This course is an academic inquiry into practice, and it draws on both academic and practical knowledge.

The key learning objective of the course is to expand the ability of students to mobilise academic knowledge to enhance their understanding of policy processes. Students come to this course from a diversity of backgrounds, in terms of education, prior experience and current occupation, and so they encounter it differently, and different learning strategies are appropriate. What everyone needs is to be able both to interrogate the academic literature and to interrogate policy practice.