Principles and Practices of Public Adminstration, Part 4: Public Budgeting

The constructivist movement in higher education is changing the way in which many of us view public administration pedagogy. The nonlinear nature of our field demands that its participants deal with myriad ill-structured problems and competing priorities. Didactic methods that emphasize lecture over learning do not sufficiently equip graduates to deal with this, however.

In order to manage the tension between "higher-order thinking skills and lower-order information," the problem solver must be able to make associations between what he or she is learning and its attendant conditions. If public administration education is to make intelligible the complexities of the real world, our programs must mirror current realities and our students must make mental links to these realities.

Accordingly, we must recast the student from a passive receptacle for information to an active constructor of his or her own knowledge. Successful knowledge transfer is the result of extensive involvement with concepts—something that best occurs when educators are integrators of the learning experience and students take an active part in the process.

It is with such a constructivist model in mind that we have compiled this comprehensive book to advance the study and practice of public administration.

Structurally, Principles and Practices of Public Administration consists of 11 major units, each of which maps to a generally accepted subfield of public administration. Within each major unit, prominent scholars within the field offer diverse perspectives for a balanced treatment of that area.