Postgraduate Course: Policy Work (SCPL11030)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | What does 'policy' consist of? What do 'policy makers' do when they are making policy? What is 'policy work' and how is it done? Following the practice turn in policy studies, this course is designed to equip students to think about policy making as a form of action or work. It seeks to explore the microsociology of the policy process, drawing on a range of case studies from different contexts and disciplines. |
| Course description |
Policy Work attends to the 'who' and 'how' of policy making. How does policy happen, in fact? Who are the policy makers, and how is policy made?
The course has two principal elements: the first focuses on figures (the public official, the elected representative and the diplomat) and the second on practices, including the meeting (committees, consultations and informal encounters) as well as other forms of communication in talk and text (the drafting and publication of speeches, interviews, memoranda, position statements, budgets and reports).
In these ways, the course aims to capture policy making in some of its essential social forms. It makes no a priori distinction between the local, the national and the international, or between the disciplines that might be used to understand them. Its intellectual roots are diverse: it draws not only on practice theory but on a range of other approaches across the social sciences.
The course is delivered in two-hour workshop sessions, which consist for the most part in the discussion of ethnographic case studies. It is assessed by a single course paper, in which students research and write a case study of their own.
Policy Work is designed for students on the MSc Public Policy and related taught postgraduate programmes in Social and Political Science. It's especially concerned to attract students wanting to use and reflect on their own experience of policy making in any form.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 35 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Summative Assessment Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
156 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Course paper, 100% |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- develop and articulate a deep appreciation of the ways in which policy making is grounded in human action and interaction;
- demonstrate an advanced understanding of the precepts and parameters of practice-based social theory as applied to policy making;
- demonstrate critical and theoretical ability and imagination in identifying, investigating and analysing a specific instance or aspect of policy making in practice;
- critically reflect on their own and others' practical and professional experience of policy work.
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Reading List
Wagenaar, H (2004) ''Knowing' the rules: administrative work as practice', Public Administration Review 64 (6) 643 656
Wodak, R (2009) 'One day in the life of an MEP', in Wodak, R The Discourse of Politics in Action: politics as usual, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan
Neumann, I B (2005) 'To be a diplomat', International Studies Perspectives 6 72-93
Colebatch, H K (2006) 'What work makes policy?', Policy Sciences 39 (4) 309-321
Freeman, R (2019) 'Meeting, talk and text: policy and politics in practice', Policy and Politics 47 (1) 37-56
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Graduates of this course will have acquired a realistic and detailed understanding of occupational environments in which policy is conceived, developed and carried out. In doing so:
they will have learned to appreciate the significance of the seemingly mundane to the task of governance, and to attend to what is taken for granted in the 'doings and sayings' of everyday workplace activity;
they will have developed skills of interpretation and communication through the collaborative reading and discussion of ethnographic case studies;
they will have shown the independent ability to investigate and interrogate the world of practice by interviewing, observation and/or the analysis of documents;
they will enhance their personal and professional autonomy by drawing on the theoretical and empirical resources made available in the course to reflect on their own experience and future practice.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Richard Freeman
Tel: (0131 6)50 4680
Email: richard.freeman@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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