Amanda Wolf

Background

About Amanda Wolf

My very short bio shows that I lived in the Southwest, Midwest, Northeast and mid-Atlantic of the United States, picking up degrees in Philosophy and Public Management/Policy before hopping over to Wellington, New Zealand in 1994. Why? Well, the short answer was to continue to engage with work-experienced public servants – to do what I could for a better world and society by helping them to do what they do better (and maybe, just the slight attraction to living in a beautiful country). I have a couple of enduring strings in my bow: I am an expert in the philosophical underpinnings and applications of Q methodology – which is, in its essence a package of principles and techniques to systematically study the complex ways people see any subjective matter. And as an academic specialising in teaching and learning for the public sector, I continually look for ways to help practitioners develop their capabilities for addressing complex challenges. These two strands currently come together in the idea that ‘casing’ is an important capability – allowing someone to look selectively and form different perspectives while applying various theoretical and experiential lenses to what they see, as a critical step in finding ideas worth pursuing.