Journal of Public Affairs Education at 25: Topics, trends, and authors

ABSTRACT

Upon the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE), this article examines its development from 1995 to 2018. Many scholars in public affairs and administration have published in its pages, and the journal offers a large variety of articles on curriculum, pedagogy, and educational philosophy. This article presents the results of a qualitative content analysis of topics, as well as a quantitative bibliometric analysis of authorship patterns. Topics such as diversity and inclusion, teaching methodology, and the nature of public affairs education play prominent roles on the journal’s pages. Collaboration among authors has become more common. Gender representation has experienced changes over time. International authors also contribute. The co-author network structure of JPAE is relatively sparse but shows potential for greater collaboration. Finally, this article identifies directions for future exploration in the journal.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• pedagogy
• educational philosophy
• bibliometric analysis
• authorship patterns

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Kathleen Hallihan, Assistant Dean of Students and Instruction, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, for her helpful comments and suggestions. We also are very grateful for the information Stacy Drudy, NASPAA’s data center director, provided about undergraduate programs.

Notes

1. Perry’s 15 topics were: classroom techniques, distance education, program administration, student affairs, public policy, health care management, public affairs theory, international public affairs, mentoring, diversity, nonprofit management, professional ethics, program evaluation, quantitative methods, and undergraduate education.

2. Frederickson organized his topics according to the three buckets, and in each bucket by order of number of articles: a) content or what is being taught: ethics (13), environment (6), comparative administration (6), master’s degree programs 5–3 on core curriculum, 2 on capstone), nonprofit administration (4), performance measurement and program evaluation (4), public management and management science (4), undergraduate public administration education (4), doctoral public administration education (4), gender and women (3), research methods (2), budget and finance (2), law (1), emergency management (1); b) pedagogy or how it is taught: internet and eteaching (11), distance education (7), cases and narratives (6), learning outcomes (6), experiential and service learning (5), movies and other media (3), surveys (3), good teaching practices (3), classroom experiments (2), adult learning (2), texts (1), mentoring (1), class research (1), oral history (1), and learning journals (1); c) educational philosophy: no indication of numbers but about pragmatism, the future of public service, ranking of degree programs, Dwight Waldo’s role in PA education, and globalization of public affairs education.

3. It is beyond this paper to compare the JPAE network to other journal networks, but one example is an analysis of the journal Scientometrics from 1978 to 2004, which specializes in the analysis of scientific coauthor networks, which shows a density of 0.03, 10 times greater than that observed in JPAE (Hou, Kretschmer, & Lie 2007).

4. Education has two purposes: on the one hand to form the mind, on the other to train the citizen. The Athenians concentrated on the former, the Spartans on the latter. The Spartans won, but the Athenians were remembered. (Russell, 1962 [1931], p. 243; see also Raadschelders forthcoming).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jos Raadschelders

Jos Raadschelders is a professor and associate dean of faculty at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University. He is also affiliated with the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His interests include the nature of the study of public administration, administrative history, and comparative government.

Travis Whetsell

Travis Whetsell is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy & Administration at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in public policy and management from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, as well as his M.P.A. and B.A. in political science from Texas State University. His research interests include collaborative governance, science and technology policy, social network analysis, and philosophy of public administration.

Ana-Maria Dimand

Ana-Maria Dimand is a doctoral candidate in public affairs at Florida International University. Her research focuses on issues related to government contracting, sustainability, environmental policy, and collaboration.

Katie Kieninger

Katie Kieninger is a student in the Master of Public Administration program at the John Glenn college of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University. She will start in January the doctoral program in curriculum and instruction at the Patton College of Education, Ohio University.