Reflexive Dialogical Practice in Management Learning

TLDR

Critiques of management education highlight a need for critical pedagogy, yet the implications for learning and practice remain underexplored, underscoring the importance of critically examining dialogical practices. The study proposes embedding reflexive dialogical practice into management learning to cultivate more critical and responsive practitioners. Learning is reimagined as reflective dialogue that links tacit and explicit knowledge, illustrated through the author's own teaching examples.

Abstract

Recent criticisms of management education have raised the need for a critical pedagogy in management studies but have rarely evaluated the possible implications for management learning and practice. Drawing from critical and social constructionist perspectives, I propose we need to ground critique by incorporating reflexive dialogical practice in management learning as a way of developing more critical and responsive practitioners. Specifically, I reconstruct learning as reflective/reflexive dialogue in which participants connect tacit knowing and explicit knowledge. From this perspective, both educators and learners need to take a critical view of their dialogical practices and what may constitute `good' learning conversations. I include examples from my attempts to incorporate this approach in my own teaching practices.