Museum education is a dynamic and evolving field, requiring a commitment to continuous professional growth and the integration of best practices as they develop. As the field has shifted towards creating participant-centered experiences that encourage active learning and dialogue, museum educators have been seeking new ways to enhance their…

For workers employed in the public and nonprofit sectors, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program offers the potential for full forgiveness of federal student loans for those with 10 years of full-time work experience. A year-long waiver issued by the Department of Education in 2021 to address administrative problems in program access…

The Biden administration is implementing a new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for federal student loans called Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE). The SAVE plan adds to existing IDR plans and reduces borrowers' monthly payments and shortens the time certain borrowers must repay before their debts are forgiven compared with current options.…

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens American lives and disrupts daily routines, we continue to see front-line public servants step forward to battle the virus with persistence. Given the increasingly polarized COVID environment, the natural inclination is to ask: what is motivating these public servants to persevere in their work despite the…

For administrators of higher education public service and outreach (PSO) units at public research institutions, the opportunities for service to their states are broad. These administrators' efforts in research, technical assistance, and training address critical needs in their states. Yet all units face limited resources, and the administrators…

Aspects of public service often involve tasks sometimes considered taboo, including working with grit, grime, blood, guts, grease, and stigmatized populations. Yet scholarship in our field directly incorporating dirty work remains limited yet growing. Importantly, if MPA students are not trained in how to work with and manage public sector…

Many professionals are confronted in their practice with clients who show post-traumatic symptoms (PTS). "Trauma-informed practice" helps professionals recognize, understand, and appropriately respond to the effects of trauma. This work presents the "Trauma-Informed Practice for Workers in Public Service Settings" -- TIPS…

A challenge public organizations face in motivating their workforces is the strong union influence. In 2018, the United States Supreme Court abolished agency fees in the public sector, changing the landscape of union membership. In examining the unique motivational factors of public sector employees, Perry and Wise developed a theory called public…

This study evaluates faculty efforts to accommodate graduate students in the Tarleton State University Masters of Public Administration and Masters of Criminal Justice programs called away from classes in the first weeks of the 2017 academic year as disaster responders called into duty by Hurricane Harvey. The evaluation employed a theoretical…

Public opinion toward teachers and other public sector workers is an important factor in Ontario provincial politics. This article uses public opinion data to measure, and identify the correlates of, resentment and admiration of these groups, and to identify the relationship between these attitudes and support for political parties in Ontario.…

Public managers play a critical role in making and implementing environmental policies. Pre-service training provides an important opportunity to influence the environmental attitudes of public managers. Nevertheless, we know little about this influence. This research employs a classic experiment to examine the effects of a pre-service training…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of senior management training on transfer of learning among public officers trained by Kenya school of Government by establishing whether training interventions yield corresponding increase in the level of trainees' knowledge, skills and attitude. F-test was used to find out whether there was…

This paper explores how alumni of a multi-term public service program understand the connection between the program and their career development. Qualitative data were collected from 393 alumni based on six open-ended survey questions. While career and professional development is not an explicit goal of the program, a thematic analysis suggests…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently projected record-breaking growth in 2021, but it is premature to celebrate this rosy macroeconomic picture. In the same document, the CBO also made an alarming prediction: The U.S. labor market will not fully recover until 2024. Recent U.S. jobs reports reveal the depth of the pandemic-created…

This paper explores the thinking and practice of 'action inquiry' an embedded learning practice that can help navigate complexity when practising change together. The paper uses examples from social contexts where there are concerns about community wellbeing and health care. These are drawn from collaborative or collective leadership development…