Building graduates’ political fluency through primary source case studies
Lindy EdwardsAbstract
The need to improve students’ political fluency and produce graduates equipped for the ‘real world of policy‐making’ has led to the creation of an experimental course. In this course, students use Parliamentary primary source documents to track a policy issue through the political decision‐making process, identifying the factors impacting the outcome. The detailed engagement with the primary sources in the policy development process makes this a rich applied learning experience that takes students into real‐world policy‐making. However, a high level of explicit instruction is required to empower students to navigate the complexity of this task. This article outlines the lessons learnt about the guidance required to facilitate this valuable learning experience so that others might build upon it.
Points for practitioners
Teaching policy histories that integrate public policy with politics helps to prepare ‘job ready’ graduates. Students gain a deep understanding of the policy process by tracing issues through the primary policy documents and creating the policy histories. A high level of explicit instruction is required to enable students to do this effectively. They need an introduction to the institutions, to be directed to specific resources, to be guided on how to present the case studies, and to be given theory primers to help get critical traction on the material. Parliamentary resources such as Bills Digests and Committee Inquiry Reports are a useful gateway for students into these policy histories.