PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION IN PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY

While there are plenty of good public policy advocates at EU and member state level, the public policy advocacy profession in most countries has not developed its own mechanisms for indentifying them and providing professional recognition. In well-established professions, one of the main leadership functions is to build a framework for continuing learning from entry to the profession to advanced levels of standards, and systems for providing certification for members who reach those standards.

Professional Certification

Certification refers to an endorsement by a professional body that a member of that profession has attained a designated standard of practice. Some form of advanced certification is common among most professions, but not in public policy advocacy .

In contrast, certification serves profession-wide purposes. A certification system makes decisions at key transition points in a public policy advocate’s career, such as graduation, entry to the profession and advanced professional certification. These decisions are usually the responsibility of a profession-wide body.

The benefits of certification schemes include making public policy advocacy more attractive to abler graduates by providing a basis for higher salaries, increasing incentives for professional learning, and more interesting career paths for accomplished public policy advocates. .

The Concept of a Standards-based professional learning and certification system

The main components of a standards-based professional learning and certification system are:

• High teaching standards that articulate what public policy advocates should get better at and provide direction for professional development over the long term;
• A rigorous, voluntary system of advanced professional certification based on valid methods for assessing public policy advocate performance against the standards.
• Staged Career paths that provide recognition for good public policy advocacy and provide substantial incentives and for public policy advocates to attain the standards for certification.
• An infrastructure for professional learning that enables public policy advocates to gain the knowledge and skill embodied in the teaching standards.

A rigorous standards-guided certification system aims to provide a sound basis for recognising and rewarding accomplished public policy advocacy  performance. To be effective, certification should  be a career step that most practitioners aspire to – something achievable by most public policy advocates  given opportunities for professional learning, not just an elite few.

A system of professional recognition for public policy advocacy must be established, which is based on the achievement of enhanced knowledge and skills. Such knowledge and skills should be identified, classified and assessed according to criteria developed by expert panels drawn from the profession.

The European Union should facilitate the development of a professional body with responsibility, authority and resources to develop and maintain standards of professional standards i.e. Professional Knowledge; Professional Practice; and Professional Engagement.

Developing standards for accomplished public policy advocacy

Standards, by definition, are statements about what is valued. As measures, standards will not only describe what public policy advocates  need to know and be able to do to put these values into practice; they will describe how attainment of that knowledge will be assessed, and what counts as meeting the standard. A standard, in the latter sense, is the level of performance on the criterion being assessed that is considered satisfactory in terms of the purpose of the evaluation.

It should be clear from this definition that public policy advocacy standards are not fully developed or defined until it is it is clear how they are to be used to judge public policy advocates’ knowledge and practice. When standards are used for professional certification, there are three essential steps in their development. These are:

1. Defining what is to be assessed – i.e. what do highly accomplished public policy advocates know and do. (This is what AALEP  aims to do. These are called content standards);
2. Developing valid and consistent methods for gathering evidence about what a public policy advocate  knows and is able to do in relation to the standards; and
3. Developing reliable procedures for assessing that evidence and deciding whether a public policy advocate has met the standard. (This will depend on developing performance in addition to content standards).

A profession-wide certification system would need nationally consistent methods of assessment and scoring of those assessment tasks.

A professional certification system is consistent with the idea of entrusting public policy advocate with the responsibilities of a profession - it strengthens the role that public policy advocates and their organisations play in

• Standards development – in defining what the profession expects its members to get better at.
• Developing methods whereby public policy advocates can demonstrate how they meet the standards
• Operating systems for assessing public policy advocate performance and providing certification to public policy advocates who meet the standards
• Developing and operating professional learning programmes (e.g. AALEP Executive Certificate in Public Policy Advocacy) to help public policy advocates meet the standards.