I have been running MBA and leadership masters programmes for over ten years with a focus on practice based learning. In a pamphlet on the subject James Traeger and I explain that:
“Practice-based learning is highly contextual. Whilst previous experience is valued, working out how a person’s knowledge and that of the group will play out in a unique situation at hand is the crux of the task. In this sense, finding the right question is as hard as working out the answer (Traeger & Warwick, 2020).”
A recurring question for me is: what role does academic literature have to play? In this blog I am narrowing academic literature to peer-reviewed journals. I am an associate editor of one of these journals so it is a question that interests me from several angles.
My hope has always been that academic literature can be helpful in developing participants’ practice. When I started my MBA and doctorate I found getting to grips with academic literature tricky, it was like joining a club where I was not told the ‘rules’. To help participants I introduced a Reading Club. Every month after lunch we would talk about an article or book (which now includes podcasts, films, and even art). We would spend 30 minutes exploring two areas. First, how the insights helped the participants in their leadership and management practice (after the Reading Club we would have action learning sets where they would agree to concrete actions.) Second, the practice of research by looking at the authors’ research question, methodology, literature, empirical work, and how they made their argument. The Reading Club conversations have often shone a bright and fascinating light on the state of academic writing and its worth.
‘Did you enjoy the paper’ I would ask, and the conversation would begin. Some participants would be hot off the mark, others are more reticent, some have read it, and others might have skimmed it; patterns of behaviour that would emerge and settle down over the programme. Sometimes we would just stick to the contents of the paper but more often we would talk about it in relation to their experience, practice, and problems they were facing at the time.
I have come to notice that there are three interconnected characteristics that create a good Reading Club conversation, these are:
Usefulness, in the sense that it enables them to understand what has been going on and/or make a decision. For example, it might be a theory that can help them unpick something that has been troubling them by offering them a wider body of thought to explore further.
Connection, so that they can relate the words on the page to their lived experience. This can be directly in the form of a narrative, practical example, interviews, or survey. But more lately I have become interested in more abstract ways that evoke a reaction such as a piece of art, literature, or poetry.
Language, which is a difficult one as whatever world we occupy the most (for example being an academic writing a research paper or a manager on an MBA programme) there are distinct rules and norms of communicating. Once a student has got the knack of those rules the academic literature should be accessible, relevant, and even enjoyable.
I think these characteristics offer a helpful rule of thumb for our academic writing. Michael Billig (Billig, 2013) wrote a witty and heartfelt book called How to Write Badly and Succeed in Social Sciences that outlines the tricks, habits, and foibles that many of us use in the hope that we might sound clever. If you don’t want to read the book, just set up a Reading Club, there is no place to hide. It can be very humbling particularly if you offer your own work for the group to discuss (as I have done).
Billig, M. (2013). How to write badly: How to succeed in social sciences. Cambridge University Press.
Traeger, J., & Warwick, R. (2020). Pamphlet: Artful ways … Practice Based Learning in Organisational Chance – An Incitement to Humanity. https://mayvin.co.uk/resource/artful-ways-practice-based-learning-organisational-change/
Metis 