Patricia M. Shields
Patricia M. Shields is a Regents' Professor in the Political Science Department at Texas State University. Since 2001 she has been Editor-in-Chief of the international and interdisciplinary journal Armed Forces & Society. She is also a Contributing Editor to Parameters: The US Army War College Quarterly and the Section Editor of the Military and Society section to the Handbook of Military Sciences. Shields is notable for her publications focusing on research methods, civil military relations, gender issues, pragmatism in public administration, peace studies, and the contributions of Jane Addams to public administration and peace theory. She received a BA in Economics from the University of Maryland - College Park, an MA in Economics and a PhD in Public Administration from The Ohio State University.
Scholarship
As a scholar, Shields promoted the classical pragmatism of C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey as an "organizing principle" for the discipline of public administration. Her publication, "The Community of inquiry: Classical Pragmatism and Public Administration", began an ongoing, interdisciplinary, academic debate in the journal Administration & Society. She applies the feminist pragmatism of Jane Addams to Public Administration.Shields is also notable in the public administration community for utilizing pragmatism to advance research methodology in the field. For example, Shields is responsible in part for popularizing Dewey's notion of the working hypothesis as a method of preliminary, qualitative, exploratory research, in addition to the concept of the practical ideal type for program evaluation.