Course Title: Policy Making

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Policy Making

Credit Points: 12.00

Terms

Course Code

Campus

Career

School

Learning Mode

Teaching Period(s)

POLI1052

City Campus

Postgraduate

365H Global, Urban and Social Studies

Face-to-Face

Sem 1 2007,
Sem 1 2008,
Sem 1 2009,
Sem 1 2010,
Summer2011,
Sem 1 2011,
Sem 1 2012,
Sem 1 2017,
Sem 1 2018,
Sem 1 2019,
Sem 1 2020,
Sem 1 2022,
Sem 1 2023,
Sem 1 2024

Flexible Terms

Course Code

Campus

Career

School

Learning Mode

Teaching Period(s)

POLI1052

City Campus

Postgraduate

365H Global, Urban and Social Studies

Face-to-Face

PGRDFlex18 (All)

Course Coordinator: Kent Goldsworthy

Course Coordinator Phone: +61 3 9925 2674

Course Coordinator Email: kent.goldsworthy@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Location: Building 37, Floor 4, Room 12B

Course Coordinator Availability: By appointment


Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

None


Course Description

This course is about making sense of how public policy is made. Public policy is the collection of decisions and instruments used by governments to respond to the diverse and complex mix of social, environmental, economic and cultural problems, issues and circumstances which confront and challenge communities, regions and nations. There are a number of models which attempt to explain how policy making happens which typically adopt sausage factory production or cyclic modes of analysis, reducing policy making to a rational, objective process of steps and stages. Deborah Stone, and others, suggest we use other forms of analysis to understand the paradox and ambiguity of policy making. This course takes Stone’s advice and so is designed develop your policy analysis capacity so that you can engage with the complexity and challenges of developing political responses to a diverse range of often enduring and difficult problems and issues. The course is designed for postgraduate students wanting to develop understanding and familiarity with the ideas, processes and politics of policy making. Within this framework, it is the task of the course to support your development as critically aware policy actors.


Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

 

In this course you will develop and be assessed on the following graduate capabilities:

• Policy development and management

• Critical analysis and conceptual development

• Policy making

• Ethics and values


Upon successful completion of the course you will be able to:

• understand and critique policy making ideas, processes and politics;

• critically analyse the interplay between social, economic and political circumstances, and the policy responses developed by contemporary policy-makers;

• provide analysis and critique of policy cases, research and policy literature which is well written, evidence based and soundly argued.


Overview of Learning Activities

Workshops provide the key sequential learning space for the course. Moreover they are the primary point of connection and engagement with you. Workshops open up key ideas and themes for thinking about policy making, providing an overview of relevant research and literature for each topic, an opportunity to discuss the course reading and enabling you to use the concepts to inform both your case study analysis and final paper. They are designed to be interactive and draw upon the wealth of policy expertise within the student group. Workshops also provide a space for you and your team members to work on your case study presentation. You are expected to attend all workshops in this course.

Course learning activities utilise a range of resources designed to immerse students in building understanding and critical capacity in policy making. These include: - • workshops – discussion, reading review and activities related to the policy making topic and policy case studies • policy case studies – students will work in small teams to analyse specified policy cases (available on Canvas) along with supporting research, journal articles, media, Hansard debates etc • topic reading - relevant policy literature available on Canvas.


Overview of Learning Resources

Course reading will be available on Canvas


Overview of Assessment

You will be assessed on the above learning outcomes and capabilities. Assessment tasks may include but are not limited to a policy case study and a policy analysis paper. Feedback will be given on all assessment tasks.

  • If you have a long term medical condition and/or disability it may be possible to negotiate to vary aspects of the learning or assessment methods. You can contact the program coordinator or the Disability Liaison Unit if you would like to find out more.
  • A student charter http://www.rmit.edu.au/about/studentcharter summarises your responsibilities as an RMIT student as well as those of your teachers.
  • Your course assessment conforms to RMIT assessment principles, regulations, policies, procedures and instructions which are available for review online: http://www.rmit.edu.au/policies/academic#assessment