A Reflection on the Force Point of Participatory Teaching and Public Employees’ Collaborative Competency Building
Lung-Teng Hu*, Kuan-Chiu Tseng**
Abstract
While public agencies are recently apt to address the complicated and wicked problems with cross-agency or cross-sector collaborations as a solution model, public employees’ collaborative competencies are also getting more important. On the other hand, participatory teaching/ learning technique, rather than traditional lectures, is largely encouraged to be applied in civil servant training programs in the last decade. However, it is still yet to be known whether participatory learning techniques, such as situational exercise or role playing, are more suitable than others for public employees’ collaborative competency building. Moreover, what would be the advantages as well as the limitations when we are teaching cross-boundary coordination and collaboration in the public sector by using participatory learning technique? In this regard, this paper aims to clarify what could be the best force-point of participatory learning technique in building public employees’ collaborative competencies by analyzing the feedbacks provided by the trainees who attended the training course of cross-boundary coordination in the Civil Service Development Institute of the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, Executive Yuan.
Keywords: cross-boundary coordination, collaborative competency, participatory learning, force point of teaching
* Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy, National Taipei University, e-mail: hult@gm.ntpu.edu.tw.
** Associate Professor, Department of Civic Education and Leadership, National Taiwan Normal University, e-mail: kctseng@ntnu.edu.tw.