Curriculum redesign of a two year mid-career public administration master program

Since 2004 there is a two year mid-career program in public administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This program was has been adjusted several times in the last decade, but always on a minor level:... [ view full abstract ]

Since 2004 there is a two year mid-career program in public administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This program was has been adjusted several times in the last decade, but always on a minor level: e.g. two courses that were merged, or certain aspects of different courses merged into a new course. All these changes were to accommodate the changing challenges the public professionals that entered the program were facing. However, the last couple of years there has been more significant changes and more wicked challenges that these professionals are facing. For instance, the professionals have to work together with stakeholders in public service delivery much more than a decade ago, but also organisations have internally been adjusted to working with output parameters or other processes than professionals were used to. This has led the program coordinators to rethink the program more rigorously. Based on various theoretical and didactical literature, but also expertise of program directors elsewhere, the program will change in content as well as didactical design: i.e. a serious curriculum make-over.

In this paper first the theoretical, pedagogical and didactical underpinning of the curriculum design will be discussed. Then the whole transition of the old to the new program will be demonstrated based on this underpinning. The whole process of the curriculum design and the separate courses will be discussed. As we are in the middle of the redesign, we will discuss the difficulties we encounter in the transition process and we will also demonstrate certain redesigns of courses that will be completed in the redesign of the complete curriculum. The paper will raise and discuss certain questions that need to be addressed when redesigning curricula.