Re-thinking policy analysis: new approaches to learning and teaching cultural awareness

Fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in public policy education is essential to connect theory to practice. Specifically, our unit of analysis for our chapter is a semester-long assignment from a Master of Public Administration Program (MPA) core class (POS 571, Policy Analysis). In this course, a required learning objective is for students “to critically evaluate and advance our understanding of cultural awareness through the exploration of power, representation, empathy, prejudgments, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the public sector through self-reflection, readings, discussions, and assignments.” This chapter focuses on how to use a semester-long policy project where students embody the role of a policy analyst. We argue that applying cultural awareness as a learning framework increases our students’ ability to work in a diverse and changing workforce.