BSC Faculty Director, Matt Andrews, and Program Director, Salimah Samji, have been co-teaching PDIA in Action: Development through Facilitated Emergence at the Harvard Kennedy School since 2018. This is a field-lab class where students learn a research-oriented version of PDIA by working on public problems – they learn by doing. In Spring 2021, HKS Implementing Public Policy (IPP) alumni were selected as authorizers to nominate real-world problems for eight student teams. Over the course of seven weeks, students worked alongside their authorizer/client, adopting a problem driven approach and developing an action strategy using the PDIA framework. Teams presented their key takeaways and policy recommendations to authorizers on the last day of class.
The student team presentations, their learning journey blogs, and videos of their presentations during the PDIA in Action event series are highlighted below. The collection of student projects are also showcased in the PDIA in Action book designed by Harvard GSD student, Gauri Nagpal.