You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The struggle to create adequate conditions for teaching and learning can become a utopian project, one in which competing visions of the just society are played out in microcosm. Within the academy, a variety of postgraduate and equivalent management education programmes based on experiential learning and social values offer an alternative to the more traditional MBA. These programmes are often identified with specific communities of practice and tend to reproduce historical oppositions between them, offering few opportunities for cross-community dialogue. Moreover, such programmes often adopt strategies to defend their values and practices from dilution, particularly where there are increasing internal and external pressures to adopt instrumental approaches to education. Yet these defensive strategies can block development and growth, leading to cultures that sabotage learning from experience and encourage cult-like dynamics.
This working paper invites exploration of what it could mean to take up a role as a new member of staff in such an experiential learning programme. Through a series of vignettes, it reflects on the tensions experienced by the authors when seeking to revitalize inquiry within a programme with a humanistic pedagogy and ideology. Crucially, as Daniel Barenboim has suggested, to be recognized and accepted in role necessitated listening to, and accepting the legitimacy of, the ‘narrative of the other’.