“Seeking meaning in self: the dialogical process of storytelling and educating the professional practitioner”

Abstract

Purpose

The paper seeks to illustrate the impact, a narrative based approach to learning in practice could have in relation to management education, where reflexive critiques may provide a platform for integrating more closely the appreciation/analysis of the nature of management development with the experiences of practice.

Design/methodology/approach

Collaborative ethnography seeks to connect the self with others and the social with context; it is a method which embraces the opportunity to understand/appreciate lived experience in moments of learning.

Findings

The use of storytelling as a method to aid reflexive dialogue forces the student to move away from their pre-existing assumptions and practices and provide them with the power and conviction to seek out and recognise new meaning and differing alternatives of practice. The implication of this position in terms of an educational agenda involves challenging the “self-conceptions” of what it means to be a “practitioner” (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Martin, 1992; Zubizarreta, 2004).

Practical implications

The authors argue that focus must be placed on methods through which learning resides in action. Recognising action in learning allows for the development of management education which re-directs thinking and conceptualising towards understanding the social tensions, complex relations and connections in the co-construction of knowing.

Social implications

The article has sought to exemplify how storytelling can contribute to professional and personal development in new and more enriched ways. This reflexive-style paper presented a perspective from which the writers' values and beliefs are informed, as opposed to making a claim for authenticity and authority in regards to the subject area.

Originality/value

The paper highlights the need to explore imaginative modes of management education practices (Hjorth et al., 2018). Teaching students to simply tell stories is not the goal; rather, it is about sensitising students to the aesthetics of organising and the potential of approaching learning from sensuous and experimental perspectives.

Citation

Higgins, D. (2022), "“Seeking meaning in self: the dialogical process of storytelling and educating the professional practitioner”", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 821-833. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-02-2021-0026