Seventy five years of public administration teaching and learning in public Administration and development: Looking back and looking forward

Abstract

Through a narrative review of 75 years of research in public administration teaching and learning in the journal of Public Administration and Development, this article focusses on the challenges and evolution of approaches for decolonizing countries. These challenges are contextualised within broader debates within the discipline of public administration. Three themes are explored: the assumption of universality of knowledge; appropriate contextualization and the applicability of knowledge; and teaching in and for decolonizing countries. Research interest in this topic has nonetheless declined in recent years, so three areas for future research are suggested: the need to support an empirical agenda which privileges the experiences of managing the tensions between imposed and indigenous systems; the need to support scholars in decolonizing countries to critically reflect on and share their approaches to teaching and learning; and the need to support a research agenda on teaching public administration which embraces more flexible and relational models for public administration and includes diverse ontologies.