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Garlic (Allium sativum L) is becoming increasingly popular as an important component in the culinary vocabulary of the cooks in this country. Humans are known to have consumed garlic for many millennia as a cure for a wide variety of different conditions. Its volatile components are reputed to have antithrombotic, antimicrobial, free radical scavenger activity associated with them. Its mythical medicinal properties are now being studied scientifically and some of the claims have been proven to be correct. Ten years ago garlic would have been difficult to obtain except in the speciality health shops or ethnic supermarkets: now it is freely available everywhere.

This chapter tells the story of the initiation, development (over two decades) and collective contribution of the Copenhagen Forum since its foundation in 1996. This Forum comprises a grouping of teachers and directors of masters-level public administrative programmes (notably the MPA) from different academic institutions across Northern Europe. Each year a workshop is convened where a series of papers are presented by the participants, and from which this volume, and a number of other related publications, have been derived.

The chapter is essentially factual and descriptive in style; summarising the story of the Copenhagen Forum so far; doing so under the following five headings – ‘overview’, ‘origins’, ‘odyssey’, ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’.

The chapter is particularly oriented towards teachers of public administration and by focusing on the pedagogical aspects of the public management programmes that they are responsible for delivering, provides insights, guidance and suggestions from experience to help them develop their practice.

The aim is to provide readers with an appreciation of the context from which the inspiration for this volume, and the individual contributions, derive. It is a context that has been all about a shared fascination with, and collective commitment to, the advancement of learning and development among practicing public managers.

The purpose of the paper is to report on the results of an inquiry into the possible reasons why many public service managers and leaders across six European countries report a loss of personal agency and suggests a possible pedagogic response to this.

The nature of agency is explored with reference to theory, and the methodology for the study – heuristic action inquiry – is outlined. The paper argues that spaces within postgraduate education are needed to facilitate managers' critical reflection and working with anxiety, and the article goes on to outline how public services leadership programmes can seek to achieve this.

The paper suggests that programmes need to work both with the cognitive and affective domains, and to find ways of exploring within the curriculum how managers may begin more to see their roles as potentially key actors in the policy‐making process rather than as passive recipients of policy imperatives received from above. The loss of agency experienced by public servants in several European countries suggests that MPA programmes and the like need to work with students' anxieties in a contained way.

Some trends within contemporary public services that lie behind anxiety and loss of agency are identified, including high emphasis on performance targets, centrally driven change, financial stringency, loss of professional and organisation identities, a perpetuation of a “private is best” governmental ideology, and contradictory accountability structures.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse three innovative Master's programmes designed for public and voluntary sector managers across three EU countries.

The paper compares similarities and differences between the programmes in order to shed light on the “innovation journey” which the authors took in establishing these programmes, and on the distinctive pedagogies which have been designed and developed to help address the complex dilemmas and challenges facing public and voluntary sector managers in the three countries.

The paper draws on theories of innovation and entrepreneurship to illustrate how these programmes were created, and how both new curriculum content and new approaches to pedagogy had to be developed.

The paper addresses the current and future learning needs of these public and voluntary service managers.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on issues of assessment in leadership and management programmes for mid career public managers. Drawing on experiences of such programmes from across Europe, the paper examines the potential conflict between traditional perspectives on academic study, with the typically‐associated focus on testing what has been learned, and the expectations and needs for competence and relevance for the work‐place.

The paper aruges that two key distinctions are crucial – on the one hand, between formative and summative assessment (i.e. between assessment and feedback during a programme to help participants learn, as opposed to assessment at the end of a programme to judge and determine if they have met the grade), and on the other, between participant‐centred and institution‐centred approaches (i.e. between commitment to collaborating with individual participants to ensure that their personal learning and development objectives are met, and a more traditional perspective reflecting a culture of “the institution knows best” and of concern to protect academic standards).

From the evidence gathered the conclusion is reached that, despite the claims made about the developmental objectives of such programmes, mostly, the assessment processes tend to accord with traditional academic perspectives, and give only limited weight to learning and skills for the workplace.

The paper argues for more emphasis on formative assessment and participant‐centredness and also for greater clarity about purposes in such management programmes. It advocates more imaginative and innovative learning and development approaches to mirror better the diverse realities and requirements of a public service organisational context.

The health problem commonly associated with consuming a diet rich in cholesterol – what is generally termed atherosclerosis – is widespread in the Western world and the single most prevalent cause of death. Public awareness about cholesterol is, however, patchy owing to conflicting and confusing information in the media. Attempts to give an understanding about chemical composition, the mode of presence, metabolism, and other general current information and practices about cholesterol and how it may be controlled to maintain safe levels in the body.

It is estimated that by the turn of the millennium the world human population could exceed ten billion. Scientists inevitably are searching for effective alternative methods of food preservation. Accordingly, ionization radiation, discovered nearly a hundred years ago when it was first shown to kill micro‐organisms in foods, is being increasingly encouraged as an alternative method of food preservation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared irradiation to be “a powerful tool against preventable food losses and food borne illnesses”. Low dose irradiation, up to 10KGy dose, has been shown to delay ripening, enhance shelf‐life, kill bacteria such as salmonella, listeria, etc., destroy insect infestation, eliminate unwanted sprouting, and in many cases improve flavour and texture of foods. The consumer may not be aware, but a staggering tonnage of food is already being irradiated around the world. Irradiation does not impart any radioactivity to the food and the irradiated food has been shown to be safe for human consumption. The technique offers yet another possibility of extending choice in new exotics for the consumer.

Posits that fibre is an essential constituent of the daily diet. Outlines the types of dietary fibre and summarizes some common diseases associated with the lack of fibre in the human diet.

The purpose of this paper is to give concrete ideas to the development of MPA programmes in the light of the changing public sector. Following the introduction of ideas and practices from New Public Management, public managers face new requirements. The paper aims to deal with some of them and argues that in order to be a competent manager in the public sector today, one needs to be able to self‐develop four types of competence‐in‐practice: methodological competencies; theoretical competencies; meta‐theoretical competencies; and contextual competencies.

The approach in the paper is explorative and normative. The paper explores the changes and challenges in the public sector based on the aforementioned four types of competence‐in‐practice. Following that the paper presents a normative model for curriculum design and exemplify the development and possible processes of learning‐centered MPA programmes.

The paper finds that learning‐centred MPA programmes are fruitful for the development of said the types of competence‐in‐practice.

With its particular focus on public sector management education this article may be relevant to curriculum developers, academics and practitioners interested in education and employability of public managers.

The paper shows that building on theories about learning, competencies, and curriculum development suggests a processual model for curriculum development that can inspire faculty members to develop learning‐centred MPA programmes where focus is learning and competence development.