The teaching of Public Policy in undergraduate law at UFRJ: experiences and strategies in the light of the Law and Public Policy (DPP) approach

Abstract

This article deals with the experiences of creating and teaching the program for the discipline “Public Policies and Social Inclusion” within the scope of the National Law School (FND) of UFRJ. These experiences will be reported in their interaction with the development of research activities, especially with the State, Law and Public Policy group around the development of the Law and Public Policy (DPP) approach. With this, the article aims to contribute to the formation of a repertoire of public policy teaching experiences in the legal environment, with emphasis on the DPP approach. When dealing with the elaboration of a teaching program that is based on the historically situated view of public policies and what constitutes their legal component, the fundamental problems are assumed to be the selection of topics and theoretical references to be adopted and the development of a suitable method for those purposes. These problems will be approached from the context of the insertion of the discipline Policies and Social Inclusion in the undergraduate course in law at the FND (section 1) and the presentation of the basic structure of the program and its theoretical references (section 2), when it will also be approached the way in which they are related to a didactic-pedagogical strategy aimed at developing a legal approach to public policies. In its conclusion, the article postulates that the public policy course based on the DPP approach can be structured around certain key themes that articulate teaching and research and give a general orientation to the program.