Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

El curso “Prevención de la conducta suicida en adolescentes, una necesidad en la Atención Primaria Salud” constituyó una experiencia valiosa en el municipio Centro Habana. Estuvo estructurado en ocho temas, dirigido a las enfermeras que trabajan en la comunidad, los cursistas obtuvieron conocimientos muy significativos para su ejercicio profesional porque el tema es pertinente para el referido nivel de atención.

In this article, we provide a detailed account of the design process, implementation phase and results of a teaching innovation project aimed at training undergraduate and graduate students in ways to design, compose and disseminate scientific infographics. The project –titled Visualize It: Infographics on Government, Administration and Public Policy– involved a rather broad group of teachers from the Autonomous University of Madrid, in collaboration with teachers from other Spanish universities (UCM, URJC, UCLM, EHU-UPV and UdG), and was conducted during the academic years of 2020/2021 and 2021/2022. This article first offers a theoretical approach to the concept of infographics, and then it gives a detailed account of infographics usefulness both as a teaching and work-related tool. After that, we offer a description of the way in which this practice was designed, giving the reader a detailed account of the methodology used for its implementation and of the implementation phase itself. Then, we compile the results obtained in surveys distributed to students and teachers, aimed at measuring the effects, levels of success and failures of this practice. The article closes with a brief discussion of these very results, and with a list with some ways to improve and/or optimize it.

When we teach policy analysis, we should focus not only on how to be a policy analyst but also how to situate the act of analysis within a wider political and policymaking context. There is the potential to achieve this aim: policy analysis texts focus on the individual and professional skills required to act efficiently and effectively in a time-pressured political environment, policy process research helps to situate this activity in a policymaking environment out of their control, and critical policy analysis prompts students to identify the inequalities of power that underpin policy practice and outcomes. However, students embody the concept of “bounded rationality” that is central to such studies: there is an overwhelming amount of information that they could encounter, and they have limited resources to learn. In that context, how can we help students to navigate the study of public policy well enough to make “good enough” choices about what and how to learn? I discuss the role of blog posts (and textbook materials) to foster that learning, and a mixture of coursework to help students reflect on the practical implications of what they learn.

This article is the result of an internal work of research, self-analysis, and self-assessment by the public manager of the National Institute of Public Administration (INAP) responsible both of the decision making and the implementation the training public policy, including learning public policies. This work is, moreover, done in one of the most important tools of the INAP: this very journal. Somehow this is the meta public policy stemming from the concept used in this article of the Learning Community in Spanish training of public servants. This article explores how to reduce the gap between a situation in which several somewhat scattered learning activities in the annual training programme and the cohesive and coherent with the brand-new Learning Strategy of INAP 2023-2024 can contribute to improve the development of public managers. Therefore, there is room to design a learning itinerary that will help improve the existing activities and consequently honing their competencies to becoming change and innovation agents.

During the last years, policy analysis has converted into a core discipline of social and political sciences. Nevertheless, the pedagogical dimension of policy analysis has not been handled by the literature yet. This article questions this vacuum in three ways. First of all, it presents the historical process of consolidation followed by policy analysis in Spain. Secondly, it analyses the few available studies centered on the didactic of this discipline. Lastly, it introduces the different contributions made by the Spanish and foreign experts recruited for producing this special issue. .