PPA 296L
Collaborative Governance Advanced Practice
Summer, 2006
David Booher, M.A., M.S.P Meeting Place and Time:
Senior Policy Advisor and Location: MND 3007
Laura Kaplan, M.C.R., Associate
9AM-5PM, June 9-10, July
Center for Collaborative Policy 7-8, Aug. 4, 5 & 12.
1303 Street, Suite 250 Office hours: By appointment
(916) 445-2079 Modoc Hall 2006
dbooher@berkeley.edu
Prerequisites: PPA 270 and PPA 271 or the permission of the Instructor.
Course Description
Practice driven, highly participatory course for professionals who require more advanced skills in collaborative methods. Topics include conflict analysis and assessment, analysis of advocacy speech, public participation, working with the media, and interagency networks. Focuses on active learning with practice in a wide variety of collaborative skills.
Course Content
This is practice-driven, highly participatory course geared toward mid-career professionals who desire to increase their practical skills at using collaborative methods in their current careers or other public policy settings. Students will practice a wide variety of advanced collaborative skills through scenarios, role plays, fish bowls, and facilitation of thoughtful class discussion.
Participants will increase their skill at applying the core values of collaboration and will gain familiarity with techniques of analyzing conflict and advocacy behavior. They will practice integrating these skills into a variety of settings such as collaborative groups, inter-organizational networks, internal group process, and public participation. Students will also broaden their conception of collaborative practice beyond the concept of neutrality and explore how collaborative techniques can be useful in internal organizational and advocacy roles. Although students will have opportunities to practice group and interpersonal facilitation, this is not a stand-up facilitation training course.
Description of Expected Learning Objectives
As a result of this course, students will be able to:
Required Readings
Peter Block. 2000. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used. Jossey-Bass.
Susan Carpenter and W.J.D. Kennedy. 2001. Managing Public Disputes: A Practical Guide for Professionals in Government, Business, and Citizen’s Groups. Jossey-Bass.
Bernard S. Mayer. 2004. Beyond Neutrality: Confronting the Crisis in Conflict Resolution. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
William W. Wilmot and Joyce L. Hocker. 2005. Interpersonal Conflict, 7th edition. McGraw-Hill.
John M. Kamensky and Thomas J. Burlin, Collaboration: Using Networks and Partnerships. 2004. Rowland Littlefield.
Network Structures: Working Differently and Changing Expectations, Robyn Keast, Myrna P. Mandel, Kerry Brown, and Geoffrey Woolcock, Public Administration Review (Vol. 54, No. 3), 2004.
David E. Booher and Judith Innes, Complexity and Adaptive Policy Systems: CALFED as an Emergent Form of Governance for Sustainable Management of Contested Resources, Paper presented to the International Society of Systems Sciences, 2006.
Stages of a Collaborative Policy Process, Center for Collaborative Policy*
Conditions Needed for a Collaborative Process, Center for Collaborative Policy*
Conditions for Authentic Dialogue, Center for Collaborative Policy*
Principles of Collaborative Public Involvement, Center for Collaborative Policy course handout
The Ladder of Inference, course handout
CCP training materials on advocacy and collaborative public participation.
Additional materials may be provided by Center for Collaborative Policy.
*Available from www.csus.edu/ccp/
Recommended Text
Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger. 1996. Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. New Society Publishers.
Course Requirements
The course will take place over seven days: three two-day Friday/Saturday sessions plus one student evaluation day. Students must attend every session to successfully complete the course. Students must read the course materials prior to each class including the first session. In addition, students will keep a weekly journal of one to two pages in which they reflect on the course concepts that they find to be especially intriguing or applicable, and describe their experiences in applying the concepts to their lives (work, family, other academic experiences) between weekend sessions. The journals will be in the form of an Internet blog using the free services of Live Journal. (A “community” for the course will be established on LiveJournal.com that will be restricted to students and Instructors. Students will read each others journals weekly and comment as appropriate. The required journal entries may either respond to other student journal entries and/or initiate a discussion. Details will be provided at the first class.) In addition informal sessions will be arranged between classes for students and instructors to continue the discussions. These informal sessions are optional.
Students will be evaluated based on the following:
Outline of Topics
Session One (Day One): Review of Previous Course Concepts, Foundation for Advanced Practice, and Day-to-Day Internal Group Collaboration
Students will come to class having reviewed their notes and readings from previous Collaborative Policy courses. They will share and analyze the concepts they have learned thus far that have the most meaning for their practice. Students will review and go deeper into the core concepts of collaboration, including definition and core values of collaboration; when a collaborative approach is and is not appropriate; the 5 stages of Collaborative decision-making; and facilitator role and responsibilities. Students will be introduced to the “Flawless Consultant” model of internal facilitation. Through short scenarios and application of real life experience, students will explore how they can be most effective at encouraging collaboration in their day-to-day lives.
Readings: Review of previous Collaborative Policy course material. Wilmot and Hocker, Chapters 1, 2, and 5. Block, chapters 1, 2, 3, and 7. Stages of a Collaborative Policy Process; Conditions Needed for a Collaborative Process; Conditions for Authentic Dialogue; Principles of Collaborative Public Involvement; Ladder of Inference.
Recommended: Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger.
Session Two (Day Two): Conflict Analysis and Situation Assessment.
This day begins with a crash course in conflict analysis and assessment techniques. The focus of the day will be a fish bowl role-play exercise that will give students a sense of the real process and challenges of assessing a situation in which there is manifest conflict. Students will determine a strategy for gaining access to stakeholders and information, arrange and engage in interviews, and develop assessment recommendations.
Readings: Block, Chapter 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17, 19; Wilmot and Hocker, Chapters 3, 4, and 6.
Session Three (Day Three): Analysis of Advocacy Speech, Practice of Collaborative Public Participation, and Working with the Media
This day begins with discussion of the techniques and tactics of advocacy speech, and collaborative responses to these techniques. These principles will enrich a discussion of how to work with the media. Students will review the core concepts and strategies of collaborative public participation. They will then engage in an extended role play that first explores the challenges to designing a collaborative public participation process in the face of agency resistance, and then shifts to the actual conduct of collaborative public participation to engage a potentially hostile public and media.
Readings: CCP training materials on advocacy and collaborative public participation.
Session Four (Day Four): Interagency Networking
Students will explore networking theory and apply it to a case study of CALFED. Students will analyze what worked and didn’t work in the CALFED experience, and apply this learning to a facilitated negotiation role play to develop an interagency MOU for emergency preparedness planning.
Readings: Carpenter and Kennedy, all.
Network Structures: Working Differently and Changing Expectations, Robyn Keast, Myrna P. Mandel, Kerry Brown, and Geoffrey Woolcock, Public Administration Review (Vol. 54, No. 3), 2004.
David E. Booher and Judith Innes, Complexity and Adaptive Policy Systems: CALFED as an Emergent Form of Governance for Sustainable Management of Contested Resources.
Collaboration: Using Networks and Partnerships, John M. Kamensky and Thomas J. Burlin.
Session Five (Days Five and Six): Intensive Practice
This session consist of a series of short role-play exercises, fishbowls, and scenarios dealing with key challenges to collaborative processes in a wide variety of policy settings. Students will rotate the role of facilitator and gain experience handling key challenges with both internal stakeholders (your own colleagues / clients) and external stakeholders. Examples include initiating collaborative dialogue where none previously exists, challenges in pre-meeting planning, disruptions in meetings, and the effect of shifting political winds.
Readings: Mayer, all.
Session Six (Day Seven): Evaluation and Group Debrief
In a one-on-one setting with an instructor, each student will individually 1) engage in a two-person 30 minute role play with the instructor in which he or she must act in a collaborative manner and encourage collaborative behavior in the other; and 2) respond to two scenario challenges (“what would you do if…?”). Participants will receive individual feedback from the instructors and will convene as a group in the evening for a group debrief of the course experience.