I asked lecturers in the interviews about the content covered in their modules. Strong evidence of ER+ was found in the following excerpt: “[The Public Office Management
module looks at]... an official in the front, front office duties, ventilation, how should the office be laid out, it’s very practical.” (Interview: Rebecca). This extract seemed
at first glance to be ER- as she started off commenting on qualities of a secretary. However, as Rebecca unpacked these qualities, she listed a set of skills or procedures that involved office duties and office layout, which suggested ER+.
Natasha’s response to the questions of what students needed to know in the Public Decision-Making module was an example of ER+: “the message we try and get
across to them is that they need to know the fundamentals of decision-making, the rational process of decision-making as well as ... the dynamics of legislation issues”.
Natasha had conceptualised decision-making as a set of procedures which involved “fundamentals” and “a process” rather than as being related to the possession of a particular disposition, which would have indicated SR+.
Sam strongly foregrounded ER+ throughout his interview and indicated that the Public Resources Management module concerned: “…conceptual explanation of the
practices, then the arrangements that we have in the government, the role of the constitution and the legislature because they have the authority to make laws for the utilisation of resources and they have control over it and now other concepts, like what is human resources, what is finance information?” (Interview: Sam).
On the question of the knowledge students needed to learn in the Public Resources Management module, Sam commented on knowledge gaps in the module “if it were
to be restructured so that students have basics in mathematics and a little bit of business knowledge… ”. In addition, areas of knowledge that the module currently
addressed included: “Logistics …[and] human resources management, we go into
programme management, project management and things like that. So it is very necessary that you need certain basic knowledge obviously.” (Interview: Sam).
Rebecca’s response to the question of content in the Public Service Delivery Module also underscored the prevalence of ER+ in her module: “Value of community
participation in building local democracy so I want them to discuss community participation, what its value is and then how does that apply to local democracies, and improving policies.” (Interview: Rebecca).
The knowledge in the Public Service Delivery Module, firstly, made propositions about communication participation, what it was and its value, ‘the why’ of improving policies and ‘the who’. Secondly, it was also procedural, knowing how to apply community participation policies. It was not, however, discussed in terms of particular belief systems or ideological approaches, as would be expected if community participation were presented from a strong SR+ perspective.
Akhona downplayed theories, which was seemingly ER-, in the following response: “I
only go into detail with the theories at the third year level. However, ER+ was
noticeable in his overview of the content of the Self-Management module: “I mean I
get to organising one of the principles of public administration… to issues like internalisation … the EBC training as well….to strategy and accountability, which is part of self management and then the possibility of enhancing effectiveness and efficiency. … I explain what self management is about…. if they understand theconcept and there are a lot of definitions you need to unpack and explain them:… we talk about conceptual understanding of these types of terms…” (Interview:
Akhona). Even though Akhona may not have been engaging with propositional knowledge, he still focused far more on knowledge (ER+) than on knowers (SR+)
but conceptualised knowledge in the Self-Management module in terms of procedural knowledge.
Natasha was unequivocal about the role of knowledge in the Public Decision-Making module: “It’s more theoretical... I mean you can’t tell me green paper is the colour of
the page. You know, they need to know exactly green paper is. The knowledge is important, yes absolutely... There’s a lot of theory.” (Interview: Natasha). The term
‘theory’ was repeatedly used in the data in the everyday sense of ‘facts’ rather than in the scientific sense of a tested system of ideas used to explain a phenomenon. But this fairly simple conception of ‘theory’ nonetheless indicated a strong ER+ in the curriculum.
The following extracts show that the knowledge in the first-year PM Diploma was fairly low level and of an introductory nature but still ER+: “At this level it’s more
conceptual….at the first year I don’t expect them to be that critical but if you are, that’s fine” (Interview: Sam) and “We move on to legislation and public policy documents and then right towards the end we look at the process of policy making because now they have the policies there, in place, what was the process that brought about this policy? So I don’t go into too much detail because it’s first year”
(Interview: Natasha).
Having shown that lecturers strongly foregrounded ER+ in the PM Diploma, I now discuss the strengths of ER in textbooks.