. Starting from this premise, it takes some effort to convince them that “new and better policies” are not necessarily the answer. The recourse to the notion of “law as scape goat and magic charm (von Benda Beckmann 1989)” is useful here: that new policies are necessarily the solution to development problems needs to be challenged. While there is no dearth of policy prescriptions and think tanks in the country, a far deeper understanding of public policy processes is necessary both to uncover the implementation gaps as well as to understand the politics of policy. New policies do not necessarily guarantee better solutions. Rather than move mechanically from one policy to the next in the hope that it would provide a better solution, it is as important to understand why existing policies have failed or how implementation gaps in existing policies can be addressed and removed. Thus a focus of the course on understanding policy processes is emphasized early on in the course delivery.

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The overall, general response of the participants to this course, especially the pedagogy adopted, is that it provides a framework for articulating their experiences. For instance, one response was “we have always seen this happening in our professional lives, but now we know what it is called”. Thus the course gives them a language in which to describe their experiences, and a structured way to share them. Another broad impact of this pedagogy is that they start approaching public policy issues with more mature lenses. A newspaper is not any longer read casually, but with an eye to analyze the nature of the policy process. As one participant put it at the beginning of the course, the course helps them analyze “why policies are the way they are”. What is the nature of the policy process and why? Is policy change incremental? Is it a case of social experiment? Do policy makers have the resources and time to make rational policy choices? The following section of this chapter draws on some of the important concepts of the public policy literature as developed in the west and discusses their relevance in the Indian context.

Stories that Shape Public Policy A narrative is a story with a moral or message that provides a convincing basis for policy makers to legitimize policy choices. It assumes a certain causality, that creates imperatives for policy makers to make certain choices. Narratives are important in that they present what the problem is out there. Narratives thus present the framing of the problem, which subsequently becomes the basis for the policy choices made by policy makers. The problem with narratives, however, arises when they come to be seen as a blueprint, representing a one size fits all, a universal solution to public policy problems (Roe 1991). While introducing the concept of a narrative to course participants, several analogies of a “moral with a story” are useful. Aesop’s fables, Panchatantra tales and jataka tales provide good parallel examples and analogies. The concept of the narrative presents to the participants a new way of presenting their understanding of a development issue. For instance, in the course of a discussion on community-based organizations in the course on institutions and development (another course taught by me to the same group), a participant said, “there is a narrative that civil society organizations are taking the place of the state… this narrative needs to be challenged”.

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In the Indian context, the concept of a narrative has been very relevant to explain the persistence of the water crisis. The dominant framing of the water crisis has been that of a physical one; it is presented to be a problem that needs physical measures of resolution, this has culminated in solutions leaning on the side of supply augmentation: building water diversion structures, enhancing efforts at watershed management, water conservation and recharge (Shah and Narain 2019). This view of the water crisis sees it as a uniform problem, spread evenly across social groups and periods of time. An alternative narrative, that would see the water crisis as a social and institutional problem, causing water to be unevenly located across space and time, has barely captured the policy makers’ attention. One of the reasons that water continues to be scarce for some and plenty for others is that the social and institutional causes of the water crises are not understood as being significant in the shaping of the crisis. A longer-term solution to the problem would require that we see the water crisis differently, as a social and institutional one, rather than a purely physical one. At the same time, there has been a big debate in India on the proposal for the inter-linking of rivers. This proposal is based on the narrative that some parts of India have surplus water, while some parts have a water deficit. The water crisis can only be solved on a sustainable basis if water is transferred from the water surplus to the water deficit areas. This has been the narrative constituting a legitimization of the proposal for interlinking of major river basins. However, this proposal did not catch up as much because of powerful counter narratives. These narratives revolve around the displacement of affected populations, the loss of biodiversity, the submergence of large areas and the “small is beautiful” paradigm that emphasizes local level, decentralized, community-driven solutions to the water crisis. Why certain narratives do not get translated into actual policy choices could be because of powerful counter-narratives. In terms of pedagogy, the concept of narratives is first introduced in class. Participants are then explained the role of narratives in shaping the policy process, in terms of how policy choice can be seen to be a struggle among competing narratives. Participants are then asked to break into smaller groups and to reflect on how the dominant narratives in their respective organizations—or sectors of public service delivery—have evolved over time, and what influence this has had over policy choices made in their respective organizations or cadres of service. Thus the

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pedagogy emphasizes an element of conceptual learning as well as selfreflection. This approach helps participants internalize the concept of a narrative and apply it to their professional lives and work settings. As against a narrative, a discourse is a wider concept and refers to ensembles of ideas, thoughts and values that re-enforce certain ways of thinking, establishing the supremacy of specific ways of intervening to address policy problems (Grillo 1997). In terms of driving the relevance of this concept to participants in a way that catches their imagination, several relevant examples are presented. In India, for example, the neoliberal discourse was instrumental in the 1990s, as much as it was in other parts of the global south in creating space for private enterprise. Another pedagogical approach that is tried in class to explain new words and expressions is an etymological one, where some concepts and phrases are explained using root words. Thus while explaining the meaning and significance of the neo-liberal discourse, the use of the root word “liber” is explained, as signifying freedom, giving rise to related expressions and words such as neo-liberalism and liberalization, processes and terms that participants can easily identify with. It is also important to make participants see the relationship between narratives and discourses. A discourse represents a wider philosophy while narratives represent specific blueprints for action. In terms of explaining the difference to participants, it always helps to split them into group work to think of specific examples of the relationship between narratives and discourses. Thus, as a result of such group exercise, the class inferred that narratives can be seen to be embedded in discourses. One could deconstruct a discourse to unravel the composite narratives. These narratives together constitute a discourse. Together these narratives reinforce specific ways of intervening to address policy problems. For instance, the neo-liberal discourse, that establishes the supremacy of the free market to address development and public policy issues, could be deconstructed into its composite narratives: one that asserts the efficiency of markets as a means of resource allocation and the second that asserts the weakness of the state. The former has a clear element of causality in it: when commodities are traded freely in the market through the forces of demand and supply, an equilibrium price will emerge, that results in the establishment of a price that conveys the scarcity value of the resource and leads to its efficient allocation. The narrative of the bad state sees the state as corrupt, inefficient and weak. Together these narratives reinforce the supremacy of the free market and lead to the introduction

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of policies for the establishment and promotion of private enterprise. The economic liberalization of the 1990s in India, as noted above, stands out as the most convincing example of the role of narratives and discourses in shaping policy choices. That example also illustrates the role of the global context of policy making, and the role of international donors and funders. This is an example that strikes a chord with the participants instantly, coming from the civil services, and all too familiar with the abolition of the license raj.

Theorizing About Policy Change in the Global South In two respective modules of the course, one on processes of policy making and one on processes of policy implementation, an effort is made to explain concepts that describe the evolution of policy choices as well as the processes through which policies are implemented. While discussing concepts that explain the genesis of policy, attention is paid to three broad factors: the global context of policy making, the role of individuals in the policy process and the role of ideas in the policy processes. The discussion of the global context of policy making is split into two broad heads: namely, the rise of the good governance agenda and the globalization of governance. The globalization of governance is seen to be captured by such trends as the rising role of international institutions like the World Bank and IMF, the rising stature of transnational NGOs and transnational corporations, the rapid spread of the internet and emergence of international forums and summits that create imperatives for Governments to act in specific ways to co-ordinate the actions of large numbers of nation states. Narratives and discourses are seen to represent the role of ideas in shaping the policy process. Change agents, epistemic communities and policy networks represent the groups of people that influence the policy process. Together, these concepts are used to develop a theory of policy change in the global south. Namely, that within a broad context of the globalization of governance and the good governance agenda, policy change is shaped by the dominant narratives and discourses of the time: these narratives and discourses are brought into the policy process by epistemic communities, change agents and policy networks. Pedagogically, this is accomplished by means of an exercise in which these words “Good governance agenda”, “Globalization of governance”, “narrative”, “discourse”, “change agent”, “epistemic community” and “policy network”

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are scribbled on the board. In small groups, the participants are asked to resolve the jigsaw puzzle of policy change in the global south with an overarching question: can we join the dots to explain policy change in the global south?

Theorizing About Policy Choice and Change The module of the course on models of public policy processes deals essentially with two aspects of models; first, models of policy choice and second, models of policy processes. While referring to models of policy processes, the discussion revolves around representations of the policy process. The focus here is on the linear model of the policy process, that is the most widely used and understood model of the policy process, which is then contrasted with the interactive model of the policy process (Thomas and Grindle 1990). The question then that is posed to the class is which of the two is a better model of the policy process? Here it needs emphasis that since the word “model” here is meant to be a representation, the goodness or badness of a model needs to be judged against a backdrop of how well it represents the policy process in the real world. As one participant put it, in the context of the global south, the linear model of the policy process is “far too sanitized” a model and presents the policy process to be unrealistically neat and clean, and as a highly apolitical process, which it is not. An observation that often emerges in the context of the global south is that in the case of some policies the policy-making process could be a linear one, while the policy implementation process is an interactive one. For India, a consensus among participants tends to be that in the early phases of planned economic development, the policy process was a linear one. Over the years, however, policy processes have become more interactive, as more space has been created for different stakeholders to articulate and protect their interests in the policy process. An important point here is that as frameworks for analyzing the policy process, both the linear and interactive models of the policy process provide different entry points and raise different questions about what constitutes the policy process. In terms of pedagogy, participants are asked to pick up a specific policy in their sector of working and present the questions that they would ask of themselves to analyze the policy process using first the linear model, and then an interactive model. The question then that engages the class is whether there is a dichotomy between the linear and interactive models of the policy process as frameworks for analysis, or

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can they be combined. The answer, as provided by Mooij (2003), is that insights from the two models can indeed be combined. We could work within the broad framework of the linear model of the policy process, deconstructing the policy process into the various steps or stages and then unpacking at each stage the role of politics; how different actors strategize to protect their interests and how that affects the policy outcomes. Each of the steps in the linear model of the policy process could be seen as a political one. Agenda setting, for instance, could be highly political and so would policy monitoring and evaluation. From models of the policy process, attention shifts to models of policy choice. The repertoire here covers rationalism, and the alternatives postulated of incrementalism, policy as social experiment, policy as interactive learning and the mixed scanning model. The basic premises of these models of policy choice are explained in class and followed up with a question: is there a one size fits all model? Does one model uniformly describe how policy choices are made in India? The task of policy choice is explained as one of narrowing down a policy space, or of choosing from among a number of policy options. In terms of pedagogy, policy space can be a difficult concept to explain in class. This is accomplished by giving an analogy of walking into a restaurant and ordering food from a menu card. Just as the menu card provides options to order, so does a policy space contain different choices for policy makers to choose from. When we choose from a menu card in a restaurant, a number of factors influence our choice, such as our budget, taste preferences, dietary and health considerations and religious or other restrictions. Each of these factors leads to the elimination of certain choices and the narrowing down of choices to one finally made. Similarly, the question of policy choice is about studying the factors that cause policy makers to choose or narrow down to a specific choice, while eliminating others. While rationalism is an ideal to live up to, participants in the course of discussions with a near unanimous consensus insist that in practice policy making is seldom rational. On account of the human and financial resources required for a rational policy choice to be made, rationalism is more of an ideal to live up to. In practice, incrementalism, policy as social experiment or the mixed scanning model serve as better representations of the process of policy choice. However, the nature of the sector determines which of these models of policy choice hold good. In cases where there is a large number of stakeholders and stakes are high or where drastic policy changes can be difficult to accept or assimilate

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or lead to a serious uproar and backlash, incrementalism is seen in the process of policy choice. This is why, for instance, we hear of rolling back subsidies or incremental increases in the price of petrol or diesel. In Delhi, the introduction of the odd–even scheme, which allows vehicles with odd and even number endings to ply on the road on alternate days in order to curb pollution emissions from vehicles, is presented as a good example of a policy as social experiment. A pedagogical point here is that participants way too often confuse between the “interactive model of the policy process” and “policy as interactive learning”. It takes some extra effort to drive home this difference. Another point is working around participants’ articulation of models. It is common for participants to talk about “which model is followed”; it takes some effort to explain that these are not models “to be followed”; rather the correct way to talk about these models is in terms of “which model is a good representation of the policy process in the real world”. In other words, how good or bad a model is depends on to what extent it represents the policy process in the real world.

What Happens When Policies Come to the Ground? While discussing processes of policy implementation, one concept that always catches the fancy of the participants is that of the street level bureaucracy. The concept was coined by Lipsky in his 1980 book of the same name, and refers to that segment of the bureaucracy which is engaged in public service delivery and has a direct interface with recipients of public service (Lipsky 1980). This is explained in class with reference to several examples in the Indian context such as of the paatkar 1 i, polio did 2 i, anganwad 3 i worker, and policeman. Pedagogically, this concept is dealt with by introducing the concept, contrasting Lipsky’s notion of street-level bureaucracy with Max Weber’s conceptualization of the bureaucracy as an “ideal type” and then again, getting participants in a reflective mood with an exercise: recall from your own association with public service delivery how you deviated from your prescribed role 1 A paatkari is a person who releases water in large—scale canal irrigation systems by lifting a locked gate. 2 Polio didi is a health worker who administers polio drops, often moving door-step to door-step. ‘Didi’ is the Hindi word for sister. 3 Anganwadi is a primary school at the village level in India.

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because of the constraints of time, energy and resources and what impacts that had on public service delivery. This exercise then serves as a good example of how the actual choices made by street-level bureaucrats result in an implementation gap in public policy. An important reason for why intended policy outcomes are not accomplished is that on account of the constraints of time, energy and resources, bureaucrats at the ground level devise their own shortcuts. Thus the policy “out there” is not the same as the policy that leaves the corridors of policy making. Two other conceptual lenses are used to explain processes of policy implementation; namely, the lens of the interactive model of the policy process (Thomas and Grindle 1990) and the conceptual lens of legal pluralism (Von Benda Beckmann 1989; Vanderlinden 1989). The interactive model of the policy process draws attention to the role of different actors in the policy process: it is about the exercise of power among various actors, both in terms of the processes of policy making, as well as the processes of policy implementation. It is in essence about the politics of policy. Pedagogically, this is accomplished by contrasting the interactive model of the policy process with the linear one and then getting participants to work in small groups to identify who the major actors or stakeholders are in their respective sectors of policy making, what their interests in the policy process are and what strategies they devise to protect their interest in the policy process. Participants are then encouraged to reflect on the consequence of this process for the policy outcomes and how the politics of policy result in a gap between the intended and actual outcomes of public policy. The premise of legal pluralism refers to the existence of multiple normative systems with regard to the same set of activities (Vanderlinden 1989; von Benda Beckmann 1989). While legal pluralism has been widely used as a lens to study the plurality of institutions as well as the bases of their legitimacy, its potential as a conceptual lens to study policy implementation has been scarcely recognized. From this perspective, it can be seen to represent a conceptual lens that studies the interface of state law and policy with non-statutory institutions and how the former get diluted through the interface with the latter. Pedagogically this represents a big challenge for mid-career civil servants who are trained to think of law as that which is framed and enforced by the institutions of the state and who understand their role in terms of protecting and safeguarding it. However, its relevance becomes convincing when they reflect on their own experiences with enforcing state law. My favorite example is that which came

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from a participant from the Indian Police Service who wanted to ban the sale of a drug in the district where he was posted, but could not do so as it was offered to the Gods as part of a religious ceremony and offering. Pedagogically, this is presented to the participants as a dilemma: which should prevail, the law of the state or the law of the Gods? Likewise, in the controversial Sabarimala issue that has hogged much media limelight in India recently, menstruating women have been prevented from entering the temple on grounds that they are impure and the resident deity is a bachelor: however, the Supreme Court and several activist groups have taken a position counter to this. In practice, the verdict of the Supreme Court has been difficult to enforce. The practical question that is posed to the participants of the program then is: what is the relevance of a concept of legal pluralism to a practicing civil servant? Does this mean that they need to accept all legal systems other than the state as sacrosanct? Far from that. What this means is that they challenge their own assumptions about legal and normative systems other than those legitimized by the state as being illegal; rather that they consider the legitimacy of non-statutory systems as well and take cognizance of their existence and significance in so far as it affects the enforcement of state law or the implementation of public policy. What is required is a maturity to understand the significance of normative systems outside state law in the functioning of public service delivery as well as an ability, where possible, to anticipate how state law and policy will articulate with other normative systems when they come to the ground. The policy “out there” is different from the policy as framed in the corridors of policy making, and this difference is shaped in large part by the interface of state law and policy with other normative systems.

Doing This won’t Get You There: Differentiating Between Policy Outputs and Outcomes A subject that evokes enormous interest while talking about public policy monitoring and evaluation is the distinction between policy outputs and outcomes. Policy outputs are the tangible deliverables of a policy process (they are what the public policy hands out), while outcomes are the impacts of the policy. While talking about public policy evaluation, it can be misleading to focus only on the outputs, to the neglect of policy outcomes. Most participants contend that in the evaluation of public policy, policy outputs receive disproportionate attention. This is

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for obvious reasons, namely, that outputs are measurable, outcomes have a time lag; there can be challenges of attribution in assessing outcomes and finally, outputs are good for garnering immediate visibility and political mileage. Several examples abound in the Indian context: hand pumps being installed to bring water sources closer to homes to reduce women’s drudgery in water collection, but actually increasing the volume of water that women carry on the heads (Narain 2014); toilets being constructed in houses to prevent open defecation (O’Reilly 2010), but not being used and the debate about whether India’s mid-day meal scheme should provide a packet of biscuits to children or a cooked meal of lentils and rice. Both a packet of biscuits as well as a plate of lentils and rice represent policy outputs (they are the deliverables of a public program), but with different outcomes in terms of the impact on the nutritional status of school going children. The question then that is posed to the participants is what is the relevance of this distinction between policy outputs and outcomes for the practice of public service delivery? What discussion points to is that government agencies and departments typically concern themselves with policy outputs. The effectiveness of policies can be increased with some examination of the conditions that cause the translation of policy outputs to outcomes. Policy makers need to address themselves specifically to the question: what further enabling conditions need to be met in order for the policy outputs to be translated into policy outcomes? In other words, we emphasize in class that planning the implementation process needs to be part of the policy-making process, rather than seeing policy making and implementation as distinct stages in the policy process. This ties in very well with the weaknesses of the linear model of the policy process.

Perspectives on Institutional Analyses In turn this brings us to a discussion of institutions—the rules, norms, practices and codes of conduct that structure human interaction in society. While assessing the impact of teaching the course on public policy analysis, participants often assert that the discussion of institutions is an eye-opener. That institutions pervade all aspects of human existence, and have a bearing on all aspects of public policy making and implementation, but are seldom thought about in processes of policy making. In fact, one participant pointed out that institutions have existed in society

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even way before the state came into being. While talking about the role of institutions in society, several aspects are emphasized, cutting across disciplines: their role in reducing transaction costs, shaping access to resources, structuring society, mediating environment demographic relationships and generating incentives for individual and group behavior (Mearns 1995; Mehta 2005: North 1990: Giddens 1984; Ostrom 1992, 1996). Different perspectives on analyzing institutions are emphasized; legal pluralism, new institutional economics and socio-technical perspectives. These are seen as presenting different ways of looking at institutions and understanding why they are important. Seen as being of great relevance particularly is a socio-technical perspective on institutions, that emphasizes the relationships between technology and society. With its epistemological roots in the paradigm of the social construction of technology, three ideas are emphasized: namely, technology has social requirements for use, technology is socially constructed and technology has social effects (Kloezen and Mollinga 1992). Discussions on this paradigm generate several interesting observations and points of relevance from an applied, public policy perspective: namely, that technological interventions to succeed need to be embedded in societal institutions; and technological reform to be effective needs to be accompanied by institutional reform. This perspective also provides an entry point to understanding the relationship between technologies and societal institutions as gender. A classic example that drives home this point is that the construction of toilets needs to be seen as a gendered intervention, and not just as a technical one. In her work in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, O’Reilly (2010) demonstrated that even though subsidies for toilets were given in the name of women, decisions about where to locate them in the household were vested with men. Toilets came to be located in the courtyards of the homes, that over looked the streets and bye lanes. The objectives of securing the privacy of women stood defeated, and women continued the practice of open defecation. While examining the relevance of new institutionalist and legal pluralist perspectives on institutions for policy making, a point that surfaces is that the former has been more influential in shaping the prescriptive dimensions of public policy, while the latter is more useful in studying what happens when policies come to the ground (Narain 2018). The new institutionalist premise that institutions serve as a source of incentives that influence individual and group behavior has been the basis of institutional reform in much of the global south (“craft institutions to the

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get the incentives right”) (Ostrom 1990, 1992). On the other hand, one of the reasons why much of this institutional design has not had an intended impact is that in practice, the “crafted institutions” interface with other institutions on the ground. Legal pluralism challenges the premise of “an institutional structure serving as a source of incentives structuring human behavior and interaction” by a counter narrative, namely, that an individual stands at the convergence of multiple regulatory orders and normative systems. Pedagogically this is accomplished by explaining the basic tenets of the different approaches to institutional analyses, explaining their genesis and the epistemological orientation of their proponents and discussing their relevance for processes of policy making and implementation.

Conclusion: Lessons for Pedagogy in Public Policy Education for Mid-Career Civil Servants While reflecting on the pedagogy for teaching this course to mid-career civil servants, the following points stand out. Broadly, elements of the pedagogy are inspired by the premise that participants have a back ground in engineering and the natural sciences and that while they need an exposure to concepts and theories, their approach needs to be more pragmatic and applied. This creates a need to demystify the social sciences and public policy literature. Social scientists write predominantly for academic peers, and the large number of readings and papers that constitute reading material for participants are way too heavy. This creates an enormous responsibility for course instructors to demystify the course material and present it in a form that is digestible and more application oriented. The background papers referred to in earlier sections of this chapter were written to fulfill that need. Excessive engagement with theories, conceptual lenses and frameworks can be demotivating and discouraging for them, unless they are able to internalize the concepts and ideas and figure out how to relate them to the work place and to their professional life. This is not in any way to undermine the value of these concepts and theories, rather to underscore that internalization and application is more relevant for them, than empty theorization. A counter view that civil servants need only practical examples and cases and no introduction to concepts also needs to be challenged. Concepts are important for civil servants as they provide new ways

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of thinking, they open up the mind to a range of possibilities not earlier thought about. At the same time, pedagogy for this group needs to be built on an element of cross learning. Cross-learning in class serves two purposes. First, it augments the teaching resources of the class beyond those of the faculty. Thus, it constitutes supplementary “course material”. Second, cross-learning, through group work, serves to break the ice and encourages internalization, self-reflection and application. Cross-learning brings in greater diversity in the classroom experience. This is particularly relevant, for instance, while discussing gendered outcomes of policies, where male and female participants respond in different ways. This also brings in different sectoral perspectives. It helps us understand what the same concept means in the context of different sectors. The concept of common pool resources, for instance, is experienced very differently by a civil servant from the Indian Forestry Service than by a civil servant from the Indian Telecommunication Service. The concept of open access or state property, while used widely in the context of such natural resources as land, water or forests, generates much debate and discussion when used in the context of a natural resource like spectrum. Another way in which cross-learning outcomes are experienced is through group and individual assignments. As an end-term submission, participants are expected to pick up a case of public policy formation and implementation and make a presentation to the group. This widens the pool of experiences available to the class and allows some comparison of policy processes across sectors. Finally, the experience in teaching this course suggests that the classroom as laboratory can be a useful pedagogical tool to bridge the North–South epistemological divide. Public policy concepts, theories and frameworks as taught in the public policy literature have developed in the global north. Exposing public policy students of the global south to them creates opportunities to reflect on them and examine their relevance in the global south. It provides a structured way of articulating their experiences. It provides a framework for new knowledge creation: it gives an opportunity to integrate other frameworks and conceptual lenses relevant to policy change in the global south with the mainstream literature on public policy processes. Proof of the pudding is in the eating, as borne out by the experience of Narain (2018).

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References Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. University of California Press. Grillo, R. 1997. Discourses of development: The view from anthropology. Introduction. In Discourses of development: Anthropological perspectives, eds. R. Grillo, and R.L. Stirrat, 299. Oxford: Oxford International Publications. Hogwood, B.W., and L.A. Gunn. 1984. Policy analysis for the real world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kloezen, W., and P.P. Mollinga. 1992. Opening closed gates: Recognizing the social nature of irrigation artifacts. In Irrigators and engineers, eds. G. Diemer, and J. Slabbers, 53–64. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers. Lipsky, M. 1980. Street level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Mearns, R. 1995. Institutions in natural resource management: Access to and control over woodfuel in East Africa. In People and environment in Africa, ed. T. Binns, 103–114. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Mehta, L. 2005. The politics and poetics of water: Naturalising water scarcity in western India. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman. Mooij, J. 2003. Smart governance? Politics in the policy process in Andhra Pradesh, India. Working Paper 228. London: Overseas Development Institute. Narain, V. 2014. Shifting the focus from women to gender relations: Assessing the impacts of water supply interventions in the Morni–Shiwalik hills of northwest India. Mountain Research and Development 34(3): 208–213. Narain, V. 2018. Public policy: A view from the South. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. North, D.C. 1990. Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Reilly, K. 2010. Combining sanitation and women’s participation in water supply: An example from Rajasthan. Development in Practice 20(1): 45–56. Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, E. 1992. Crafting institutions for self-governing irrigation systems. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies. Ostrom, E. 1996. Incentives, rules of the game and development. Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, 207–223. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Roe, E.M. 1991. Development narratives, or making the best of blueprint development. World Development 19: 287–300. Shah, S.H., and V. Narain. 2019. Re-framing India’s “water crisis”: An institutions and entitlements perspective. Geoforum 101: 76–79. Thomas, J.W., and M.S. Grindle. 1990. After the decision: Implementing policy reforms in developing countries. World Development 18: 1163–1181.

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Vanderlinden, J. 1989. Return to legal pluralism: Twenty years later. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 28: 149–159. Von Benda Beckmann, F. 1989. Scape-goat and magic charm: Law in development theory and practice. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 28: 129–149.

CHAPTER 9

Potential of a Serious game in Teaching and Learning of Systems Thinking and System Dynamics in a Multi-disciplinary Classroom Navarun Varma and Wei Liu

Introduction Teaching and learning are conditioned by a combination of epistemic beliefs, institutions, classroom practices, and culture. Following Kantian philosophy—“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without

N. Varma (B) Residential College 4, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] W. Liu International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_9

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concepts are blind”, teaching is more of a reflexive praxis rather than a strategic mean for an optimal end. Thus, within this belief, pedagogy is an action-oriented inquiry of students’ interpretation of experiences for continuous improvement of teaching and learning (Procee, 2006; Miettinen, 2000). The authors practice this big picture in all their classroom and out-of-classroom teaching by selecting and customizing pedagogies fit for content and evaluating their potential for existing context as well as replication. Residential College 4 (RC4) within University Town College Program (UTCP) of National University of Singapore (NUS) specializes in building capability of students from different disciplines (e.g., engineering, faculty of arts and social sciences, law, medicine) in systems thinking and system dynamics modeling. Systems thinking, as also explained in Chapter 5 of this book, is a methodology for exploring and managing complex feedback systems which often emerge in business, public policy issues, ecosystems and environmental processes. Systems thinking (ST) uses mapping tools to explore causality chains and feedback loop relationships across multiple disciplines, worldviews, sectors and problem domains. System dynamics (SD) quantifies the relationships identified through ST by identifying accumulations, rates of such de/accumulations and factors influencing the rates which help in understanding the multiple dependencies across the mapped elements. The process of transforming ST-based maps to SD models uses equations which can be based on theory as well as empirical data. Both ST and SD can lead to policy insights while SD can help in experimenting with what-if scenarios and policy tests. ST and SD are iterative processes and are heuristics for discovering interconnectedness of real-world issues, explore reasons for unintended consequences of decision-making rather than produce deterministic models (Sterman, 2000). One of the modules in the college—Thinking in Systems: Disaster Resilience for Year 1 undergraduate students have intended learning outcomes focusing on acquiring ST and SD skills along with ability to brainstorm on issues of disaster resilience. ST is introduced with examples of failures, from household decision-making to public policy level, attributed to lack of ST. This creates opportunity for students to grasp importance of key systems concepts of “feedback, self-organization, endogenous change and delay” (Meadows, 2008; Sterman, 2000). Like

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many other modules of the college, this module too aims to help students to start thinking about problem solving and policy through Sterman’s (2000) five steps of system dynamics modeling: (1) Articulation: one can start from a problem articulation phase by identifying key variables of a problem narrative and a trend of the evolution of the problem in time, (2) Conceptualization: articulation is followed by conceptualization which is a hypothesis generation phase for the problem using skills of ST. A diagraming tool called causal loop diagram is used to identify the cause-effect-feedback loop structure among the variables responsible for the problem trend, (3) Model formulation: causal loop diagrams can then be used to formulate a system dynamics model with stocks and flows illustrating accumulations and rates of de/accumulation respectively. Further, numerical values for parameters and algebraic equations for variables which are responsible for influencing the rates, can be estimated using available data and/or logically derived, (4) Model testing: these models are then compared with real-world problem situation through a process of structural (comparison of relationships with established theory and empirical evidence) and/or behavioral (comparison of model simulation with real-world problem behavior over time using visualization and/or statistical means) model validation, and (5) Policy testing and evaluation: The validated models are then tested to identify policy leverages, design strategies and explore policy impact. Model conceptualizationformulation-testing and evaluation can not only provide insights for policy making but can also broaden one’s articulation of the problem situation. Such iteration across the five steps often encourages reflection, new questions as well as integration of nuances beyond one’s worldview (Sterman, 2000). Students also learn the use of a software package named Vensim PLE version available from Ventana systems which helps in simulation of the model and its testing. Scaffolding for students’ skill development includes continuous experimentation with case studies from Asia so that students can connect to the cases, feel passionate for problem-solving and learn to apply skills and draw insights for policy. Teaching ST and SD for public policy needs experimentation and partnerships with students for problem-based learning (Mathews and Jones, 2008; Hmelo-Silver, 2004). However, ST as an approach is not new to civilizations of Asia, but that has not led us away from disasters. Thus, learners not only need interesting cases for application of the methodology but also experiences to reflect on the opportunities and challenges

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of application, to relate attributes of systems and resilience and have deeper insights for policy. Our students need to experience the existence of plurality of goals in a society, dilemmas of decision-making and uncertainty associated with twenty-first century “wicked problems” (Kumlein and Coughlan, 2018). In order to put theory into practice, the module utilizes a serious game called “Forest at risk” in the classroom so that students engage with problem, not only as modelers outside a system but as part of system’s problem itself. This chapter first explores serious games as active learning tool, then introduces the online serious game Forest at risk (Liu et al., 2017) and finally explains its use and effectiveness in teaching and learning of ST and SD in NUS-RC4 Module-Thinking in Systems-Disaster Resilience.

Experiential Learning and Serious Games Experiential learning is believed to be “created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb and Kolb, 2013). It has shifted the Lecturer’s authoritative role to one of a facilitator of peer-to-peer relationships, communication and collaboration. This participatory paradigm of education legitimizes the use of games as active learning tools for skill development in navigating through social-ecological challenges like disasters (Mochizuki, 2021; Solinska et al., 2018). Active learning methods retain the element of fun associated with games as positive emotions have found to be useful in creating memorable experiences. Such experiences facilitate effortless as well as serendipitous learning. Active learning methods not only have around 70% higher retention potential of content among adult learners who generally have weak attention spans but can also lead to meaningful learning and constructive application of prior knowledge for problem-solving (Solinska et al., 2018). Games for education include a range of methods and practices including computer simulations, board games, modeling, virtual reality, role-plays and debriefing (Gouveia et al., 2011; Solinska et al., 2018). For this chapter, we will bundle all such methods as serious games and will be referring to the potential of an online serious game called Forest at risk which is part of Gamepedia collection (available at games4sustainability.org) developed by the Centre for Systems Solutions. Serious games create rule bound simulation-based environments where players engage in conflict, surprises, negotiations-all of which result in quantifiable outcome. In the quasi-real environments created by serious

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games, student can work within and across groups, have partial information of an evolving situation, apply critical thinking, negotiate for shared understanding and develop a more holistic perception of any issue. These serious games have an edge over more conventional education games like quizzes or rolling a die as they involve simulation of reality yet create a safe space for learners to experience outcomes of their own decisions, explore multiple cause-effect relations, negotiate, learn from trial and error of strategies and enrich understanding of many aspects of real life (Gouveia et al., 2011; Solinska et al., 2018; Mochizuki, 2021).

Tragedy of Commons and Forest at Risk Common pool resources or the commons are resources like the oceans, world’s fish stock, global climate and even the Internet which is shared among more than one party. Open access or limited access can lead to over-exploitation of such resources owing to inherent selfish human behavior leading to collapse of entire resource systems-a phenomenon called Tragedy of commons. In 1968, Garrett Harding’s words—“Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all” was influential for policy research and practice (Battersby, 2017). The solution from Harding was to surrender human agency to higher authority who would decide rules for equitable resource appropriation. However, later work on irrigation systems from Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues from Indiana University pointed that Harding’s perspective maybe an extreme and there can be occasions where individuals sharing a resource can collectively work for a common good by designing their own rules, monitoring and penalties (Battersby, 2017; Ostrom, 2007). In many cases, common resources like forests, farms and fisheries of global south and north, communities have devised sustainable strategies through use of traditional knowledge. State interventions, like exclusive zones or technological interventions, have actually disturbed many contexts that favored co-existence and mutual dependencies among human communities and ecosystems. There is rich work on social and ecological regime shifts and capacity of humans to learn and evolve rules and norms as policies and environment change (Holling and Gunderson, 2002). C. S. Holling and his collaborators’ work on social-ecological resilience explains a general theory of multi-scale dynamics of such

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coupled human–environment systems, risk of unanticipated and surprising outcomes due to uncertainties of environment and human exchanges and failure of “control and command” paradigm of policy. They recommend an “adaptive governance” paradigm for policy which needs participation and learning across stakeholders which can range from resource users, regulators to academia. An iterative learning process between hypothesis generation, negotiations among stakeholders for shared understanding in situations of ambiguity, and policy as a tool for exploring impact of decision-making is embedded in this governance paradigm. Such a paradigm does not believe in designing strategies for optimal use of resources and practice of exclusionary policies. Rather, the paradigm acknowledges existence of plurality i.e., multiple framings in society and uncertainties of environmental changes, uses science to design toolkits for participatory scenario exercises with scope for negotiation and social learning (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2007; Folke et al., 2005). “Forest at risk” is a digital serious game, available online from games4sustainability.org, which is designed on the above theoretical foundations. Players are embedded in a context where they take the role of a forest-dependent community and share a pool of hundred trees which regenerate at a constant rate. The players have to harvest trees for income tokens but at the same time conserve the trees to avert a collapse of the forest. Players also experience surprise events from two hazards—earthquake and floods whose magnitude and frequency remain uncertain. Players do not have a-priori information about the magnitude and frequency of the hazard(s). They become aware of the magnitude, round (in 10-rounds of the game) of the occurence, type of hazard(s) (earthquake, flood or both) and the disaster impact only after the occurrence of the disaster event. Different levels of forest cover (i.e. number of existing trees) provide varying levels of protection from these hazards, and players can also invest their income tokens in building infrastructures to protect themselves from disaster loss. Players anticipate the future impact of these disasters in the midst of ambiguity of others’ choices and uncertainty of hazards. They perceive risks differently and make their choices for investment for protection accordingly. Disasters can lead to losses in community’s finance, forest cover and even cause damages to the disaster protection infrastructures. Players are given an opportunity for community meetings to share their understanding of the evolving situation and also design rules for harvesting and/or investments. In order to deter free-riders and encourage compliance to rules framed in such meetings,

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players can also choose to use the monitoring, sanctioning and positive or negative reputation application within the game (https://games4sus tainability.org/gamepedia/forest-at-risk/). The game has the ability to involve the players emotionally as the destiny of the community and the forest lies with them. Players can choose between competition and cooperation and their decisions will shape the state of the forest. They experience the impacts of their decisions and get an opportunity to test their strategies to reduce vulnerabilities and work toward resilience (Gallopin, 2006). This digital multi-player game can be played online with remote participants or in face-to-face seminars and workshops, and incorporates debriefing as an essential element. It is found that such multi-player settings are useful as a pedagogical tool for their “social dimension” i.e., the collective effort facilitates relationships, engages players in negotiations and conflict resolution, sharing of information and experiences, all of which are essential for disaster planning (Solinska et al., 2018).

Pedagogizing Forest at Risk for Students’ Learning of ST and SD Gamification and game-based pedagogies are established in ST and SD education and also found useful to create simulation-based classroom learning environments for disaster education (Cunico et al., 2021; Tasantab et al., 2021). “Forest at risk” can be used for education at different levels to create awareness of complexity associated with disaster resilience (Liu et al., 2017), an important intended learning outcome (ILO) of the Disaster Resilience Module in RC4. In the thirteen-week semester, the module first introduces ST and SD through engaging students in the exploration of failures in simple cases of decision making which helps not only in introducing key concepts but also in establishing the need of the systems perspective. In the mid-weeks of the semester, the module uses ST and SD to explore nuances of risk and vulnerability concepts of disaster studies like “actual and perceived risk, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity” (Gallopin, 2006) through case studies on flood, conflict, epidemic and environmental collapse. These formative weeks are crucial for students to build skills in modeling and at the same time becoming aware of the key concepts of disaster studies. In the concluding three weeks, the module introduces Forest at risk to create a simulation-based learning environment for students to experience

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the complex relations within and across the concepts of disaster studies and systems perspective. The game is a safe space where students face the dilemma of maximizing their individual benefit through tree harvestingvs-managing trees for reducing vulnerability to a collapse situation. They also have to invest in disaster protection infrastructure depending on their risk perception based on incomplete information. The pedagogical steps1 (see Table 9.1) include pre and post-game activities, consultations with the lecturer, submissions of formative and summative assessments followed by one-to-one chats with every student of each project team.

Evidence of Learning from Analysis of Students’ Formative and Summative Assessments Data is used with students’ consent to analyze their learning from pre and post-game students’ work from both semesters of academic year 2019– 2020. Analysis of students’ work from pre-and-post game activities in both semesters of the academic year helps in proposing the potential of the pedagogy in both face-to-face classroom environment as well as virtual (zoom seminar) environment. The analysis categorizes students’ learning into three broad categories: 1) development of nuanced understanding of tragedy of commons through ST; 2) development of skills to conceptualize and formulate SD model of social-ecological issue; and 3) ability to test model and reflect on policy and unpack adaptive governance. Category 1: Development of Nuanced Understanding of Tragedy of Commons Through ST From the analysis of pre and post-game activities (see Table 9.1), it is seen that half of the project teams found the game outcome unexpected as compared to their prior anticipation. Such unexpected outcome helped in creating curiosity to explore the plausible reasons of-what worked and what did not.

1 The pedagogical steps are not part of the game but designed by the authors. The game is played with students of RC4 since AY 17–18 but the use of samples of previous students’ work was added in AY 19–20. An official peer-review report for this module helped the first author to make this modification.

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Table 9.1 Pedagogical steps using Forest at risk Phases of the Game

Steps

Activity

Pre-Game

1

The context of the game and its instructions are explained by the lecturer. Project teams set their goals which can range from maximizing individual team income, conservation of forest to equity in distribution of wealth in community. Based on the goal setting, they anticipate trajectory of forest cover and average community wealth for 10 rounds of the game and illustrate it in a graphical form They hypothesize the factors and their relationships that may drive the anticipated trends i.e., the graphs of forest size and community income from Step 1. Then each team applies ST to explore and conceptualize their “mental model” i.e., problem framing as a conceptual systems model or causal loop diagram As a formative assessment, each project teams presents their anticipation as graphs and causal loop diagrams Project teams play the 10 rounds of the game without community meetings at first. They get information on forest cover, income, impact of disasters and strategies like monitoring and sanctions every round from the game algorithm. However, they decide on harvesting trees and/or investments with an uncertainty of magnitude and frequency of disasters and others’ choices The game is paused in Round 3 and teams get an opportunity to send one representative to a community meeting. In this meeting, the representatives are invited to discuss on the evolving situation of the forest size and negotiate for rules for harvesting and/or investing. Such meetings are later held only on demand by the teams in the remaining seven rounds of the game

2

3 Game

4

5

(continued)

From Fig. 9.1, it can be seen that number of variables used for conceptualization of the problem context increased for all the student teams post-game in Semester 1 AY 19–20. From Fig. 9.2, it can be seen that number of feedback loop relationships identified among the variables also increased in 85.7% (12 out of 14) of the teams in the same semester. From Figs. 9.3 and 9.4, it is seen that apart from one case, number of variables as well as feedback loops identified either increased or stayed the same for all the thirteen project teams in Semester 2.

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Table 9.1 (continued) Phases of the Game

Steps

Activity

Post-Game

6

Project teams get an opportunity to modify their own “mental models” i.e., reflect and modify causal loop diagrams from Step1 As part of a summative assessment, teams use data generated in game and their post-game causal loop diagrams to formulate and test SD models and also reflect on strategies and goals Student teams consult with lecturer out of classroom and take guidance on use of quantitative data as well as their reflections for estimating parameters and forming equations. Samples of prior students’ work help in these consultations as students visualize the use of reflections i.e., qualitative information in quantifying relationships across variables

A further categorization of variables into social structure (e.g., sanctions, monitoring, income); environment (number of trees, regeneration, harvesting, etc.) and human agency (e.g., trust, policy compliance, greed to harvest, willingness to invest) reveals that majority of the teams in both semesters could identify human agency variables only post-game (see Fig. 9.5). Therefore, it is evident that students develop a more complex perspective of the linkages between tragedy of commons situation and disasters

Fig. 9.1 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization- Number of variables identified by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 1 AY 19–20

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Fig. 9.2 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization - Identification of feedback loops by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 1 AY 19–20

Fig. 9.3 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization- Number of variables identified by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 2 AY 19–20

after playing the game as majority could think of more variables and feedback loops after the game is played in both semesters. Moreover, majority of the teams could look beyond social structure and environment dimensions and identify role of human dimensions like trust, greed, compliance or willingness after playing the game. This indicates that they developed

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Fig. 9.4 Comparison of pre and post-game conceptualization - Identification of feedback loops by each project team during conceptualization in Semester 2 AY 19–20

Semester 1

Semester 2

Fig. 9.5 Human agency in pre and post-game conceptualization for both semesters of AY 19-20- Percentage of teams identifying at least 1 human agency variable

a more nuanced picture of the tragedy of commons phenomenon only after playing the game. Category 2: Development of Skills to Conceptualize and Formulate SD Model of Social-Ecological Issue It is important to note that the Step 6 of pedagogy (see Table 9.1) helps the lecturer to scaffold students’ learning to use and transform feedback loops from casual loop diagrams (ST) to simulation model

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stage (SD) i.e., understand and apply the endogenous change concept of SD (which means causes are contained within structure of the system rather than disturbances from outside the system). So in the context of the game, the behavior of the forest size or community income will be dependent on the relationships between the forces driving the choices of harvesting and investment and discrete events like occurrences of disasters or harvesting per round rather than solely on the events. Further, the students’ modeling work also gives an opportunity to the lecturer to understand whether students have tried to validate the model behavior i.e., in this case replicate the trend of forest size and/or community income from the game with their model simulation. It is equally important to ascertain whether this replication is achieved only by pushing the model towards a desired behavior with data of events and certain software functions or also taking into consideration some of the causeeffect-feedback loop relationships from their post-game conceptualization i.e. post-game modified causal loop diagrams. In the Semester 1, all teams managed feedback loops, in different ways and in varying numbers, in their SD models. Feedback loops in the SD models demonstrate that students could successfully transform causal loop diagram to model. From Fig. 9.6, it is evident that in three cases, number of feedbacks loops actually increased in modeling stage while in three other cases, number of feedback loops are same in diagram and model. From Fig. 9.7, it is evident that all teams managed feedback loops in their SD models in the Semester 2. The one case which did not identify any feedback loops in pre- and post-game causal loop diagram could identify a feedback loop in the SD modeling stage. Thus all project teams, from both semesters, understood the role of feedback loop relationships as all SD models had feedback loops, some retained from conceptualization while some others emerged during model formulation. Majority of the project teams could achieve appropriate model validation i.e. they have not only successfully replicated the game trends (forest size and community income) with their model simulation but also applied the endogenous concept of SD (see Table 9.2). The teams who have appropriately validated their model behavior have made sense of the qualitative and quantitative data to estimate parameter values and equations for variables. Besides using data, they have applied the endogenous concept which means the simulation behaviour of their models depended on the cause-effect-feedback relationships, some which were transformed from post-game causal loop diagram while others emerged in model formulation stage. Except for one project team in Semester 2, rest all could atleast

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Table 9.2 Comparison of Model validation Type of model validation achieved

Semester 1

Semester 2

Attempted Model Validation—Students have understood the need for their simulation models to replicate a data trend for model behavior validation but still there is a gap in understanding of the endogenous concept of SD (i.e. causes of behavior are in structure of system and not just external triggers) Appropriate Model Validation—Students not only used qualitative and quantitative data but also used some of the already conceptualized post-game cause-effect-feedback relationships and also some newly emerged while model formulation i.e. they understood and used the endogenous concept

42.9% of teams (6 out of 14)

30.7% (4 out of 13)

57.1% of teams (8 out of 14)

61.5% of teams (8 out of 13)

attempt model validation (see Table 9.2) i.e. they have replicated the game trend and understood the need of validation of model behaviour. But there remains a gap in application of the endogenous concept of SD as they have pushed the model to behave in a desired trajectory with data and software functions rather than the use of the post-game conceptualized or novel cause-effect-feedback loop structure. Thus, the pedagogical steps, especially the sixth step, helps in scaffolding SD skills and provide opportunity to the lecturer to evaluate students’ learning of essential steps of SD modeling.

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Fig. 9.6 Comparison between post-game conceptualization and model formulation- Number of feedback loops identified by each project team in Semester 1 AY 19–20

Fig. 9.7 Comparison between post-game conceptualization and model formulation- Number of feedback loops identified by each project team in Semester 2 AY 19–20

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Category 3—Ability to Test Model and Reflect on Policy and Unpack Adaptive Governance In this analysis, the term Adaptive rule will illustrate a range of strategies used and continuously modified by students’ teams during the game, for e.g., differential quotas to harvest and invest according to a team’s accumulated wealth and/ or size of community forest in different rounds of the game. It can be observed from Table 9.3 (see Serial number 1 in Table 9.3), that majority of the teams in both semesters negotiated for an adaptive rule during the game with mixed outcomes. Since, both free-riding and surprise events took place during the game, the teams did not always end up with anticipated outcomes of their negotiated strategy. This helps the lecturer to communicate the need of the principles of adaptive governance i.e., participation, collaboration and learning and modification of policies during post-game debrief and consultations (Solinska et al., 2018; Mochizuki et al., 2021). All teams, except 1, tested their models with same or different policy strategies as used in game (see Serial number 2 in Table 9.3). They also reflected on similarities and differences on policy impact in game and model. Thus, the modeling exercise (step 6 of pedagogical steps, Table 9.1) not only allowed students to test model with same policy strategies as used in the game (e.g. the adaptive rule as explained above) and reflect on outcomes, but also created opportunities to be creative and innovate strategies that connected to reality beyond the game. It can also be seen that only a minority of teams did not change their pre-game goal or reverted back to their pre-game goal after the entire exercise i.e., after completing the six steps of the pedagogy (see Serial number 3 in Table 9.3). Following Torbert’s triple loop learning framework for adult education (Nicolaides and McCallum, 2013), such reflections on goal setting which is beyond modification of policy frameworks and strategies indicate a deeper learning among participants in any social setting. The most common reflection points among the majority of student reports centered around—“early meetings for better communication and negotiations”, which is an important nuance of adaptive governance paradigm. Forest-at-risk can be effective in making the participants aware that a gap may arise between anticipated outcome during policy design and actual outcome after implementation. The six pedagogical steps using the game can create opportunities for students to explore this gap, innovate strategies and unpack key principles of adaptive governance like

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Table 9.3 Summary table of policy testing and reflection on adaptive management Serial number

Summary from strategies used in game, policy testing of SD models and reflections on goals and strategies

Semester 1

Semester 2

1

Negotiated for adaptive rule during game Tested models with strategies outside boundary of game Did not change goal or reverted back to original goal after entire exercise Changed goal and reflected on early “participation, negotiation, communication” for adaptive rule making

78.5% of teams (11 out of 14) 57.14% of teams (8 out of 14

61.5% of teams (8 out of 13) 30.7% of teams (4 out of 13

21.3% of teams (3 out of 14)

30.7% (4 out of 13)

50% of teams (7 out of 14)

69.2% of teams (9 out of 13)

2

3

4

“participation of community, negotiation, communication and iterative design of rules in response to uncertainty”.

Conclusion From all the three categories of learning, as explained in above analysis of students’ work, it is evident that the pedagogy is effective to achieve the learning outcomes of the Module related to acquiring capabilities of ST, SD and brainstorming on issues of disaster resilience. The pedagogy also targets one of the intended learning outcomes (ILO) of the larger NUS- general education program- UTCP of which RC4 is a part (ILO 3: -Holistic understanding of complex issues). The pedagogy illustrated here provides the opportunity to the lecturer as well as students2 to engage in a safe environment and achieve experiential 2 Testimonial from students’ feedback report—“… He made the module less overwhelming with the Forest Risk game where we learnt to apply our skills which were slightly stressful because of the unknown, but we learnt a lot through applying it in the final project.”

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learning. In this group work, students broadened their articulation and conceptualization of tragedy of commons situations by experiencing and exploring human dimensions (learning category 1), acquired capability to formulate and validate system dynamics models (learning category 2) and reflect on principles of adaptive governance for policy (learning category 3) i.e. followed and reflected through Sterman’s (2000) five steps of SD modelling: (1) problem articulation, (2) conceptualization, (3) model formulation, (4) model testing and (5) policy evaluation. The advantage of using serious games is that learners can observe the simulated impact of their own decisions, reflect on match and mismatch between anticipation and actual outcome and can further learn—“what worked and what didn’t”. However, as illustrated in this chapter, that any serious game needs to be embedded in a pedagogical strategy (e.g., six steps of Table 9.1) so that students can connect and apply prior knowledge. This study can be used to design rubric to evaluate students’ work in similar multi-and-interdisciplinary modules where games are used to make-sense from the existing plurality, integrate information from different sources and reflect on real-world policy issues. It will be interesting to also look at factors like the role of facilitator (in this case the lecturer), type of module, lesson plan of the module and sample size of students in impact of learning from this pedagogy in future research. Acknowledgements This chapter is part of the project “Measuring Learning Outcomes of University Town College Programme (UTCP) in Residential College 4 (RC4): Examining the Constructively Aligned Living-Learning Environments”, which is supported by “Teaching Enhancement Grant” (TEG) from Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL), National University of Singapore (NUS)”. The authors are thankful to all the students of academic year 19–20 of the NUS-RC4 module Thinking in systems: Disaster resilience for their consent to use data from their assignments.

References Battersby, Stephen. “Can humankind escape the tragedy of commons?” PNAS. News Feature (2017). Cunico, Giovanni, Erini Aivazidou, and Edoardo Mollona. “System dynamics gamification: A proposal for shared principles.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science (2021): 1–11.

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Folke, Carl, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg. “Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.” Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 30 (2005): 441– 473. Gallopín, Gilberto C. “Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity.” Global environmental change 16, no. 3 (2006): 293–303. Gouveia, David, Duarte Lopes, and Carlos Vaz De Carvalho. “Serious gaming for experiential learning.” In Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pp. T2G-1. IEEE, (2011). Hmelo-Silver, Cindy E. “Problem-based learning: What and how do students learn?.” Educational psychology review 16, no. 3 (2004): 235–266. Holling, Crawford S., and Lance H. Gunderson. “Resilience and adaptive cycles.” In: Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, 25–62 (2002). Kolb, Alice Y., and David A Kolb. “The Kolb learning style inventory 4.0: A comprehensive guide to the theory, psychometrics, research on validity and educational applications.” Philadelphia, PA: Hay Group (2013). Kumilen A C de Almeida, and Coughlan P. Wicked problems and how to solve them. The Conversation. (2018). Accessed online from: https://theconversat ion.com/wicked-problems-and-how-to-solve-them-100047 Liu, Wei, Piotr Magnuszewski, Yidan Yang, and Nan Chen. “Navigating Conservation-Development-Disaster Complexities in Social-Ecological Systems Using Role-play Serious Gaming.” (2017). Marcela, Brugnach, Art Dewulf, Claudia Pahl Wost, and Tharsi Taillieu. “Toward a Relational Concept of Uncertainty: about Knowing Too Little, Knowing Too Differently, and Accepting Not to Know.” Ecology and Society. 13, no. 2 (2008). Mathews, Leah G., and Andrew Jones. “Using systems thinking to improve interdisciplinary learning outcomes: Reflections of a pilot study in land economics.” Issues in Integrative Studies. 26 (2008): 73–104. Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, (2008). Miettinen, Reijo. “The concept of experiential learning and John Dewey’s theory of reflective thought and action.” International journal of lifelong education 19, no. 1 (2000): 54–72. Mochizuki, Junko, Piotr Magnuszewski, Michal Pajak, Karolina Krolikowska, Lukasz Jarzabek, and Michalina Kulakowska. “Simulation games as a catalyst for social learning: The case of the water-food-energy nexus game.” Global Environmental Change 66 (2021): 102204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glo envcha.2020.102204 Nicolaides, Aliki and David C. McCallum. “Inquiry in action for leadership in turbulent times: Exploring the connections between transformative learning

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and adaptive leadership”. Journal of Transformative Education 11, no. 4 (2013): 246–260. Ostrom, Elinor. “A diagnostic approach for going beyond panacea.”. PNAS 104, no. 39 (2007): 15181–15187. Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Jan Sendzimir, Paul Jeffrey, Jeoren Aerts, Ger Berkamp, and Katherine Cross. “Managing change toward adaptive water management through social learning.” Ecology and Society. 12, no. 2 (2007): 30. Procee, Henk. “Reflection in education: A Kantian epistemology.” Educational theory 56, no. 3 (2006): 237–253. Solinska-Nowak, Aleksandra, Piotr Magnuszewski, Margot Curl, Adam French, Adriana Keating, Junko Mochizuki, Wei Liu, Reinhard Mechler, Michalina Kulakowska, and Lukasz Jarzabek. “An overview of serious games for disaster risk management–Prospects and limitations for informing actions to arrest increasing risk.” International journal of disaster risk reduction 31 (2018): 1013–1029. Sterman, J. D. “Business Dynamics. Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world.” McGraw-Hill, Boston, (2000): 982. Tasantab, Jerry C, Gajendran Thyaparan, Owi Toinpre, and Raju Emmanuel. “Simulation-based learning in tertiary-level disaster risk management education: A class-room experiment.” International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment (2021).

CHAPTER 10

Learning About LERN (Land and EnviRonment Nexus): A Case Study of Effective Pedagogy for Out-Of-Classroom Teaching Lynette Yuen Ling Tan, Navarun Varma, and Naviyn Prabhu Balakrishnan Why Land-EnviRonment Nexus (LERN) for a Study Trip? The special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2019 brings the focus on land and land use both as a contributor and sink for greenhouse gas emissions. About 23% of human sources of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and other

L. Y. L. Tan (B) · N. Varma · N. P. Balakrishnan National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] N. Varma e-mail: [email protected] N. P. Balakrishnan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_10

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changes in land use like the clearing of forests for agriculture and infrastructure development. This is a significant percentage. The report further indicates that while land sequesters almost a third of all carbon dioxide emissions from human sources, it will be impossible to limit the rise in global temperature without transforming our means of food production, consumption and land use in the world (Levin and Parsons 2008). Scientists found that land temperatures increased 1.5°C (2.7°F) between 1850–1900 and 2006–2015 i.e. 75% more than the global average. The current trend of warming has already led to an increase in climate extreme events like forest fires, changes in rainfall patterns and heat waves which have the potential of irreversible environmental changes (Levin and Parsons 2008; Rockstrom et al. 2009). Although afforestation and reforestation can contribute the most for enhancing the carbon sink potential of land, scientists also emphasize the need to be mindful of trade-offs and unintentional consequences of policy strategies. For example, planting forests on natural grasslands could actually lower the amount of carbon stored in soil. Some interventions, like tree plantations and growing plants for bioenergy may lower emissions directly or indirectly, but can lead to irreversible changes to local livelihoods and sustenance farming, biodiversity and other ecosystem services important for managing water quantity and quality (Pearce 1998; Levin and Parsons 2008). Hence, it is very important to understand the local ecological as well as social factors driving land use and its changes and further its interlinkages with global environmental change processes, before designing development and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This motivated the Student Life team of the National University of Singapore (NUS)-Residential College 4 (RC4) to use the “Nexus”1 concept from the applied science of Systems Thinking (Laspidou et al. 2020) as a metaphor to design a study trip to the Indian Himalayan Region for students of different faculties (e.g., Engineering, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Business and so on) of NUS.

1 “…integrated approach in planning and management of resources, in order to address

the interconnected risks to water, energy, and food security, since each resource ‘security’ implies tradeoffs for the others. As natural resources are increasingly under pressure, interlinkages, synergies and tradeoffs among resources as well as their interactions with economy and livelihoods under climate change becomes increasingly evident” (Laspidou et al. 2020).

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Why LERN in Kumaon Range of Himalaya? One of the most complex landscapes of the world relevant to the nexus between land and the environment is the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region, also known as the water towers of Asia, being the source of the main rivers of the Asian continent like Indus, Ganga, Mekong and Brahmaputra. The South Asian countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, sharing this landscape have only 5% of the earth’s land area but have to feed one-fourth of the world’s population (Rasul and Sharma 2015). In most areas of the HKH, rapid population and economic growth have increased the demand for natural resources leading to their overexploitation and significant change in land use and land cover. Rapid economic growth in the region has altered the quantum as well as patterns of consumption and infrastructure development, further changing patterns of local livelihoods, property rights, migration, urbanization, waste management and above all human aspirations, all creating opportunities and challenges for land management (Sharma et al. 2019; Rasul and Sharma 2015). Per capita fossil fuel carbon dioxide emission from the HKH is onesixth of the global average, however, the region immensely suffers from the impact of climate change. Variability in patterns of rainfall and temperature are already affecting water availability, ecosystem services and agricultural production, and extreme weather is causing flash floods, landslides and debris flow. Climate change is likely to have serious effects in the next decades in the mountains of the HKH landscape. By 2050, mountain temperatures across the region are projected to increase beyond 2°C on average, and more at higher elevations. Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C, warming will likely be at least 0.3°C higher in the HKH. Mountain settlement communities are more vulnerable to climate change impacts as compared to ones in the plains. The mountains are still poor in terms of services from government like health, education, water and may also have issues of access to information, market and transport (Sharma et al. 2019). The Kumaon region of Western Himalaya in India within this HKH landscape is one such region which is undergoing rapid land use changes owing to a booming tourism industry. Cities and towns of this region are being increasingly studied in disciplines of human geography, environment studies and public policy to explore transitions of rural to peri-urban spaces, water scarcity, lake pollution and interestingly also the success of

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policy experiments (e.g., rejuvenation of springs through communitybased water harvesting). The region is famous in literature from the real-life experiences of British hunter and writer Jim Corbett. The landscape of the region has, however, witnessed important changes in recent years, especially in urban areas like Nainital and rural to peri-urban areas of Mukteshwar within the State of Uttarakhand in India. The region is socially heterogeneous, but the previous caste and class relations are fast changing with new claims over land resources from enterprises outside the region and increasing out-migration of males. Agriculture has been the main occupation of the local community and is predominantly rain fed. In recent years, however, there has been a change in the cropping pattern away from cereals and grains toward vegetables due to changes in weather patterns (Singh et al. 2020; Narain and Singh 2019; Kumar et al. 2019).

How Did We Learn About LERN in Kumaon? The selection of Kumaon as a possible location for our college’s study trip was facilitated through a collaboration with Dr. Ghazala Shahabuddin, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR) in Dehradun (Uttarakhand, India). CEDAR is a not-for-profit organization registered in 2006 and was established when a group of academics and development practitioners came together to bridge the gap between applied research (theory) and field-based interventions (practice). The gap is also one that surfaces in environmental policy where mismatches exist between worldview of policymakers and local realities, leading to problems of “fit” between rules and contexts further creating challenges in policy implementation (Sud et al. 2015). In particular, CEDAR focuses on conservation and the management of natural resources in the Western Himalaya of the Indian Himalayan region, with a core research competence in forestry, ecology and the social sciences (Centre for Ecology Development and Research [CEDAR] n.d.). We partnered with CEDAR in developing our study trip and finalized our visit to 3 distinct regions of the Kumaon described in the previous section, which are in varying stages of development—Jim Corbett National Park in the foothills of the Himalaya, the rural to peri-urban areas of Mukteshwar and the urban area of Nainital. Dr. Shahabuddin was instrumental in the early stages of planning, connecting us with key local experts who would assist us as we navigated issues relating to land use and the environment

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in the region. She also led talks at the college introducing students to the region in preparation for the trip. These talks were the foundation for sessions led by RC4’s faculty comprising the Student Life team and assigned readings of the areas to be visited.

What Did We Learn About LERN in Kumaon? With a focus on transdisciplinarity i.e. aiming toward a form of practice that crosses disciplinary knowledge (Varma and Hazarika, 2018); student learning on this study trip was itself predicated on an intersection of various contexts and pedagogical strategies. In addition to the content of policy issues linking land use and environmental change in the Kumaon, photovoice was used as a strategy to align student learning to RC4’s overall intended learning outcomes (ILOs) as a college. After an explanation of how the study trip is an integral part of living-learning communities (LLC) on which RC4 and its ILOs is based, the following section describes the various contexts and strategies and how photovoice facilitates as a methodology to integrate as well as form the basis of students’ deep learning and move toward a transdisciplinary practice. This conceptual model for transdisciplinary practice in this chapter is one predicated on D.J. Lang et al. (2012) who see the model as ideal for sustainability research. The study trip follows this transdisciplinary model in integrating two pathways to solve “real world problems”, particularly the second, where the first path is committed to finding new ways to solve these societal problems, and the second committed to interdisciplinary approaches, methods and general insights which are crucial to the practical path of solving these problems (p. 27). Since December 2010, NUS has initiated the Study Trips for Engagement and Enrichment (STEER) program which seeks to “familiarise students with the diverse socio-cultural-economic environments of new and fast-evolving regions through a mix of classroom-based learning and experiential site visits”. (NUS Global Relations Office [GRO] n.d.). The geographical range of these trips is expansive, including countries in Southeast Asia, Asia, Central America, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Southern Africa. The STEER program is one that lends itself well to students within an LLC and provides opportunities to meet, in particular, the learning outcomes of RC4. Programs organized for students in LLCs aim to “increase student and faculty interactions partly through the co-curricular program, emphasizing the intellectual

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connections between students and faculty (Gabelnick et al. 1990) and this is much the case for RC4. The co-curricular program forms a major component of best practice for LLCs (Inkelas and Weisman 2003; Inkelas 2016; Inkelas et al. 2018) with the most effective co-curricular activities necessarily tailored to the theme, goals and objectives of each unique program (Inkelas 2016). With faculty accompanying students and engaging student learning on a STEER trip over 14 days as well pre-trip and post-trip interactions there is great emphasis on intellectual connections between students, faculty and local community and experts. RC4, as an LLC, aims to meet 4 overarching intended learning outcomes (ILOs) for its undergraduate residents: ILO1-Effective communication skills and strong writing skills; ILO2-Inclusiveness and appreciation of cultural differences and diversity; ILO3-Holistic understanding of complex issues; ILO4-Community engagement and social awareness. These ILOs fall within the values that the college publicizes on its website (Residential College 4 [RC4] n.d.). RC4’s STEER Himalaya was one such co-curricular activity tailored to these learning outcomes, more specifically ILOs 2–4). While it was not the aim for students to achieve effective communication and writing skills on the trip, there were ample opportunities for them to share their views of the experiential learning they gained, and ILO1 was targeted via peer collaboration and oral presentations. In addition to these ILOs, our study trip facilitated the learning of key policy issues emerging from the interlinkages between land use and environmental change, with a particular emphasis on the gaps that exist between theory and practice. A participatory action research technique named photovoice was used along with scaffolding from faculty and context experts to target these learning outcomes in the study trip. O. Latz situates photovoice within a tradition of using photography for the purpose of inquiry, covering interfaces of the former with journalism (photojournalism), sociology (visual sociology), anthropology (visual anthropology) and psychology (auto-photography)—photovoice interfaces photography with participatory action research and seeks to “encourage participants to document elements of their lives within their own terms” (ILO1), “raise levels of critical consciousness within participants through critical dialogue” (ILO2 and ILO3) and “reach policy makers with project findings to catalyse positive change” (ILO4) (Wang and Burris 1997 quoted in O.

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Latz, p. 43). Apart from documenting experiences, presenting them and learning through dialogue and seminar-style discussions, the students were also building a foundation for change by contributing to awareness generation in the University on their return and also engaging themselves in a followup project with organizations in the study trip context. Thus, the STEER program, with use of the photovoice as a pedagogical approach, could achieve the 4 ILOs and pave a pathway for trans-disciplinary practice. The following section will explain the application of the pedagogy and illustrate evidences of learning for each ILO using John Bigg’s Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) as an analytical framework to evaluate the movement of learning from surface to deep.

How Did We Use Photovoice to Deepen Learning of LERN in Kumaon? O. Latz (2017) explains the implementation of photovoice as following eight steps: 1. Identifying the place, people and purpose of the study 2. Inviting individuals to participate in the project 3. Educating participants on how the project will unfold 4. Responding to questions and prompts 5. Documenting the experience through photography 6. Narrating the contents of photographs 7. Generating thematic strands within the narrations (may not involve participants directly) 8. Conversion of thematic strands into findings with practical implications These steps were carried out on the trip, with students engaged in the surfacing of some thematic strands through discussions on the trip itself as they became more adept at locating and understanding policy issues. We used SOLO taxonomy developed by Biggs (Biggs and Collis 1982; Biggs and Tang 2011) as a framework to analyze the depth of student learning. Biggs’ website (Biggs n.d.) clearly introduces the central tenets of his theory of learning, illustrated by a diagram (see Fig. 10.1) that visualizes the movement from surface to deep learning:

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Fig. 10.1 SOLO taxonomy

As learning progresses it becomes more complex. SOLO, which stands for the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess students’ work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they have got right. At first, we pick up only one or few aspects of the task (unistructural), then several aspects but they are unrelated (multistructural), then we learn how to integrate them into a whole (relational), and finally, we are able to generalise that whole to as yet untaught applications (extended abstract). The diagram (Biggs n.d.) lists verbs typical of each such level.

The students’ learning on the study trip developed and deepened from the unistructural understanding of policy issues related to land use and the environment, to the relational and approached the extended abstract levels. Two key interventions were applied as students moved from surface to deep learning on the study trip:

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1. Firstly, the question prompts that students were given for their photovoice activities grew in complexity, so that they were encouraged to display a more relational understanding of land and environment issues—in particular, the later question prompts invited students to consider policy impacts challenges of implementation while reflecting their observations. 2. Secondly, a comparison was made to students’ prior knowledge through the articles that were given to them with their experiential learning as students engaged with their surroundings. For this, the students’ photovoice activities were the foundation for on-site seminars where an explicit discussion of the articles was pitted against what they had learnt from these prior readings. The diagram below shows the movement of student learning on our STEER from surface to deep aligning to RC4’s ILOs as well as the strategy of photovoice (with the modification described in the paragraph above) and the seminars. The next section charts the process of operationalization of the 8 steps of photovoice and an analysis of the evidence from student presentations. The first 4 steps are already covered in preceding sections and hence not described in detail. Steps 7 and 8 are discussed towards the end of the chapter. Step1: Identifying the place, people and purpose of the study As described, partnership with CEDAR helped in step 1, which was identification of Kumaon and its inhabitants in the Western Himalaya of Indian Himalayan Region for the purpose of studying about the nexus of land and environment. Step 2: Inviting individuals to participate in the project This consisted of inviting undergraduates from RC4, NUS to participate—including these 25 undergraduates, three academic faculty and two administrative staff of the college making a total of 30 went on STEER Himalaya. The undergraduates, a mix of both genders with the majority Singaporeans hailed from various disciplines—the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Business, Science, Engineering and Medicine. Step 3: Educating participants on how the project will unfold This comprised of the workshops in collaboration with CEDAR which educated participants on how the project would unfold, including key

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policy issues related to land and environment in the Kumaon, photovoice, the itinerary and predicted weather (the weather proved to be vastly different from what was predicted) as well as what to expect in terms of food. The workshops were complemented by three readings related to the three main geographical areas to be visited. The readings were selected consciously by the faculty members to create a broad overview of policy issues of localities where were planned to be visited in Kumaon and were also representative of issues of entire Western Himalaya in India. Narain and Singh (2019) illustrated the transition of a place like Mukteshwar from rural to peri-urban and its influence on dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of gender and social groups in management of land and water (Narain and Singh, 2019). Singh et al. (2020) gave a rich picture of risks to water availability, access and quality in Himalayan cities like Nainital and inappropriate usage of groundwater as a coping capacity without an eye on long-terms trade-offs. Kumar et al. (2019) with a survey of 150 households around Jim Corbett National Park explained the role of ecosystem services from the forest area on livelihood security of communities around the reserved forest. Ideas such as Bourdieu’s concept of capital (2011) supported the theoretical foundation of these readings. The common thread connecting these 3 localities was the impact of the tourism sector in land use changes. The rationale for selecting these readings was to build existing knowledge among the students that would then be compared with their experience of the Himalaya and the field work they did during the trip itself. They were a key part in highlighting the gaps that exist between theory and practice within the context of policy, land use and environmental change as referred to earlier in the section on ILOs. Step 4 and 5: Responding to questions and prompts; documenting the experience through photography With this prior knowledge of the project and localities, students embarked on the study trip where through WhatsApp groups, questions and prompts were disseminated to them (step 4) for their photovoice documentation (either on their phones or personal cameras, and a camera belonging to the college)—step 5. Step 6: Narrating the contents of photographs For this step, we present the details from the application of photovoice in each of the 3 locations—Muktheshwar, Nainital and Jim Corbett i.e. the

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question prompts used and the changes in type of the questions for each locality, direct evidences of student learning and an analysis of depth of the learning achieved using SOLO taxonomy. On study trips, particularly those that are inaugural, there is an element of unpredictability. One of these was the unexpected snowfall in Mukteshwar (and electricity outage over 3 days leading to non-existent heating) which left quite a few of our students ill. We were, however, able to carry on with our design. There was a disruption for the section of our visit to Jim Corbett National Park, where a collision between our bus and another vehicle led to the truncated version of question prompts for the photovoice. Applying Photovoice in Mukteshwar The 6 question prompts for the Mukteshwar locality did not directly engage with theoretical aspects of interlinkages of land use and environment policy, instead they focussed on students’ observations about changes to land use and the environment. This introduced pertinent issues gradually and in a way that would not threaten the competence of students from any multidisciplinary classroom. Mukteshwar question prompts: 1. What do you see in this photograph? 2. How is the land being used here? 3. Do you see or hear about changes in the way the land is used? Have they evolved or changed in function? 4. Which era do you think these spaces represent? 5. What changes do you see in the ecosystem around you and what might be the causes/ driving factors for such changes? 6. How do you think these spaces will evolve in future? What, for example, are alternatives to agriculture? The photovoice presentations from students showed corresponding evidence that pointed to the lower levels of SOLO, where procedural understanding is being established, and the communication is mainly at the level of description. From the start, however, students were able to impress faculty with their ability to communicate these ideas through their presentations, and this was a catalyst for peer learning as students witnessed effective and less than effective communication skills

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(L01: effective communication skills). Two examples from our students’ photovoice presentations (see Figs. 10.2 and 10.3) show that the procedure of the strategy was easily comprehended, as well as early engagement with observations that will be critical in understanding linkages of land use and environment. They center around water and fuelwood resources. Here, the student simply describes what they are observing without much reflection, and the description proceeds without much depth of understanding (the focus is on “what” rather than “how” or “why”), and the tone is very tentative “may also be”, “probably continue”. Again, while the tone of the student in this extract is more assertive, and there is an attempt to link what is observed to “unsustainable practices”, the linkage is vague. At the level of description, however, this is informative and functions as the basis for further reflection. In order to consolidate the learning from the photovoice presentations, before moving to the next region, students attended a faculty-led seminar where their observations were placed in relation to the prior reading (step 3). This was found to be a very effective method of deepening learning,

Fig. 10.2 Example 1 of photovoice from Mukhteshwar “A step well is shown in the picture at the bottom of a gully. The well used to be a source of water for locals in the area, but it is obsolete due to the transport of water through modern infrastructure through the pipes. The well is no longer maintained because they don’t require it anymore. There may also be more wildlife in this area as the humans do not maintain it. It will most probably continue to be unmaintained.”

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Fig. 10.3 Example 2 of photovoice from Mukhteshwar “This picture shows a resin tap that we encountered on our walk. The resin is used to make turpentine, which can be sold for a high price. However, we noticed some taps along the walk were done on trees that did not have sufficient trunk diameters (illegal tapping). Furthermore, the cuts on the fire-resistant bark of the pine trees have allowed fires to spread up to the canopy level of the forest, where otherwise they would have remained closer to the forest floor. This is an example of unsustainable practices in the region…”

where students compare what they experience on the field to what they have read in publications. The discussions showed critical thinking as well, where students argued that their observations did not correspond accurately to what had been written—they saw more agency in the work of the women in Mukteshwar than what was presented in Narain & Singh’s research. Applying Photovoice in Nainital The question prompts for Nainital begin to directly focus on policy with regards to land and the environment: 1. What do you see in this photograph?

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2. How is the land being used here? 3. Do you see or hear about changes in the way the land is used? Have they evolved or changed in function? 4. What changes do you see in the ecosystem around you and what might be the causes/ driving factors for such changes? 5. How does public or government policy play a part in these changes? 6. Are there any aspects of policy that need to be changed with relation to land use and the environment in this area? The question prompts also took the students toward the higher levels of SOLO, where they were asked to explain causes (question 4) and also reflect on policy impact in their observation (question 5), relating to SOLO level 4 “relational”, and finally to formulate new policy that would improve synergies and reduce trade-offs land use on the environment (question 6), relating to SOLO level 5 “extended abstract” (Fig. 10.4). In the above example, the students recognize the work of the government in the continuing strategies for preventing landslides. There is clear reflection on the constraints that policymakers face due to the geological backdrop of the area as well as challenges due to overpopulation. There is also the beginning of a “relational” understanding of the interaction between land use, environment as well as change in context and its implication for policy. For SOLO level 4 (relational level), Biggs (n.d.) states that “the student may understand relations between several aspects and how they might fit together to form a whole. The understanding forms a structure and may thus have the competence to compare, relate, analyze, apply theory, explain in terms of cause and effect” (Fig. 10.5). In the above example, the student group reflects on policy traps—the “excessive” number of buildings (Nainital has a planned population of 5000, however, at the current time of writing, approximately, 50,000 inhabit the area) causing a high risk of landslides which cannot be reduced by the actions of the NGO CEDAR and the “logistical nightmare” of relocation to safer grounds inhibits positive change. The complex relationships between the local community, the government and the NGOs are what situate this photovoice extract in SOLO level 4. For SOLO level 5, Biggs (n.d.) states the “student may generalize structure beyond what was given, may perceive structure from many different perspectives, and transfer ideas to new areas. He/she may have the competence to generalise, hypothesise, criticize or theorise”. This level of abstraction was observed in the on-site seminar where nuances

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Fig. 10.4 Example 1 of photovoice from Nainital “This picture shows a drain from the top of the hill slope next to Nainital lake that ultimately drains into the lake. Its purpose is to channelize the water from the watershed quickly into the lake. The channelization prevents water from collecting on the hill slope, which can weaken the strength of the slope against landslides. This was done in the colonial era but efforts to protect the town against landslides have certainly continued today. Along the trail we walked, signs of recent landslides could be seen, and retaining walls were constructed to provide lateral support for the weakened soil. It is important that the government continue to implement policies that protect the town against landslides, given its weak geology. However, such policies can be challenging to enforce given the space constraints the region experiences.”

of reading were compared with students’ experiences (via photovoice) of the trip). The reading had raised issues of water insecurity in Himalayan cities like Nainital but students from their learning of effective strategies to conserve water in Mukteshwar could suggest policy propositions that could lead to water security in contexts like Nainital in the long run. This was a “transfer” of ideas to “new areas” as well as to theorize how new policy might develop to improve water management. Application of Photovoice in Jim Corbett National Park Due to the unforeseen extended travel time, our photovoice presentation was limited. For the discussion on Jim Corbett National Park, tourism as

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Fig. 10.5 Example 2 of photovoice from Nainital “As explained by the CEDAR representatives, the excessive amount of buildings along the side of the number weakens the soil, increasing the possibility of landslides. What my group was amazed by was the fact that there seemed to be little to no action taken by the locals. What little actions and petitions we saw were by CEDAR and it feels like it’s an uphill task to change things in that area. Then again, the inaction might be due to the locals not knowing where to relocate. With the myriad of infrastructures and high number of people, it would be a logistical nightmare, hence the possible inaction from local communities. In the future, similar to the issue of the recharge zone, if the India Government is able to step in, their resources available would be able to overcome the steep logistical challenges.”

a source of income for communities living in its periphery was the primary topic (Fig. 10.6). The question prompts for this region were: 1. What is happening to the environment, for example, in terms of the surrounding rivers? 2. The area has adequate water for now, what do you anticipate will happen in future years? 3. How does this area relate to Nainital and Mukteshwar in terms of development, do you see similar trends of agriculture giving way to more urban institutions like resorts? While Mukteshwar and Nainital have more concrete constructions, Jim Corbett National Park seems to be following the same trajectory of

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Fig. 10.6 Example 1 of photovoice from Jim Corbett “This picture shows a canal carrying water to places around the village. While the villages here do not suffer from water insecurity, the increase in tourist resorts in the region due to Jim Corbett National Park has caused some pollution to the local rivers. We saw the effect of just one resort on a stream, turning clear running water into grey water filled with pollution. The canal was built in colonial times but continues to run today, likely contributing much to local water security. However, in order to remain water secure, the local resorts need to consider different ways to conserve water and dispose of sanitation.”

concretization, pollution and water insecurity as more resorts mushroom around the park periphery. In the above example of photovoice, students recognize the need of policymaking for navigation toward alternative pathways. The seminar discussion that did not take place due to the shortened travel time was to lead students to consider what kinds of policy might work in this context, leading students through levels 4 and 5 of SOLO. In terms of our college’s ILOs, ILO2 and ILO4 (an appreciation of cultural differences and diversity; community engagement and social awareness) were achieved through living and interacting with the inhabitants of the Kumaon region. Students not only engaged with the

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local guides and Non-Government Organizations (such as Aarohi and Chirag), they also had opportunities to interact with the Sunkiya community and meet Shrimati Bachuli Devi who is credited with saving a forest through her efforts. The Sunkiya forest ranks as one of the best community-protected forests in the region as a result. ILO3 the “holistic” understanding of complex issues aligns with level 4 of SOLO as evidenced in this section.

Reflection and Action from LERN From the above 6 steps, the following themes emerge in step 7 (generating thematic strands within the narrations, may not involve participants directly) which helped us in writing this chapter and also students to contribute toward a transdisciplinary practice i.e., moving toward step 8 of O. Latz’s (2017) photovoice list and also our college’s ILO4. Key themes for public policy influencing interlinkages of land use and environment— 1. Importance of linkage of water and emerging land use practices in Himalaya like tourism 2. Need to transfer policy lessons beyond specific contexts; e.g., Mukteshwar water strategies in Nainital 3. Policy traps exacerbating vulnerability to hazards; e.g. increase in ecologically sensitive areas, lack of access to safe relocation zones can amplify vulnerability to hazards like landslides 4. Needing alternatives from community and leadership within civil society organizations to challenge unsustainable practices and motivate change. Apart from coming up with these thematic strands for policy in Himalayan contexts, students have also gone ahead in applying the knowledge. This takes the study trip to step 8 (conversion of thematic strands into findings with practical implications). Some students have designed infographics for raising awareness regarding issues in the context (Fig. 10.7) within NUS, and others are engaging with local and regional research and civil society organizations to design an electronic platform (mobile phone application) for facilitating eco-tourism in Himalaya instead of the current observed

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Fig. 10.7 Post trip infographic by a student group

trend of exploitative and unsustainable practices (Fig. 10.8). These posttrip activities were more student-driven and needed much less of the instructor’s overt guidance. From Fig. 10.7, it is evident that students have synthesized information on the issue of water and policy traps (see above themes 1 and 3 and infographic in Fig. 10.7 on water recharge zone in Nainital) and also diversification in livelihood strategies and leadership (see above theme 4 and infographic in Fig. 10.7 on eco-tourism in Jim Corbett and home-grown development in Mukteshwar). Figure 10.8 illustrates the engagement of students with a mobile application design which initiates the mobility toward application of knowledge with stakeholders i.e.

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Fig. 10.7 (continued)

transdisciplinary practice. These last 2 steps of photovoice, achieved posttrip, illustrate elements of “awareness generation and engagement” i.e. our college’s ILO4 and also deep learning via the relational and abstraction levels of SOLO taxonomy as students could use synthesized thematic trends and move toward the application of knowledge.

Key Insights for Replication in Other OCT Programs In conclusion, there are three insights that we gained for the designing of successful out-of-classroom (OCT) environments:

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Fig. 10.8 Infographic used by students to publicize the Mobile Application project

1. Application of photovoice for OCT: Photovoice is an effective tool for OCT and learning as it engages students with current technology (e.g., mobile phone cameras), and provides opportunities to observe, reflect, express and engage in dialogue with peers and stakeholders using evidence (as illustrated in applying O. Latz’s steps 1 to 8 in this chapter). Question prompts are an important element of the tool as we find from our intervention that as the questions grow deeper into the complexity of the theme (in this case LERN) the students’ responses also illustrate deeper learning i.e., relational and abstraction levels in SOLO ( e.g. see differences in questions between Mukteshwar and Nainital localities in step 6). Another important element of the tool is the seminar discussions pre- and

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during the trip which helped students to not only use prior knowledge but also compare and even at times challenge (in our case, prior knowledge about localities and LERN theme was through workshops and 3 readings, see step 3 of how we used photovoice). Flexibility and contingency plans are also key in implementing the tool because of uncertainties associated with any OCT or participatory technique (in our case, delays in travel and weather conditions). Lastly, we also find SOLO taxonomy a meaningful framework which can be used to evaluate the depth of learning through photovoice. The operationalization of photovoice steps, its mapping with ILOs of the multidisciplinary curriculum of the college and depth of students’ learning can be illustrated through the following figure (Fig. 10.9) and can be replicated in other OCT contexts-

Fig. 10.9 Application of photovoice (PV) in NUS-RC4 STEER

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2. Role of scaffolding: The role of scaffolding from faculty while implementing the pedagogical tool is noteworthy. It is always useful if the theme and context of implementation are within the expertise domain of the faculty as that not only helps planning for logistics based on tacit knowledge but also in selecting readings for students, selection of collaborators (in this case CEDAR) and also engagement with stakeholders for learning as well as larger impact (e.g. interactions for learning in the Jim Corbett locality and the posttrip transdisciplinary practice). It might be relevant to categorize the scaffolding into three phases for replicating the process in other OCT contexts Pre-trip phase—This phase comprised of selecting readings, themes and collaborators along with a reconnaissance (recce) trip i.e., application of steps 1–3 of photovoice. The recce provided opportunities to understand the suitability of the context to the overall theme (LERN), plan logistics and also create rapport with collaborators. The phase ended with the selection of photovoice as a pedagogy tool as well as the pre-trip seminars on context and theme with our collaborator (CEDAR) and students. Trip phase—This phase is elaborated in application of steps 4 to 6 of photovoice. It also included faculty’s design of question prompts and discussion seminars for comparison with prior knowledge gathered through readings. Post-trip phase—This phase has least involvement of faculty except for reflecting on students’ learning, scope for improvement and reviewing students’ work to check alignment with university and college policies and provide them support for engagement. However, the mobility toward the capacity of students depends on the teaching and learning of the prior 2 phases as also illustrated in steps 7 to 8 of how we implemented photovoice.

3. Role of collaboration—Not only the application of photovoice but the operationalization of NUS-RC4-STEER would have been challenging without early identification of regional collaborators. The role of Dr. Ghazala Shahabuddin and CEDAR have been crucial in logistics, scaffolding and even post-trip engagement with students leading to the work in progress of the electronic platform (see Fig. 10.8). This illustrates the importance of collaborations between universities and research and civil society organizations which work in the boundaries of science and policy in different localities. It

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is through building and sustaining such collaborations that OCT can achieve smooth implementation of study trips, facilitate deep learning in students and ignite passions for transdisciplinary practice. As discussed in this chapter, this aligns with the second pathway of the transdisciplinary model, where interdisciplinary approaches experienced at the intersection of policy studies, land use and the environment, the use of photovoice and the collaboration with civil society organizations facilitate the practical path of addressing “real world problems” (J.D. Lang et al. 2012, p. 27). The first pathway of finding innovative ways to address these problems is evidenced in the Mobile Application project (Fig. 10.8) that students from the study trip created to encourage eco-tourism and combat the urbanization that threatens biodiversity and local livelihoods in the region. Thus, this NUS-RC4 study trip provides important insights for the design and evaluation of out-of-classroom teaching and learning environments which target similar multidisciplinary learning outcomes. The pedagogical approach comprising of interlinked elements of a participatory action research tool like photovoice, three phases of scaffolding and collaboration with science-policy boundary civil society organizations has potential for facilitating deep learning of complex issues, motivate for awareness generation and action for social impact. Acknowledgements This chapter is part of the project “Measuring Learning Outcomes of University Town College Programme (UTCP) in Residential College 4 (RC4): Examining the Constructively Aligned Living-Learning Environments”, which is supported by “Teaching Enhancement Grant” (TEG) from the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL), National University of Singapore (NUS)”. The authors would like to thank all the students and alumni involved in our NUS-RC4 STEER Himalaya trip, especially Ben Wee, Nouline Noe Noe Su Aung, Chan Ee Zheng Benjamin, Tsu Jiayi and Jeremiah Benjamin Yong for their contributions in the post-trip phase. We would also like to thank Dr. Ghazala Shahabuddin, Ramnarayan K and all team members of the Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR), Uttarakhand, India for hosting and supporting NUS-RC4 faculty and students during the trip, and Associate Professor Lakshminarayanan Samavedham for introducing us to the participatory action research tool of photovoice.

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References Biggs, J. (n.d.) Solo Taxonomy. https://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solotaxonomy/ Biggs, J., & Collis, K. (1982). Evaluating the quality of learning: The SOLO taxonomy. New York: Academic Press. Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does (4th ed.). Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Bourdieu, P. (2011). The Forms of Capital (1986). Cultural Theory: An Anthology (pp. 81–93). CEDAR [Centre for Ecology Development and Research, n.d.] https://www. cedarhimalaya.org/about.php. Gabelnick, F., MacGregor, J., Matthew, R. S., & Smith, B. L. (1990). Learning communities: Creating connections among students, faculty, and disciplines. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Inkelas, K. K., & Weisman, J. L. (2003). “Different by design: An examination of student outcomes among participants in three types of living-learning programs”. Journal of College Student Development, 44(3), 335–368. Inkelas, K. K., Jessup-Anger, J., Benjamin, M., & Wawrzynski, M. R. (2018). Living-learning communities that work: A research-based model for design, delivery, and assessment. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Inkelas, K. K. (2016). “Good practices of living-learning programmes.” Asian Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6(1), 64–76. Kumar, H., Pandey, B. W., & Anand, S. (2019). “Analyzing the impacts of forest ecosystem services on livelihood security and sustainability: A Case Study of Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand.” International Journal of Geoheritage and Parks, 7 , 45–55.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgeop.2019. 05.003. Lang, J. D., Wiek, A., Bergmann, M., Stauffacher, M., Martens, P., Moll, P., Swilling, M., & Thomas, C. J. (2012). “Transdisciplinary research in sustainability science: Practice, principles, and challenges.” Sustainability Science, 7 (Suppl 1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0149-x. Laspidou, C. S., Mellios, N. K., Spyropoulou, A. E., Kofinas, D. T., & Papadopoulou, M. P. (2020). “Systems thinking on the resource nexus: Modeling and visualisation tools to identify critical interlinkages for resilient and sustainable societies and institutions.” Science of The Total Environment, 717 , 137264. ISSN 0048-9697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020. 137264. Latz, A. O. (2017). Photovoice research in education and beyond: A practical guide from theory to exhibition. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Levin, K., & Parsons, S. (2008). “7 Things to know about the IPCC’s special report on climate change and land.” World Resources Institute.org

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Blogs. https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/7-things-know-about-ipcc-spe cial-report-land-and-climate. Narain, V., & Singh, A. K. (2019). “Replacement or displacement? Periurbanisation and changing water access in the Kumaon Himalaya, India.” Land Use Policy, 82, 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.12.004. NUS Global Relations Office. (n.d.). Study Trips For Engagement & EnRichment (STEER). http://www.nus.edu.sg/gro/steer.php. Pearce, D. (1998). “Auditing the earth: The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 40(2), 23–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/001391598096 05092. Rasul, G. & Sharma, B. (2015). “The nexus approach to water–energy–food security: An option for adaptation to climate change.” Climate Policy, 16(6), 682–702. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2015.1029865. Residential College 4. (n.d.). Our Mission & Vision. https://rc4.nus.edu.sg/ about/mission-vision/. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin, III, E. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C. A. De Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P. K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R. W. Corell, V. J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, & J. Foley. (2009). “Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for humanity.” Ecology and Society, 14(2), 32. http://www.ecologyandsociety. org/vol14/iss2/art32/. Sharma, E., Molden, D., Rahman, A., Khatiwada, Y. R., Zhang, L., Singh, S. P., Yao, T., & Wester, P. (2019). “Introduction to the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment.” In Wester, P., Mishra, A., Mukherji, A., Shrestha, A. (eds), The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1_1. Singh, S., Tanvir Hassan, S. M., Hassan, M., & Bharti, N. (2020). “Urbanisation and water insecurity in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Insights from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.” Water Policy, 22(S1), 9–32.https://doi.org/10. 2166/wp.2019.215. Sud, R., Mishra, A., Varma, N., & Bhadwal, S. (2015). “Adaptation policy and practice in densely populated glacier-fed river basins of South Asia: A systematic review.” Regional Environmental Change, 15(5), 825–836. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10113-014-0711-z.

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Varma, N., & Hazarika, S. (2018). “Bridges and barriers for governance of water resources in South Asia-Insights from Brahmaputra basin.” In Barua, A., Narain, V., & Vij, S. (eds), Climate Change Governance and Adaptation: Case Studies from South Asia. CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/978131 5166704-1.

CHAPTER 11

Teaching Comparative Public Policy Comparatively Liang Ma and Chun-yuan Wang

Introduction Comparative public policy (CPP) is a subfield of public policy analysis. It is highly relevant to comparative politics and comparative public administration, focusing on comparing policies and governance systems across different nations and jurisdictions. In the study of CPP, students are primarily interested in two questions: “How do policies differ across countries, and why do they diverge?” (Gupta 2012). For instance, in regulating ridesharing and other sharing economy industries, governments vary significantly with respect to their formalization, instruments, and effectiveness, and it is theoretically interesting and policy-relevant

L. Ma (B) School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] C. Wang Central Police University, Taoyuan city, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_11

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to understand what drives the divergence of national and subnational regulations (Li and Ma 2019). Countries learn from each other to design and implement public policies, and policy innovations transfer across countries (Lee and Ma 2020). But public policies are deeply embedded in political regimes, social structures, and cultural contexts, and it is relevant to compare policies across countries and regions (Geva-May et al. 2018). To make policy transfer work, policymakers and analysts must understand the contexts in which the policies have developed. Thus, public policy courses need to equip students with the mindsets and skills to think and analyze public policies through a comparative perspective. We are preparing future policy analysts and leaders, and they should be exposed to diversified policy contexts and globalized policy problems. Students in the United States and European countries live in relatively highly diversified communities, and they can easily find counterparts from other countries to talk and exchange ideas. For other countries, however, it is much more difficult to do so. Particularly for East Asian countries such as China and Japan, these societies are highly homogeneous in historical background and ethnic composition, and they have not yet been prepared for embracing a globalized and diversified world. Students primarily consider themselves indifferent from each other, and they usually have no idea to conceive and learn about public policies in other countries and regions on a comparative scale. Students are often asked to read the literature about policies implemented in different contexts in traditional comparative policy analysis courses. The news reports and research reports help them learn about the policy contexts, but they might not be well informed about what is going on the ground. Students usually take existing policy contexts for granted without thinking deeply about their historical background and socioeconomic circumstances. They usually do not have opportunities to interact with people from these contexts, not to mention field works and site seeing. To help students understand public policies from a comparative perspective, we must creatively design the course curriculum to discuss CPP. In this chapter, we report one of our pedagogical experiments to teach CPP. In our teaching experiments, we designed a comparative policy analysis course by matching students from two distinct contexts, mainland China and Taiwan. The two-course instructors co-designed the course syllabus and match students from the two contexts. Students

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were required to work together with their team members from the other context to compare the same policies implemented in different manners. By exposing them to a different policy context, they can be immersed and really learn comparative policy analysis comparatively. To the best of our knowledge, such pedagogical innovation is among the first in teaching CPP. Using this creative approach, the students made friends across the straits, learned from each other, and grabbed comparative public policy skills. The course design reported in our chapter is highly relevant for public policy and its teaching. We believe such an approach is generalizable to other countries and regions, and we discuss the implications of our findings to policy education and research.

Course Design and Implementation Course Design Mainland China and Taiwan have been politically bifurcated since 1949, and people from the two sides have been exposed to distinct institutions and cultures for decades (Booth et al. 2019). The Kuomintang (KMT) first ruled Taiwan with authoritarianism and underwent democratization in the 1980s to compete with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) from then on. It has been heavily influenced by the United States, from which most political and academic elites get their degrees. Mainland China is governed by the sole ruling party, the Communist Party of China (CPC), and its political regimes are quite different from Taiwan’s. Business and cultural exchanges across Taiwan Straits have been flourishing over the past decades, and professors and students have rich opportunities to visit and exchange. The chapter authors and collaborators have had extensive exchanges across the straits, and they share similar ideas to promote understanding and collaboration among students from the two sides. Ming-Feng Kuo was teaching at Sichuan University (SU) at Chengdu city of Sichuan province in western China before joining National Taiwan University (NTU) at Taipei, from which he got a Ph.D. Chun-yuan Wang is teaching at Central Police University (CPU) and other universities in Taiwan (e.g., Chang Gung University, CGU). Liang Ma was doing research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore before teaching at Renmin University of China (RUC) in Beijing.

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Ming-Feng found that students at SU primarily learned about Taiwan through mass media and Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter). Taiwan counterparts relied on Facebook and news outlets to know mainland China. Students across the Straits did not understand each other due to information asymmetry, and it was essential to bring the two sides to interact in person. Ming-Feng and Chun-yuan co-designed and implemented the course, and Liang is working on a similar course with them. We worked together to co-design the course curriculum and team up students from universities in mainland China and Taiwan to strengthen their teamwork. The course is entitled “Global and Cross-Straits Political Economy,” and in the lectures, two lecturers first summarized the key theoretical debates in global political economy and their application in mainland China and Taiwan. In this course, the students were required to learn about crossboundary social interactions and economic exchanges in a globalized political economy. They must be familiar with key concepts such as states (e.g., power, function) and markets (division of labor). We matched students from mainland China and Taiwan to do policy analysis. Four or six students from mainland China will match almost equivalent students from Taiwan, and they both should agree on what topics to be discussed. In one of the teaching experiments, for instance, the students formed 12 groups. The topics include social welfare, healthcare, cross-strait cultural exchange, Hong Kong governance, environmental protection, international trade, e-commerce and e-government, police and public order, civil service system, local governance and institutions, food safety and consumer protection, and higher education. Because these topics are quite broad and relevant to their daily lives, the students can select the ones they are most interested in. Students were voluntary in teaming up in the same course, and then they would partner with teams with most similar policy interests on the other side. The students from the two sides worked as a team to compare policies across the straits, and they were expected to present their findings and reflections at the end of the semester. Despite mainland China uses simplified Chinese, whereas Taiwan uses traditional Chinese, students from the two sides shared similar spoken language and could communicate smoothly. They used email, social media (e.g., WeChat), and teleconference applications (e.g., Skype, Zoom) to interact with each other about their projects conveniently.

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Both online and face-to-face interactions are used during the processes, and it is relevant to elaborate more on their strengths, weaknesses, and relationships. Electronic chats are common among the Z generation (born after 1990s), the cohort of students we experimented this pedagogical innovation, and the students can easily know each other through social media applications. Electronic chats’ cost much lower than faceto-face interactions, and the students can talk with their team members anytime and anywhere. However, electronic chats cannot replace face-toface interactions and field works because personal intimacy and mutual trust are more likely to be developed through face-to-face interactions. Thus, it is imperative to mix online and face-to-face interactions in the process, and the students can augment electronic chats by face-to-face interactions at the end of the semester. We demonstrate the framework of this course design in Fig. 11.1. The two-course instructors agree on the course content and mode, and they organize the students of the two courses to form and match groups based on their policy interests. The students organize discussions both within

Instructor A

Instructor B

Fig. 11.1 The framework of the CPP course design (Note We visualize a scenario of the CPP course design. One node represents one student, and three students form a group. The rounded rectangle is the course instructor. The arrow means the course instructors and students interact with each other in the same course, and the dotted arrow refers to cross-strait interactions)

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their groups and with their peer groups in the other course. They are required to present their findings in the end of the semester, and students at other groups give scores together with the course instructor. This teaching model was also replicated in other courses to encourage the students to team up and communicate with their peers in other countries and regions such as Japan and Singapore. The students voluntarily formed several groups, and each of them included one to three overseas team members. The topics covered in their discussions include popular culture, technology, environmental protection, education, and economic development. Course Implementation The actual implementation of the pedagogical innovation is moderately consistent with the initial design. The course was first initiated in 2014, and it has been implemented for three years and six semesters from then on. Students at SU were primarily freshmen majoring in political science and public administration, and the course was compulsory and about the introduction to political science. These students were from various provinces, and they were curious about everything related to university life and Taiwan. Students at CGU were mainly freshmen and sophomores, and they came from various disciplines, including medicine, business, engineering, nursery, etc. In each semester, CGU elicited around 70 students, and the course was designed as part of the general education. The course was assigned one teaching assistant (TA), and it had three credits. The course was structured as 2 + 1, with the first two hours for lectures and the last one-hour group-based discussion organized TA. Generally speaking, the process of course implementation can be divided into three stages (see Fig. 11.2). In the first stage (usually the first two to three weeks at the beginning of the semester), the students spent 1.5 h to discuss the themes in which they were most interested. For instance, at CGU, the students debated which policy area in Taiwan would be influenced by cross-strait relations and globalization. The students formed 10–12 groups after debates, each focusing on a novel topic. In the second stage, the students were asked to do a literature review and discuss their plan to interview overseas partners. They presented their literature review and gave their interview outline. The presentation should include but not be limited to: The background of and current

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Fig. 11.2 Flowchart of the Comparative Public Policy course

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Policy debate and team up

Literature review and interview outline

Overseas exchange

Presentation and Sharing

debates about the topic, Taiwan’s challenges and difficulties in this policy area, the practices and implications of mainland China or other countries, policy suggestions to Taiwan government, and references. The students discussed the topics and outlined key questions they want to answer in their projects. They asked the other side to supply relevant data and materials and compare their differences. In the final stage, the students used Skype or WeChat to interview professors and students overseas, which could be done several times, depending on the projects’ progress and time. The students were encouraged to use one of the two modes of overseas exchange: group-based discussions and individual-based interviews. For the interaction across the straits, they could match their class with the class in mainland China. The course instructors coordinated the students to match with their peers by groups, and they video chatted regularly to update their projects. For the interaction with professors and students from Japan, Singapore, Australia, the United States, etc., they used individual-based interviews. Given the relatively high cost of such interviews, the students were only appointed one time. Chinese are often shy in presenting and communicating, and students hesitated to talk with each other initially. Soon after a short period of silence, they became interested in learning from each other. In the

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concluding session, each group has 15 minutes to present their findings, and both peer groups and course instructors would assess their performance. The students of compulsory courses were serious about their scores, and their dedication of time and energy was stronger than the students of optional courses.

Learning Outcomes Many learning outcomes and lessons can be observed from the teaching of this content, and some of which go beyond the course itself. A better understanding of and empathy with public policies in the home country/region and the other contexts are the key intended learning outcome envisaged before taking this pedagogical approach. Apart from these learning outcomes intended in the first place, there are also unintended learning lessons generated from the exercise. The students became more interested in the other side, and they struck up a friendship through the course journey. Some of them went to the other side to meet in person with their team members. After years of teaching experiment, we find that this mode is helpful in at least four aspects. First, the students’ participation has been substantially improved, partially due to the opportunities of chatting with overseas peers and professors. If we used the traditional mode of teaching, the students might not be as interested in and devoted to the course as this teaching experiment. Being exposed to new friends with novel exchange experiences, the students have enjoyed the journey of project coordination and two-way dialogue. Second, it has strengthened cross-disciplinary interactions among the students. To encourage interdisciplinary interaction, we require that two students come from the same department in each group maximum. Diverse disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives helped the students to think about and analyze public policies through different angles, and interdisciplinary interactions foster intensive group-based discussions. The students from different universities are also varying in terms of thinking modes and cultures. The students of elite universities, for instance, are very critical and individualistic. In contrast, the police students are trained to obey orders. Inter-university exchange helped the students learn about alternative cultures and norms, which were valuable for studying CPP. Third, the students have learned about overseas practices and known how to study and work in cross-cultural teams. As mentioned above,

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Chinese societies are very homogeneous, and the students usually take this social structure for granted. They are not well prepared to work in a diversified workplace, and few know how to interact with people culturally different from them. This pedagogical innovation enabled the students to think outside the box and empathize with peers with different cultural and educational backgrounds. Such experiences in their college years help them to adapt to a future multicultural work environment. Lastly, the students have also improved their capabilities in oral communication, presentation, and teamwork. To minimize free-riding among team members, the maximum size of each group was three. We also required each team to have a leader to coordinate discussions within and between groups. The students learned how to work together with their peers to search and review literature, interview others, and write and present reports. Each student’s score was aggregated by the course instructor’s judgment and peer reviews, and team leaders receive a premium plus team average. Each student received a grading sheet to grade all but their own presentations. The students were concerned about both instructor’s judgment and peer reviews, and they prepared and presented their team works earnestly. Here, we give an example of the learning outcomes. In one of the groups, the students were interested in three interrelated themes: healthcare systems, fertility policy, and the rural–urban gap. After literature review and group-based discussions, the students were familiar with these social problems in Taiwan. The healthcare resources in Taiwan are not equally distributed, and cities and counties vary substantially in terms of the number of doctors available and hospitals’ density. Taiwan’s fertility rate is barely 1.1, and the government has developed generous maternity incentive policies to encourage eligible families to have babies. The growing income inequality is a prominent social problem in Taiwan, which is primarily reflected in the gaps between rural and urban areas. The students wanted to know about the same social problems in mainland China. For instance, in the group of healthcare, a dozen questions were raised by Taiwan students. They wanted to know these themes in mainland China and listed a dozen of questions to ask their partners across the straits. These questions cover a broad range of topics, including healthcare insurance, out-of-pocket expense, interprovincial disparity, rural–urban gap, medical staff, doctor-patient relationship, public–private hospital differences, and international medicine.

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They developed an analytical framework to guide their empirical studies, and then each side collected their own data from news reports and research reports. The students from the two universities debated about these topics by exchanging ideas and triangulating data. Taiwan and mainland China are similar in healthcare inaccessibility and rural– urban gap, but they are different in fertility policy. The government in mainland China has implemented the one-child policy since the end of 1970s but allowed families to have their second baby in 2015 to address the fertility rate decline. They initially presumed the other side should be similar to their policy problems but usually felt shocked by their partners’ facts and opinions. After chatting and exchanging back and forth, they finally agreed about the key findings and policy implications. The process was joyful and fruitful, as reflected by one team leader from Taiwan. After this exchange, I found that the two sides are somewhat different in both values and attitudes towards government, which could be attributable to the different living circumstances! The most difficult part is to read Simplified Chinese in the preparation, the process, and the last presentation of the discussion, and I had to spend much more time to understand during the dialogue. But I found face-to-face exchange was much more efficient than communicating in writing after using video chat. Despite there was sometime awkward silence, it is joyful to chat with them. It is such a valuable experience that I can exchange ideas across the straits during my college days, and we cherished the chats and benefited a lot.

Discussions and Conclusion In this chapter, we report one of our pedagogical innovations in teaching CPP. Here, we want to discuss how this content and its teaching to the target audience are likely to evolve in the future, especially in Asia. We believe that there would be more opportunities for this pedagogical innovation to develop. This course content can be taught to a broader target audience, including students, practitioners, and undergraduate and graduate students. It is also relevant for part-time MPA and MPP students, and they have rich work experience and flexible schedule to support the implementation of this teaching innovation. Course instructors can discuss and present a summary of the policy process generically, including but not limited to agenda-setting, policy formation, policy design, policy debates, policy implementation, policy

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diffusion, and policy evaluation (Howlett and Ramesh 2003). Such a process model can be applied in any policy domain, and students with similar theoretical knowledge could have a common language in comparing public policies from different contexts. It is crucial to concentrate on real-time policy problems with which the students are familiar. Otherwise, they might not probe deeply into the nature and solutions of these policy problems. The students can focus on a specific policy domain, e.g., environmental protection, economic growth, public finance, public education, public healthcare, pension, and workplace safety. The Millennium Development Goals initiated by the United Nations could be the policy foci for course design. Every country shares these global imperatives and has common languages in framing these policy problems. This pedagogical innovation could be merged with other course modes, particularly massive open online course (MOOC) [also see Chapter 3]. MOOC is free online courses open to many enrolled participants, who can come from every corner of the world. We can use a mixed teaching mode to organize the students to study CPP. The course instructor can give lectures through online videos, and the students can voluntarily form groups to do discussions. Given the size and heterogeneity of MOOC’s enrolled students, this course mode would be a good resource for the course instructors to engage the students in CPP debates. The pedagogical innovation outlined in this chapter requires strong collaboration among course instructors from different countries and regions. International Comparative Policy Analysis Forum (the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice [JCPA]), International Public Policy Association (IPPA), Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA), and other international associations can promote such teaching innovations by leveraging their institutional support and alliance to facilitate teaching collaboration across countries and regions. World University Network (WUN) and other institutional alliances could also encourage their member universities and colleges to experiment this pedagogical innovation collectively. These institutional arrangements help to implement this teaching experiment, but the key is individual-based collaboration and mutual trust between course instructors. The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020 is one of the biggest challenges to the higher education system in recent decades, and almost all universities have to teach online or mix

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online and face-to-face teachings. Regular international travels and visits have been suspended, and city lockdown has made faculty and student exchanges either impossible or challenging. Given the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pedagogical innovation discussed in this chapter can be adopted to facilitate international exchange and comparative public policy teaching. Universities around the world have increasingly used online teaching platforms such as Zoom and Tencent VooV meeting, and both faculty and students are adept at interacting through these online teaching instruments. Also, the varying policy responses of countries and regions to the pandemic (different policies such as social distancing, quarantine, home isolation, and lockdown) have generated rich case studies, policy debates, and datasets that can be used by faculty and students in CPP courses. For instance, a group of researchers at Blavatnik School of Government of Oxford University developed the COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, which documented the changing stringency of government responses to COVID-19 in 160 countries and regions.1 A course instructor can group students to do comparative policy analyses using this dataset, and real-life experiences during the pandemic can help them better understand how public policies impact their daily lives. We thus believe that our pedagogical innovation could be used in more scenarios both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We should acknowledge the challenges of designing and implementing this teaching experiment. The design and implementation of this teaching mode are very challenging, and course instructors have to consider these practical difficulties in kicking off seriously. First, the students have diverse backgrounds, and their expectations of, familiarity with, and devotion to the group topics vary. The general education students are interested in the courses, but they usually do not spend much time in discussion and interviewing. For an optional course, they mainly want to get course credits easily. The students of compulsory courses expect high about the courses, and they are often serious and critical. If we match these two groups of students, they might not cooperate very well due to divergent expectations and devotion. For instance, the NTU students are individualistic and critical, and they believe that they

1 See https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-governmentresponse-tracker.

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could do the job by themselves. They also expect too much of their peers in other universities, which usually frustrates both sides. Second, this course’s key intent is to match students from different policy contexts, and usually those with similar language and time zones would be easier to team up. The cost of communication and coordination with overseas professors and students is much higher than regular ones. It is time-consuming to communicate and understand from peers from distinct cultural contexts. The cost would be much higher to video chat with peers with different languages and/or from different time zones. For instance, the students have to do video chats with professors in New York early morning at 4:30 AM. Thus, it is relevant to apply this pedagogical innovation in Asian countries, particularly the students across the straits. Third, the course instructors should be fully aware of the teaching load of this pedagogical innovation and the difficulties of matching across countries and institutions. Given the class size, both the course instructor and TA have to devote much more time and energy to steer group discussions. For instance, the course instructor and TA split the students into several steerable groups and spent time listening to and talking with them about their learning plans. The course instructors must communicate with their partners to co-design the syllabus and match students’ groups. Professors with modest teaching load can experiment this pedagogical innovation. Otherwise, they cannot afford intensive interactions and discussions indispensable to this course. Some of the topics are politically sensitive, and the instructors had to keep track and ensure their discussions are tolerable and under control. Taiwan politics is polarized between Blue (KMT) and Green (DPP). Taiwanese view mainland China as Red (CPC). The political climate is freezing across the Straits before and after the General Elections in Taiwan, and normal exchanges have to give way to political silence. Despite this, course design is generally apolitical and potentially fruitful, the course instructors have to seek strong support from university- and school-level leadership. The course instructors should also participate in discussions and interviews because there might be extremists and activists among the students. Last, this pedagogical innovation is to supplement instead of to replace existing student exchange programs. If the students could have opportunities to immerse in a different policy context for a period of time, their understanding of CPP would be improved. This teaching experiment works to support CPP teaching and should be mixed with other

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teaching facilities. The students get in touch with each other through this course design, but their mutual understanding is still more imaginative than empirical. They do not know clearly about the policy practices on the ground, and it is imperative to use other pedagogies to contextualize their experience in policy design and implementation.

References Booth, Alison, Elliott Fan, Xin Meng, and Dandan Zhang. 2019. “Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Culture and Institutions.” The Economic Journal 129 (681): 734–764. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj. 12583. Geva-May, Iris, David C. Hoffman, and Joselyn Muhleisen. 2018. “Twenty Years of Comparative Policy Analysis: A Survey of the Field and a Discussion of Topics and Methods.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 20 (1): 18–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2017.140 5618. Gupta, Kuhika. 2012. “Comparative Public Policy: Using the Comparative Method to Advance Our Understanding of the Policy Process.” Policy Studies Journal 40 (s1): 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2012.004 43.x. Howlett, Michael, and Michael Ramesh. 2003. Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, Celia, and Liang Ma. 2020. “The Role of Policy Labs in Policy Experiment and Knowledge Transfer: A Comparison across the UK, Denmark, and Singapore.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 22 (4): 281–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2019.1668657. Li, Yanwei, and Liang Ma. 2019. “What drives the governance of ridesharing? A fuzzy-set QCA of local regulations in China.” Policy Sciences 52 (4): 601–624. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-019-09359-x.

CHAPTER 12

Policy Learning Through Fieldwork Engagement: A Geography Classroom—fieldwork Assessment on Issues of Water for Policy Understanding Nathaniel Dylan Lim, Yan Kai Heng, and Diganta Das

Introduction Fieldwork is an essential component in a Geographer’s toolkit and a hallmark of the discipline. Not only does it bring clarity to theoretical and conceptual knowledge by grounding them in real-world contexts (Fuller et al. 2006), and the integration of a range of Geographical skills (France and Haigh 2018) but also the acquisition of powerful geographical knowledge (Hammond 2016). Fieldwork in Geography helps develop a range of skills and development of personal, social, ecological and political literacy (Job et al. 1999). Conducting fieldwork to attain geographical

N. D. Lim · Y. K. Heng · D. Das (B) National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

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knowledge does not imply that knowledge is ‘out there’ to be found. Instead, it is about creating situations where students explore, create, and test knowledge through their lenses and appreciate the complexities of Geography as a discipline (Fuller et al. 2006). This delves deeper into the epistemological understanding that geographical knowledge is relational and not an objective experiment with a universal truth (Roberts 2010). While fieldwork aims to foster a form of theory–practice nexus, how fieldwork is conducted needs to be suited for such learning to take place. Hence, to allow students to be more critically engaged and not be passive learners, Hill et al. (2016) suggests that fieldwork should attempt to situate students in unfamiliar and challenging spaces known as borderlands. These borderland spaces destabilize traditional power hierarchies in classrooms where the lecturer relays content while the student passively absorbs the knowledge. Instead, by taking a more student-led approach to learning, students themselves work in partnership with their fellow peers and their lecturers to co-create knowledge (Hill et al. 2016). This shifts away from didactic modes of instruction to one that focuses on developing students as Geographers solving real-world issues (France and Haigh 2018). By positioning students as co-creators of knowledge, it prompts them to be active collaborators in their own learning and disrupting the ‘traditional’ linearity of learning from teachers to students. This helps create learning spaces that foster more democratic dialogues and discussions, and bring in multiple analytical perspectives (CookSather and Alter 2011) which are essential to constructing powerful geographical knowledge. This way of conducting fieldwork also champions a deeper approach to learning; one where students can make integrative links with what they have learned (Revell and Wainwright 2009). Henceforth, this chapter will discuss how international geographical fieldwork can bring students to these borderland spaces and actively engage students with the learning of urban water policy in the global South.

Fieldwork as a Basis for Learning Fieldwork has been integral to geographical education in secondary and tertiary institutions in Singapore. In the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), international fieldwork is integrated with a capstone university course that aims to help students

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Table 12.1 Stages of fieldwork Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Pre-fieldwork 1. Acquiring content-based knowledge on the geographies of water and methodologies; 2. Formulating research topic, literature review and progress reports; and 3. Conducting fieldwork preparatory work

Fieldwork 1. Familarisation trips / excursions, guided fieldwork and discussions; 2. Conducting student-led fieldwork; and 3. Engaging in daily post-fieldwork discussions and reflections

Post-fieldwork 1. Conducting peer feedback and critique of work; and 2. Final submission of work

develop deeper conceptual understanding and analysis of emerging urban waterscapes in the Global South and foster a greater geographical theory– practice nexus. The international fieldwork involved eight final-year Geography undergraduates from NIE-NTU in a two-week field-based research in the Indian cities of Delhi and Hyderabad. With the eventual intention for students to be ‘border crossers’ (Hill et al. 2016, p. 4), moving them into an unfamiliar pedagogic context of student-led fieldwork, it is important to involve them in co-construction of their learning. Therefore, right from the start, greater engagement and ownership in fieldwork are sought by providing autonomy and involving the students in the fieldwork process/stages. The fieldwork was conducted in three stages (see Table 12.1): To achieve the fieldwork aims and to develop powerful geographical knowledge, we will discuss three key aspects of the international fieldwork: (1) A focus on human–environment relations; (2) Engagement in reflexivity in fieldwork studies; and (3) Student-led fieldwork.

Integrating Human–environment Relations in Urban Fieldwork In recent years, the relationship between humans and the environment has been a pivotal concern for many disciplines (Goudie 2016). Similarly, for Geography, human–environment thinking under the premise of the Anthropocene is known to provide more critical and multifaceted perspectives to the places and spaces inhabited (Larsen and Harrington Jr. 2020).

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While the extent of knowledge production in urban studies is largely tied to human geography, the study of cities remains broad and interdisciplinary (Kong & Qian 2019). Moreover, as Houston et al. (2018) put it, cities should not be seen as exceptional, bounded spaces devoid of nature-society relation. Rather, society and nature are seen as ‘inseparable, integral to each other, indefinitely bound up’ (Swyngedouw 1996, p. 66), highlighting the need to engage with the complex nature-society relations in cities. A city is a site where social and physical elements fuse in complementary and conflicting ways. Hence, studying a city and developing sound urban policies would require students to critically engage with both strands—the physical and human. Previously, the Geography undergraduates’ courses tend to be splintered into either the physical or human strand. With geographical fieldwork techniques and analytical thought largely focused on either positivist or humanist methods depending on the course’s strand. However, with calls for a greater emphasis on human–environment relations in Geography, students are challenged to integrate both schools of thought into understanding India’s urban water policy. To assist with developing a research topic that builds on a ‘unified’ geography research, faculty members from both physical and human geography backgrounds are called on to supervise, collaborate, and guide the undergraduates’ research. Hence, NIE-NTU geography student researchers are called upon to produce research that enforces the unification of both strands through improvization and amalgamation of research frameworks, one that marries both physical and human aspects of geography as a discipline. For instance, a student focuses on the socio-environmental relationship between individual perception of water security and perception of their individual health in Hyderabad, India. Discussions and consultations conducted between student researchers and the supervisors solidify the frameworks unique to each individual’s interest with little to no restrictions, giving rise to a variety of research topics and specialties specific to each students’ learning or fieldwork desires. Thus, in that cited example, students are encouraged to explore various theoretical frameworks, work to integrate these frameworks, and then given the opportunities to present the possibilities to the faculty, who would, in turn, advise the student researchers in managing their expectations and aims of the fieldwork relative to their theoretical framework of interest. With appropriate guidance from the supervisors, such ventures expand the horizon of students specializing in either strands and incite students’

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greater engagement in all-encompassing geographical research, analyses, and discussion in all fieldwork phases. Ultimately, the intention of bridging both strands into urban research does not only resonate with the call for a greater emphasis on nature-society relations in cities (Swyngedouw 1996; Houston et al. 2018), but also open multiple pathways to synthesizing geographical knowledge, helping to develop greater critical geographical inquiry. (Larsen and Harrington Jr. 2020).

Engaging Reflexivity and Emotions in International Fieldwork Studies The international fieldwork study in India aims to expose students to new and different environments, and situations by navigating through studentled fieldwork. However, this should not be done at the expense of inching onto a privileged ‘god-eye’ view over the subject studied, resulting in a ‘linear transposition of the meanings of the phenomena’ out of context and stereotypes (Golubchikov 2015, p. 151). As such, this fieldwork highlights the importance of engaging the students’ reflexivity to develop a more critical perspective and analysis on urban waterscapes and related policies in relation to India. Scholarship on reflexivity often highlights that researchers cannot remain neutral and detached from what is studied (Kobayashi 2003). Nevertheless, being aware of one’s own positionality requires them to consider their relative subject positions vis-a-vis what is in the field (See Moser 2008; Glass 2013) and see how they influence methods, interpretation, and knowledge production (Sultana 2007). To do so, informal discussions and dialogues between the students and faculty members throughout the fieldwork serve as platforms to have open conversations about their positionality. For instance, making students acutely aware of the class and educational privilege, their perceived roles in the field (e.g., researcher/tourists), how they look, what they dress, how their behavior and actions influence the interactions with the locals. Thereafter, by being aware of the site’s power relations, students would attempt to rework their respective subject positions through small actions. These small actions can range from conversing with the locals at a height equal or lower to them, mannerisms, or even engaging in small informal dialogues which builds trust and rapport, engages the locals, and even negotiates through gatekeepers.

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Before bringing students out to borderland spaces and engaging in student-led fieldwork, students need to be aware of the emotional geographies. This emphasis on the role of emotions helps students give greater engagement with local geographical issues, allowing them to reflect on their experiences and the reasons behind them (Marvell and Simm 2018). Highlighting the sensory element in fieldwork also helps to see beyond the physical structures of places, but the abstract, such as phenomena, processes, and relations (Holgersen 2020). The fieldwork creates opportunities for students to develop such awareness by incorporating excursions, site-visits, and ad-hoc participant observations and thereafter holding informal dialogues with students, faculty, and local guides. These dialogues open up conversations on what was observed and experienced—gathering thoughts, feelings, establishing relationships with prior Geographical knowledge and how their positionality as an ‘outsider’ reflects in what they have experienced. These dialogues and conversations also open a myriad of perspectives, encourage alternative viewpoints and hone student’s analytical skills (Golubchikov 2015). For example, as a prelude to the student-led fieldwork, students were brought to a ‘make-shift’ night market in Hyderabad’s Madhapur district to demonstrate how public spaces are appropriated for locals’ use. This night market shifts from location to location daily, occupying different parts of the city to serve the needs of the locals. Students were brought to the site and given time to explore the space occupied. This exploration took the form of a participant observation, where students have involved themselves in browsing, patronizing, and purchasing items from the stall owners. Informal conversations were also made with locals to understand more about the night market. While participant observation was carried out, spontaneous dialogues were made among students, faculty members, and translators to understand what was observed and experienced. Being in situ while conducting such dialogues is important as it prompts an active engagement with the sensory experience felt and the place itself (Marvell and Simm 2018). These dialogues open up questions such as, ‘why is the market situated here?’, ‘who patronizes the market?’, ‘why do people patronize the market?’, ‘is this a way of life?’ With the involvement of students, faculty, translators, and even locals, new perspectives are shared and analyzed, which co-creates geographical knowledge of a phenomenon. Henceforth, stressing the importance of reflexivity and emotion in international fieldwork opens up possibilities

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for greater engagement with places, understanding and appreciating the role of situated knowledge in urban research.

Student-Led Fieldwork The restrictions that come with guided fieldwork in an unfamiliar land comprises of the position that students take, as both a researcher and tourist in a foreign place; and, secondly, limited faculty guidance. Therefore, what is intended next is a gradual move toward the development of self-authorship. According to Moore et al. (2011), self-authorship is based on the students’ ability to ‘critically analyze and evaluate information, to view “known truths” from multiple perspectives, to embrace diversity and ambiguity and to develop an independent learning capacity and their own voice’. (p. 352). To progress toward self-authorship, students are trained to be what Hill et al. (2016) terms as ‘border crossers’ (p. 4), to move them from familiar and safe spaces of faculty/local-guided to one that is pedagogically unfamiliar to students, a student-led fieldwork. This is exemplary of the India fieldwork that involves students taking the lead after familiarizing with the various options of sites presented to them. After an introductory tour to the different sites, student researchers would present their interest in the sites they seek to continue their inquiry in. Upon reaching the sites, they are left with nothing more than a translator as their local guide. Being placed in a position of independence allows the students to navigate freely in these unfamiliar spaces, developing their own analyses through their lenses and capacity. This would also help them develop a greater sense of place with greater engagement through making critical analyses and reflecting on a range of feelings and situations that contribute to learning (Marvell and Simm 2018). Beyond the aforementioned benefits independence has to offer, student-led fieldwork also enhances the fulfillment students attain upon satiating their desires for discovery, adventure, and challenges, especially at this point of their academic pursuit where autonomy supersedes teacher-led education (Pawson & Teather 2002). To further solidify the learning experience, fieldnotes were highly encouraged to be taken with bits and pieces of reflection embedded in these notes. The advocacy of notes taking in the field is further enhanced as it was put across as an assessment requirement. Therefore, students would engage in field notes taking, albeit at its rawest form, to allow student researchers to gain insights to their experience on the

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go. As students reach the end of the day, they would further engage in reflection upon visiting their notes once more, continuously editing and making notes to their existing ones, further enhances their analyses of the experience in both academic and experiential fronts. This form of assessment holds promising results in terms of deep learning as mentioned by Dummer et al. (2008), where students engage in critical analyses of their experience through the day. Although in the research, it was concluded that students must receive clear guidelines in terms of the expectations to the notes or reflection required of them. Equivalent to this, expectations of these raw fieldnotes were also communicated to the student researchers, which enforces greatly on note-taking technique rather than the quality of the content itself, which would differ from that of the conventional reflection mentioned in the research.

Conclusion Looking through Roy’s (2011a) lens about rethinking subaltern urbanism, our discussion on doing fieldwork as part of the larger geographical learning about Southern urbanism, engaging with situated knowledge, walking the neighborhoods, critical geographical analyses and reflection helped students to see how certain practices work in certain places, a way of life and should not be bounded to ‘typical’ urban classification (e.g., informality does not equate to spaces of poverty). The neighborhood walking, observing, talking, and analyzing the field-sites in this international fieldwork study in the global South helped us mitigate the fallacies of a ‘universal’ approach to urban planning. Rather, this taught us about policy implementation and their workings and reworkings at the ground level. International fieldworks, particularly in the global South, also help students and academics to see and analyze the ‘unmapped space[s] that is integrated into dominant forms of knowledge’ and opens up opportunities to develop greater ‘evidentiary material for [urban] theory’ (Roy 2011b, p. 9).

References Boyle, A., Maguire, S., Martin, A., Milsom, C., Nash, R., Rawlinson, S., & Conchie, S. 2007. Fieldwork is good: The student perception and the affective domain. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 31(2), 299–317.

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Cook-Sather, A., & Alter, Z. 2011. What is and what can be: How a liminal position can change learning and teaching in higher education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 42(1), 37–53. Dummer, T. J. B., Cook, I. G., Parker, S. L., Barrett, G. A., & Hull, A. P. 2008. Promoting and Assessing “Deep Learning” in Geography Fieldwork: An Evaluation of Reflective Field Diaries. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32(3), 459–479.https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260701728484 France, D., & Haigh, M. 2018. Fieldwork@40: Fieldwork in geography higher education. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 1–17. Fuller, I., Edmonson, S., France, D., Higgit, D., & Ratinen, I. 2006. International perspectives on the effectiveness of Geography fieldwork for learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 30(1), 89–101. Glass, M. R. 2013. Encouraging reflexivity in urban geography fieldwork: Study abroad experiences in Singapore and Malaysia. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38(1), 69–85. Golubchikov, O. 2015. Negotiating critical geographies through a “feel-trip”: Experiential, affective and critical learning in engaged fieldwork. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39(1), 143–157. Goudie, A. 2016. The integration of human and physical geography revisited. The Canadian Geographer, 61(1), 19–27. Hammond, L. 2016. The place of fieldwork in geography education. Debates in geography education mark jones and David lambert. Harrington Jr., J., & Larsen, T. B. 2020. Geographic thought and the anthropocene: What Geographers have said and have to say. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1–13. Hill, J., Thomas, G, Diaz, A., & Simm, D. 2016. Borderland spaces for learning partnership: opportunities, benefits and challenges. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 40(3), 375–393. Holgersen, S. 2020. How to incorporate theory in (urban) field trips: The built environment as concrete abstraction. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 1–19. Houston, D., Hiller, J., MacCallum, D., Steele, W., & Bryne, J. 2018. Make kin, not cities! Multispecies entanglements and ‘becoming-world’ in planning theory. Planning Theory, 17 (2), 190–212. Job, D., Day, C., & Smyth, T. 1999. Beyond the Bikesheds: Fresh approaches to fieldwork in the school locality. Sheffield: The Geographical Association. Kobayashi, A. 2003. GPC Ten Years On: Is self-reflexivity enough? Gender, Place and Culture, 10(4), 345–349. Kong, L., & Qian, J. 2019. Knowledge circulation in urban geography/urban studies, 1990–2010: Testing the discourse of Anglo-American hegemony through publication and citation patterns. Urban Studies, 56(1), 44–80.

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Marvell, A., & Simm, D. 2018. Emotional geographies experienced during international fieldwork: An evaluation of teaching and learning strategies for reflective assessment. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 1–16. Moore, N., Fournier, E. J., Hardwick, S. W., Healey, M., MacLachlan, J., & Seemann, J. 2011. Mapping the journey toward self-authorship in Geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 35(3), 351–364. Moser, S. 2008. Personality: A new positionality? Area, 40(3), 383–392. Pawson, E., & Teather, E. K. 2002. “Geographical Expeditions”: Assessing the benefits of a student-driven fieldwork method. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 26(3), 275–289.https://doi.org/10.1080/030982602 2000019864 Revell, A., & Wainwright, E. 2009. What makes lectures ‘unmissable’? Insights into teaching excellence and active learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 33(2), 209–223. Roberts, M. 2010. Geographical enquiry. Teaching Geography, 35(1), 6–9. Roy, A. 2011a. Slumdog cities: Rethinking subaltern urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), 223–238. Roy, A. 2011b. Urbanisms, worlding practices and the theory of planning. Planning Theory, 10(6), 6–15. Sultana, F. 2007. Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research. ACME: An international E-journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385. Swyngedouw, E. 1996. The city as a hybrid: On nature, society and cyborg urbanisation. Capitalism Nature and Socialism, 7 (2), 65–80.

CHAPTER 13

Gaps, Propositions and Insights for Policy Education: A Synthesis Navarun Varma and Sreeja Nair

A synthesis of chapters In this synthesis chapter we return to our motivation in developing this book and inviting selected authors to contribute as researchers and educators in policy programs, courses and modules across Asia. The two key questions we set out to explore were: (1) What learning outcomes are expected for learners for advancing policy studies in the twenty-first century and, (2) What pedagogical strategies can help to achieve these learning outcomes?

N. Varma (B) Residential College 4, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] S. Nair Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8_13

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We acknowledge that while these are very important questions around the future of policy education, the answers are far from being straightforward and comprehensive. We reflect on these questions with the help of observations, experiments and inferences from selected educators and researchers in Asia. Some of them have experienced the need for novel intended learning outcomes in policy-related curricula while some others have tested the potential of certain pedagogies in-and-out of classrooms at different levels of education. In this chapter, we try to find an approach to synthesize knowledge from the chapters around content and pedagogy but also about the linkages between them for policy education. Policy education is a fluid term with fuzzy boundaries, which is not surprising given that it encompasses problem solving and decision-making not necessarily restricted to governments but also non-governmental entities, including citizen groups. This fuzziness is also apparent in the affiliations of contributors to this book, which goes beyond policy schools and departments. While public policy continues to evolve as a separate field, there are disciplinary underpinnings that make it difficult to consider policy education as being restricted to public policy schools and departments only. The term policy education as covered in this book covers the education landscape within which public policy is nested. As also highlighted in the Introduction chapter we focus on policy education at the tertiary level which includes courses that target policymaking, policy studies and analysis within the curriculum at undergraduate and higher levels in universities, multi-and inter-disciplinary modules within universities targeting public life and real-world problem solving, and communication of new knowledge to policy researchers and practitioners in capacity building programmes. The chapters in this book present a diversity of perspectives on the topic of emerging pedagogies for policy education. In writing these chapters, the authors were encouraged to reflect on the relevance of their chapter for policy discourse and practice, and its teaching. They were motivated to share their experience in teaching policyrelated content and/or provide recommendations for intended learning outcomes and teaching from their research content. Furthermore, authors were prompted to reflect on how their research and/or teaching content and its pedagogy may evolve, especially in Asia. The overarching ambition of this book was to bring attention to not only the key trends in policy research and practice but also its accessibility to a variety of learners. Thus,

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while some chapters in this book are centered on content of policy education, including policy theory, others focus on how to teach this content to varied audiences. In paying equal attention to both content and teaching as relevant for policy education, lies the strength of this book. The chapters in Part I of this book present ideas that are asserting the need for incorporation of new learning outcomes as well as teaching practices for public policy education. Chapters in Part II document pedagogies tested in different education contexts, such as (i) curricula within different education levels ranging from undergraduate, graduate to leadership programs, (ii) modes of teaching ranging from face-to-face in classroom, synchronous virtual to out-of-classroom teaching and learning, and (iii) disciplines—including public policy, political science, geography and general education, among others. While these chapters draw from authors’ experiences and affiliations to selected Asian countries, we believe that some general insights can be synthesized from them for similar policy programs in other parts of Asia. Education research provides us with frameworks which can help us to explore content and pedagogy for teaching not as separate entities but as knowledge outputs and processes evolved during the praxis of teaching. One such framework is that of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) which can aid in understanding the interlinkages between content and pedagogy in the creation of knowledge for policy education. Shulman (1986, 1987) suggests that there are seven categories of knowledge held by teachers. We extend this categorization to knowledge held by policy educators in general. This includes knowledge of the content being taught, general pedagogical knowledge or means to teach, knowledge of the curriculum, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contexts and knowledge of the aim, objective and usefulness of education. Of interest for this book is one of these seven categories, namely Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). PCK is a blend of content with pedagogical knowledge while being fully aware of student characteristics, curriculum and educational contexts. The focus of PCK is not just the quantum of knowledge but also the quality of that knowledge and how it is integrated to be put into action (Abell 2008). Such knowledge includes examples, metaphors, analogies, illustrations, activities, assignments and demonstrations that make the content more accessible to different learners (Niemelä and Tirri 2018).

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PCK is an academic construct based on the belief that teaching requires more than delivering content knowledge to students, and that student learning is more than absorbing information for an accurate presentation of facts. Different integrative frameworks have evolved over time that have blurred the boundaries of Shulman’s seven knowledge bases (Gess-Newsome and Lederman 2002). Like many others who have used PCK earlier as a topic of research as well as a sense-making framework, we believe in distinguishing Content knowledge and Curriculum knowledge as constituent parts of PCK. Content knowledge of educators as well as their pedagogical knowledge is important for shaping teaching and learning in any discipline. Content knowledge refers to teachers’ awareness of the facts within and across different ways of knowing of any subject to be taught, opportunities and challenges of integration of such facts into a knowledge structure, and finally transforming such disciplinary/interdisciplinary knowledge into educational content that is fit to context. Curriculum knowledge includes awareness of various instructional materials, teaching procedures, and learning objectives. Three sub-categories within Curriculum knowledge are relevant for our discussion: (i) knowledge of alternative curriculum materials i.e. awareness of different means of structuring a course; (ii) lateral curriculum knowledge i.e. awareness of what students are learning outside a teacher’s own course and also tacit knowledge of how concepts to be taught are related or need to be integrated with other concepts within similar courses, same or different disciplines; (iii) vertical knowledge i.e. awareness of what has been previously taught in one’s course and will be taught in future which is important for integration of concepts for students’ holistic learning (Niemela and Tirri 2018; Brant 2006). PCK is more than the sum of content and pedagogy; it is informed by content, theory of pedagogy and curriculum but customized to context. In practice, it has ability to create knowledge by meaningfully blending content-pedagogy-and curriculum for effective learning in a given context. Such a framework can aid in praxis of teaching disciplinary and inter-disciplinary concepts relevant to policy, fitting learning styles and educational contexts. We apply the PCK framework to categorize information from the chapters into three themes for synthesizing key insights for policy education: 1. Gaps in integration of policy research, practice and education, 2. Propositions from theory and praxis to bridge the gaps, and 3. Integration of components of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. The three themes are influenced by Content and Curriculum knowledge, and Integration of

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PCK components. Chapters 2, 6, and 7 explain the need for travel of digital literacy as a learning outcome for policy education from research and practice, i.e., content knowledge. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide insights for Curriculum knowledge as they establish the need for awareness of courses, disciplines, lateral curriculum knowledge and pedagogy theory for ushering innovations in curriculum. Chapters in Part II of the book provide common insights for the integration of PCK components in unique education contexts.

Gaps in Integration of Policy Research, Practice and Education In this section we present the gaps as identified in Chapters 2, 4, 6 and 7 within Part I of this book, focusing on content and curriculum knowledge. These chapters sit within the theme of key trends in policy education. We understand that these trends are not exhaustive by any means but are reflective of important changes occurring in the contemporary policy education landscape especially as we witness disruptions of various kinds to policymaking in general. We live in an age where disruptions owing to global environmental change, civil unrest and populism, digitalization and market shocks and epidemics and pandemics are increasingly becoming part of normal public life. The first gap that Part I of the book points out is in the training on digital skills. Thus policy education has to integrate tools and techniques for foresight, adaptability and learning. Chapter 2 mentions the need to extend competencies of analytical and critical thinking to domains of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) i.e. integration of data literacy and big data skills in content design and teaching practices in policy-related courses. Authors Gleason and Pan-Algarra stress on creating learning environments, mostly in graduate programs with policy practitioners, for hands-on training on “adaptability and application” for use of electronic sources of data, software, coding and computer simulation skills and technologies in areas of public services. They also allude to the opportunity of accessibility and paradox of acceptability of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) (discussed in more detail by Valentine in Chapter 3), in place of more institutionalized and expensive courses, for bridging skill deficits.

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Authors Goyal et al. in Chapter 6 and Permadi and Eka Putri in Chapter 7 continue on the influence of 4IR and illustrate the use of data analytics for public policy research and practice through empirical studies. Goyal et al. highlight three dimensions which add to the promise of big data analytics as compared to conventional inductive approach of policy analysis in this digital era. This includes the ability to move beyond sampling constraints, reduction in sampling error and a shift from causality to prediction. They further argue that application of big data or big data analysis can complement traditional techniques such as content analysis, cost-benefit analysis, econometric evaluation, opinion polling, and surveying. Presenting the value of social media analytics in a similar vein, Permadi and Eka Putri illustrate the role of social media in transparency and accountability in city level governance and policy planning, while cautioning that the skills for responsible use and analytics are unevenly distributed among the Asian cities. Authors Goyal et al., Permadi and Eka Putri, in Chapters 6 and 7 respectively find gaps in the travel of these methods and tools from policy research to curricula for policy studies. Permadi and Eka Putri infer that lack of public policy training and teaching covering content on digital methods lead to reduced use of government’s social media channels as means of information dissemination. Analysis of over 120 public policy institutions by Goyal et al. indicated that only 30% of them offer courses related to big data analytics. They also found high geographic variation in the diffusion of big data analytics in public policy education as 60% of the policy programs with big data analytics were in North America while only about 20% or less in Europe and the rest of the world. Apart from the gap in digital skills of policymakers and practitioners, the communication of science to impact policymaking remains a work in progress. However skilled a policy researcher or practitioner maybe, it takes more than scientific robustness to broker knowledge to policy. In Chapter 4, Wasson uses his exhaustive experience of interdisciplinary research, teaching of multidisciplinary courses and science to policy communication in Australian and Asian contexts to illustrate challenges for the “evidence-based policymaking” paradigm. In highlighting barriers for translation of science to impact policy he argues that policymakers are not engaged early on in scientific inquiries and academics themselves do not often make the scientific framing of results in a form that is easy to comprehend and accessible to policymakers. In the next section we will be discussing some of the propositions that these authors provide

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specific to the gaps identified and more generally how they can be used for innovations in teaching and learning of public policy.

Propositions from Theory and Praxis to Bridge the Gaps Part I of the book goes beyond identifying gaps as chapters also propose new content and learning outcomes for teaching as well as share motivations for innovations in curriculum. While Chapters 6 and 7 point out propositions for bridging the digital gap between policy research, practice and education, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 discuss their unique inspirations for ushering innovations in their curricula. Goyal et al. in Chapter 6 offer three distinct strategies from their research to bridge the digital gap between policy research, practice and education: (i) more multi-country and multi-institutional collaborations for diffusion of big data analytics in Asia; (ii) multi-sectoral collaborations, especially among early adopters of big data analytics, such as in fields like communications, education, healthcare, management and sustainability which can facilitate applications beyond comparative research; and (iii) online accessibility of public policy course syllabi in general and such courses with big data analytics in particular can provide templates to less resourceful institutions and scholars to engage with the topic, learn and apply. Similarly, Permadi and Eka Putri in Chapter 7, underscore the role of practitioners in the field to create capacities for uptake of digital skills in formal policy education, which can be in design of intended learning outcomes of policy related courses or choice of pedagogies to explore citizens’ sentiments to tailor policies accordingly. It is very relevant that the authors of the above mentioned chapters bring out the importance of policy practitioners to contribute in the field of public policy education. This creates the need of integration of tacit knowledge along with content on hard skills into public policy curriculum. We have observed many times that such integration has been often reduced to guest talks and industry visits. Though such exposure is important, there has to be a deliberate attempt to design curriculum to integrate novel content being aware of educational contexts, student characteristics and needs and pedagogical knowledge. This point is illustrated in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 where authors have used their tacit knowledge along with content, curriculum and pedagogical knowledge to present needs and windows of opportunities for innovations in curriculum that

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can have relevance for public policy education. These three chapters focus on what Shulman (1986) refers to as lateral curriculum knowledge or awareness of what students are learning as part of other subjects and to borrow some of these for own course design. Yong and Samavedham in Chapter 5 explain how an innovation in an undergraduate curriculum at NUS was consciously used to introduce skills required to tackle complex policy issues and navigate through disruptions with the vision of nurturing future leaders and empowering them with methods for model-based decision-making. Conceptualization of Residential College 4 within a University Town College Program took inspiration from Jay Forrester’s work on Systems thinking and System dynamics modeling (STSDM). The pioneers of the college felt that discussion, debate and experiential trips were necessary pedagogical strategies but not sufficient for good quality education. There was a firm belief that twenty-first-century problems are best understood and managed by integrating available information from different disciplinary domains as well as stakeholder perspectives using formal approaches involving mathematical representations that are solved using a suitable computer program. Till now, the discussion about design principles of an effective public policy curriculum has mostly engaged with perspectives of educators and researchers and less from a learner’s worldview. Although MOOCs are mentioned by authors in this book as an accessible source for novel content, the challenge of attrition from such courses has been picked up in great depth in Chapter 3. In this chapter, author Valentine tackles the issue of engaging the policy student and sustaining participation through pedagogical strategies that can cater to diverse learning preferences. From the discussion about the gap in training for science to policy communication, in previous section, we have an understanding that a policy practitioner or researcher will need skills beyond scientific robustness to influence policymaking. Author Wasson in Chapter 4, offers three recommendations for pedagogy to tackle this need which we interpret here as important ingredients for curriculum design for public policy: (i) introduction of case studies where the teacher was involved as a researcher such that tacit knowledge of interactions between scientist and policymakers can be shared with students; (ii) cross-disciplinary approach which can range from simple juxtaposition of different forms of knowledge, including local or traditional knowledge of stakeholders to integration of different forms of knowledge using methods like system dynamics, as also

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explained in Chapter 5; and (iii) teaching of advocacy, through role plays and classroom debates, to facilitate policy students to make a conscious choice and more often travel from the role of pure scientist to the role of issue advocate (offering scientific evidence and narrow choice of policy options to issues of allegiance and interest), science arbiter (providing policy options to help policymakers struggling with policy dilemmas) to honest broker of policy alternatives (working in a group to offer a range of policy options and going beyond issue advocacy). A commonality between Chapters 4 and 5 lies in the identification of the need for cross-disciplinarity and integration for policy education. However, Wasson in Chapter 4 acknowledges that such cross-disciplinary curricula may have to deal with the trade-off of discounting disciplinary depth and epistemological differences across disciplines. But still, they can have the ability to expose learners to varying perspectives and create interests to explore in depth further. However, he is mindful of the barriers for such knowledge creation in universities due to existence of disciplinary fiefdoms and hierarchies, examination practices and funding models. He feels that such barriers are more profound in training policy researchers where scholars might encounter examiners with disciplinary strength but less empathy to other perspectives outside the discipline. There is a risk where an examiner may interpret the scholar’s treatment of any discipline as superficial as it may be impossible to have complete command of all the disciplines used in the research. He finally goes on to recommend use of multiple research techniques and collaborations for policy research across disciplines, build coalitions for advocacy and acknowledge multiple policy frameworks and networks to influence use of research contributions. Wasson further acknowledges that there may be operationalization challenges of such curricula due to paradox of evidence itself in a posttruth era and similarity of advocacy with political means of influence which may lead to high risks. We believe that the above recommendation for diversity of pedagogical strategies from Chapter 3 can also be helpful in different education contexts where there is diversity in students, for e.g. multi and interdisciplinary programs (e.g. UTCP of NUS in Chapter 5) as well as core public policy courses (e.g. Masters in Public Policy) which have scope for blended learning or hybrid mode of teaching. Such strategies can be very useful in effective teaching and learning during disruptions like the Covid-19 pandemic where majority of classes are either online or in hybrid mode in the world. Some of these strategies can also facilitate

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inclusive environments for uptake of skills, whether in a face-to-face or virtual class environment, where there may be diversity among learners in their experience, age and level of education, among other characteristics. Curriculum design has to be reoriented to be more application-based and integrative across university disciplines and traditional or experiential knowledge. One of the ways to bring focus on application of theory is to provide opportunities to instructors to share their own policy research and practice as cases but at the same time let learners apply analytical frameworks and methods in their own contexts and interest domains. Public policy needs a cross-or multi-disciplinary curriculum at best but ideally with scope of integration.

Integration of PCK Components: Common Insights and Ways Forward Part II of this book illustrates five unique cases of integration of content and pedagogy in distinct educational contexts. Table 13.1 summarizes the five cases in terms of policy-related concepts which are taught in the modules/courses (i.e. the content), the educational context includingcourse, level of education and also country context, the pedagogical strategy used, and purpose of the teaching (which can either be same or more nuanced than formal learning outcome). Though Chapters 9 and 10 are from the same context and has a common instructor, there is uniqueness in the content, purpose of the teaching and hence the pedagogical strategies used (see Table 13.1). Each chapter provides evidence of learning which range from testimonials from learners and instructors, photographs with narratives from students to more indirect form of evidence like analysis of students’ formative and summative assessments and use of frameworks such as SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) to evaluate learning. From Table 13.1, three key common insights can be drawn for PCK for public policy: (i) teaching is targeted for a more relational aspect of learning i.e. learners are sought to comprehend relationship across concepts apart from grasping individual concepts in-depth, (ii) focus is on experiential learning with the use of active learning tools that can range from group discussion to connect personal experience with concepts to demystify social science jargons, use of serious games to embed learners in dilemmas of real world decision making to student-led fieldwork and partnerships with boundary organizations (i.e. organizations in boundary of

Educational context Multi-disciplinary general Education for undergraduates in Singapore (NUS)

Multi-disciplinary general education for undergraduates in Singapore

Postgraduate diploma in public policy for mid-career civil servants

Political science for undergraduate students in mainland China and general education in Taiwan

Concept

Nexus between land use, land use change and environmental change

Linkage between Tragedy of commons and disaster resilience

Street level bureaucracy, Legal pluralism, Linear vs interactive mode of policy, Policy output vs outcome

Comparative public policy analysis

Table 13.1 Summary of chapters from Part II Purpose

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(continued)

Inclusiveness and appreciation of cultural differences and diversity; Holistic understanding of complex issues; Community engagement and social awareness Anticipation-gaming-reflection-model Application of Systems formulation with qualitative & Thinking and System quantitative data Dynamics to explore plurality in society and unpack principles of adaptive governance Group discussions to demystify concepts, Conceptual tool kit to make participants’ connect their diagnose and fill experience of service to concepts and implementation gap co-create knowledge which aids as “supplementary material” for teaching Teaming students from two distinct Equip students with the contexts, mainland China and Taiwan mindsets and skills to through use of online (we-chat and think and analyze public zoom) and actual visits policies through a comparative perspective for better understanding and empathy to policies in home country and region

Use of participatory tool, scaffolding with faculty and local experts and partnership for impact

Pedagogical strategy

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Educational context Geography for mixed group of Ministry of Education (Singapore) teachers and graduate students

Concept

Urban waterscape in the Global South

Table 13.1 (continued)

Student-led international fieldwork, reflections on positionality

Pedagogical strategy Amalgamation of physical and human geography and co-creation of knowledge with students

Purpose

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science and policy and can be ideal spaces for honest brokerage of knowledge; discussed in Chapter 3) to gain capacity in inquiry and empathy; and (iii) that the classroom is not yet dead, but has evolved into spaces of reflection and social learning rather than spaces for passive listening to instruction.

Conclusion In conclusion, we believe that there is a need for better integration between policy research, practice and education for travel of certain concepts and skills from research to education as content and intended learning outcomes for teaching so that capacities are created for digital literacy for policymaking and analysis, and science to policy communication. The book also focuses on the need for Content knowledge, Pedagogical knowledge, and Curriculum knowledge and its blend with tacit knowledge of educators and/or researchers to create innovations in policy-related curricula. Further, the common insights from the integration of PCK components from the selected case studies of Part II of the book illustrate a focus on relationships across policy concepts for content, pedagogies for experiential learning and the evolution of classrooms as spaces of reflection and social learning. We argue that a framework from education research such as PCK can help in giving emphasis on content as well as means to make this content accessible for different audiences, thereby enhancing the satisfaction of learners and impact on their learning. An integrative framework such as PCK can help policy educators to share knowledge on teaching and learning as it gives a structure to frame content, connect across disciplines and courses, and adopt pedagogical strategies useful in an educational context. It can help in the creation of new knowledge to improve the accessibility of content and its comprehension by different types of learners, prepare content for professional development of policy educators and foster partnerships with learners, and policy researchers and practitioners. Such means of cross-learning are especially important for policy education given the disciplinary fuzziness and need for interdisciplinarity in public policy. The effort put forth in the form of this book is a small step in this direction and we see its usefulness for cross-learning among educators and researchers.

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References Abell, S. K. (2008). Twenty years later: Does pedagogical content knowledge remain a useful idea? International Journal of Science Education, 30(10), 1405–1416. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690802187041. Brant, J. (2006). Subject knowledge and pedagogic knowledge: Ingredients for good teaching? An English perspective. Edukacja, 94(2), 60–77. Gess-Newsome, J., and Lederman, N. G. (Eds.). (2001). Examining pedagogical content knowledge: The construct and its implications for science education (Vol. 6). Springer Science & Business Media. Niemelä, M. A., and Tirri, K. (2018). Teachers’ knowledge of curriculum integration: A current challenge for Finnish subject teachers. In Contemporary pedagogies in teacher education and development, pp. 119–132. Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22.

Index

A Asian universities Chang Gung University, 216 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), 31 Indian School of Public Policy, 30 Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, 30 Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 87 Management Development Institute, 147 Nanyang Technological University, 31, 229 National Institute of Education, 229 National University of Singapore, 29, 82 Residential colleges, 186. See also Asian universities, National University of Singapore Seoul National University, 31 Sichuan University, 215 Univeritas Gadjah Mada, 140

Yale-NUS College, 20

B Big data, 32 Asia, 113 governance, 113 multi-sectoral collaboration, 114 privacy, 104 public policy, 100 smart cities, 102 Boundaries of teaching cross-disciplinary, 75, 220 cross training, 87 integrative research, 75 out of classroom learning, 82, 201

C Case studies, 74 disaster risk reduction workshops, 72 history and flood governance, 74 social media analytics, 126 Collaborative learning

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. Nair and N. Varma (eds.), Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5864-8

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classrooms, 35, 87 diversity, 84, 85, 162, 220 group discussion, 154 knowledge co-creation, 228 MOOC, 48 negotiation, 90 peer learning, 49, 195, 217 residential colleges, 83 social media, 216 student exchange, 220 study trips, 189. See also Collaborative learning, diversity video chat, 225 Complexity climate crisis, 186 human-environment relations, 229 Land-EnviRonment Nexus (LERN), 185 non-linearity, 87, 105 wicked problems, 90 E E-government, 20, 31 accountability, 136 E-learning Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), 23, 39, 223 student attrition, 40 Evidence based policymaking, 61–65 climate change, 67 F Fields of study economics, 3, 16 Geography, 229 political science, 26, 112, 218 Fourth Industrial Revolution automation, 27 digital disruption, 104 digital literacy, 30, 125 ICT, 100

machine learning, 104, 105 VUCA, 82 Future of the policy school, 4

G Games, 90 disaster resilience, 171 forest@Risk, 169 Serious Games, 168 tragedy of commons, 169

H Higher education massification, 17 vocationalization, 17

L Learning styles, 41 Cognitive Learning Theory, 45 constructivism, 45, 46 critical thinking, 169 Felder-Silverman Index, 41 Kolb’s learning inventory, 41 student learning, 191 student-led, 228 VARK model, 41

M Methods public perception survey, 129 text mining, 102, 106 topic modeling, 101

O Out-of-classroom teaching participatory action research, 207 photovoice, 189, 205

INDEX

P Pedagogical Content Knowledge propositions for policy education, 243 Pedagogies, 6 cross-learning, 161 emotions, 232 experiential learning, 149, 157 fieldwork, 228, 229, 233. See also Pedagogies, experiential learning informal conversations, 232 interviews, 219 narrative, 150 reflexivity, 231 scaffolding, 205 self-reflection, 152 Seminar, 83 SOLO taxonomy, 191 stakeholder workshops, 193 Policy challenges climate change, 187 declining fertility rates, 221 healthcare access, 221 Policy education, 16 Big data, 107–109 communication, 5, 6, 128 comparative public policy, 214 Covid-19 pandemic, 17, 223 curriculum, 91, 148, 214 demystifying theory, 161 general education, 218 integration with research and practice, 241 interdisciplinary, 17, 25, 26 multi-disciplinarity, 3 multi-disciplinary, 26, 88 real-world understanding, 28, 43, 92, 156, 182 social media, 139 think-tanks, 6 trans-disciplinary, 189

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Policy learning capacity, 93 North-South epistemological divide, 162 Policy process interactive model, 156 outputs vs outcomes, 159 role of ideas, 153 Policy programs Big data courses, 107 masters in public administration, 26 masters in Public Policy, 26 Post Graduate Diploma, 147 Policy training civil servants, 148 practitioners, 3 undergraduate, 218

S Science-policy interface advocacy, 76 Honest brokerage, 65 legal pluralism, 157 rationalism, 155 street level bureaucracy, 156 Skills 21st century skills, 2, 3, 92 creativity, 2, 16, 35 lifelong learning, 94 reskilling and upskilling, 30 Social media citizen engagement, 127 E-governance, 127 Jakarta, 129–139 online student discussions, 216 Seoul, 129–139 Singapore, 129–139 transparency of governance, 135 Student evaluation, 182 formative feedback, 52, 172 student participation, 220

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Systems dynamics, 86 mathematical modeling, 92 Systems Thinking, 86 problem conceptualization, 173

U University Town College Program (UTCP), 83, 84, 166, 181, 182, 208, 244, 245