Teaching Public Administration with Pop Culture

This book introduces faculty teaching in public administration and public affairs programs to using popular (pop) culture as a pedagogical approach. Pop culture allows for humanistic learning where students can better connect with material through a common framework, and digital technologies have changed the accessibility and diversity of content available to use in the classroom. Here authors Erin L. Borry and Peter A. Jones build a framework for using pop culture in public administration courses, and in so doing, detail the richness and range of media through which pop culture can be accessed, and demonstrate how best to integrate different forms of pop culture to achieve various learning goals.

There are many opportunities to use pop culture in one's teaching, both in terms of breadth of content available and practical applicability of the public administration degree. This book offers some examples of pop culture that instructors can readily adapt for use in their own courses, as well as sample assignments and various types of group work, including simulations. This book is of enormous benefit to those teaching public administration to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to those teaching in the areas of political science, civics, social studies, and government in higher and K-12 education settings.