INNOVATION IN TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESSES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CAREER: THE WORKSHOP PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Abstract

This article reviews an innovative experience the career of Public Administration imparted by the University of Chile, an initiative implemented from 2009 in the professional training workshops included in the curriculum. This innovation process consisted of four phases: (i) diagnosis of the changes the political and institutional environment have faced in which future Public Administrators will develop, and the skills needed to understand this environment and make decisions; (ii) design, incorporating a sequential and concatenated logic in the five workshops included in the curriculum, making a commitment with participative methodologies to develop or strengthen skills previously diagnosed; (iii) implementation, creating a teaching team that discusses the program, the activities, and then agrees on a “script” for all sections of the same workshop, achieving a coordinated and consistent work across levels; and (iv) evaluation, the teaching team has to be particularly careful to utilize the same evaluations tools, facilitating the aggregation of data to make improvements in subsequent versions of the same workshop. In this document the first two phases will be portrayed, in order to make evidente the possibilities of innovation that can be created by using the promotion of competences strategy in rigid and professionalizing curriculums. This innovation acquires value and stability over time, as they interact with a complex environment and the citizen demands that new Public Administrators must face.