Discussion: View Thread

Recent critiques of management curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnect between the formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in management programs and the messy, ambiguous nature of management practice which emphasizes tacit and self regulative knowledge. However, it would be unhelpful to construct a curriculum, purely dominated by practice knowing. The most effective learning experiences for managers will be those that subject their existing understandings to challenge and widen their repertoire of perspectives. The challenge for management educators is to pay attention to both practice relevance and to providing appropriate challenge to program participants' perceptions of the 'real world'. The route to achieving this combination of relevance and challenge is to see management education as a process of designing learning environments and experiences, not as a process of transmitting a body of knowledge. Program participants' previous, current and shared experiences are a rich resource for learning and rich learning often comes out of the collision between different experiences or 'real worlds,'; between different perspectives, theories and practices. However, such an approach confronts us with some significant challenges. This symposium will explore these challenges and themes.

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