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The purpose of this paper is to show that too often decisions concerning change are made on the basis of partial understanding, limited data and unreflective assumptions about people and organizations. In the discussion of the Socratic dialogue the aim is to uncover a useful method for ensuring more reflective decision making that involves active participation of employees on the receiving end of change.

Although dialogue is used in management processes today, it is contended that the Socratic dialogue is particularly useful in making sense of complex change processes. Data drawn from research conducted in two UK higher education institutions are used to illustrate how lack of knowledge and understanding often pervades and constrains change, and how techniques of Socratic dialogue can be used to secure higher levels of employee involvement and commitment to change.

It is argued that Socratic dialogue can be used as a practical tool to facilitate “participative” change and contend that further research is required to develop the use of this method as a qualitative research instrument for uncovering data on processes of change in organizations.

If practised consistently by organizational members, the Socratic techniques can lead to a more concrete understanding of the complexities of changing organizations. It is a collective process of change through critical questioning and, as such, it lends itself to further exploration on the part of both change managers and qualitative researchers for its uses as a diagnostic and research instrument.

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since the founding of new ventures is largely a resourceful founder-driven enterprise, entrepreneurship education has largely centred on galvanising and shifting the mindsets and cognition of the entrepreneur. Yet, despite over 60 years of delivering entrepreneurship education programmes, hard evidence of the generation of high-growth-oriented and sustainable ventures has been scarce as student entrepreneurship intentions do not always translate into successful venture creation. This is largely because of the complexities of the practicality of entrepreneurial education particularly, the dissonance between acquired education in business schools and the knowledge and competencies needed in the entrepreneurial field. Such dissonance can be attributed to the lack of clarity on the pedagogical approach that most resonates with entrepreneurial action, the diversity in assessment methods and the scholarly illusion pertaining to how pedagogical approaches can be channelled to the generation of growth-oriented ventures. Drawing on Girox's concepts of transformative critical pedagogy (including pedagogy of repression), Socratic dialogue, Hegelian dialectic and Yrjö Engeström's transformative expansive agency, I demonstrate how a flipped transformative critical pedagogy can be harnessed in digitally enhanced learning environments to create new entrepreneurial possibilities for facilitating critical inquiry, complex problem-solving, innovation for the market and fostering tolerance for failure in ambiguous entrepreneurial contexts.

The paper investigates the role of information asymmetries and sensegiving processes of citizens claiming for social services. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relevance of applicants’ agency, since it has been generally neglected in the analysis of social services provision. On the contrary, the paper proposes an alternative view, considering applicants as actors who are able to develop dialectic strategies for claiming specific forms of social assistance.

The paper is based on a qualitative research, conducted following an inductive approach. The data have been collected in three different Italian municipalities, where the researcher has been the opportunity to perform a period of observation of the interviews between the social workers of the local social services department and the citizens applying for social assistance.

The findings of the research point out that informational asymmetries play an ambivalent role in the definition of applicant’s strategies, since they represent an ambivalent and dynamic factor, rather than a mere source of disadvantage for the user. From this viewpoint, the citizens’ possibilities to access to social assistance are shaped by both institutional and dialectic factors: on the one hand, access to social assistance relies on specific criteria of eligibility (institutionally defined), but on the other hand the access is the outcome of situated sensegiving processes, performed by both the applicants and the gatekeepers of social services during their encounters.

The research is based on the analysis of a small number of cases, within a context that is characterized by a high level of organizational and professional discretion in the regulation of the provision of social assistance.

The findings of the research urge policy maker to re-consider applicants as strategic actors and opens the space for the development of new options of regulation of the delivery of social services.

The paper suggests to consider the applicants for social services as people who, although in a condition of need, are capable to identify specific forms of assistance. From this point of view, informational asymmetries are not be considered as a stigmatic issue, but as a space which calls for further and less superficial investigation.

The paper challenges some of the most taken-for-granted theoretical assumptions in the analysis of the regulation of the access to social assistance. First, it proposes a dynamic interpretation of the notion of informational asymmetries, considering them as a space for action, rather than a binding factor; second, it emphasizes the relevance of user’s agency in the access to welfare services, that is generally neglected since most analyses focus on professional discretion disregarding the hypothesis of the user as a strategic actor.

This paper aims to examine the present status of the research field intercultural information ethics (IIE) including the foundational debate as well as specific issues.

A critical overview of the recent literature of the field is given.

The present IIE debate focuses on a narrow view of the field leaving aside comparative studies with non‐digital media as well as with other epochs and cultures. There is an emphasis on the question of privacy but other issues such as online communities, governmentality, gender issues, mobile phones, health care and the digital divide are on the agenda.

The paper addresses basic issues of IIE that may open new vistas for research and practice in this field.

The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary practices.

The authors reviewed the literature on Socratic seminar and developed a model for its practical use. The authors used the model to demonstrate its use in teaching civil rights history, as an example for implementation.

Socratic seminar is an instructional method that layers several disciplinary literacy skills within social studies that have the combined potential to create a transformative dialogue within the classroom and communities, especially when leveraged in more complex multi-text ways. Through the seminars, students can better understand what the authors name horizontal historical analysis, the perspective on concurrent social justice movements and vertical curricular analysis or how social justice movements experience continuity and change over time.

The authors provided an accessible model for teachers and students to use Socratic seminars as part of transformational social studies practices.

The authors demonstrate how the Socratic seminar model can provide students with the intellectual foundation for considering social action as more critically informed civic agents.

The authors examine and offer a model of how Socratic seminar can engage students in vertical and/or horizontal historical analysis for transformational purposes. Further, the authors identify how Socratic seminar can build the skills and dispositions of social studies, provide space for knowledge creation through critical historical inquiry and help reframe how teachers and students understand learning and human relationships by shifting the classroom power and promoting student agency through dialogue.

This paper aims to examine Socratic dialogue in asynchronous online discussions in relation to constructivism. The links between theory and practice in teaching are to be discussed whilst tracing the origins of Socratic dialogue and recent trends and use of seminar in research based institutions.

Many online degree courses employ asynchronous discussions where the teacher, acting as a moderator, is seen as the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Such an approach, employing collaborative learning, is often described as constructivist. Practitioners may see the term constructivist as simply a convenient label to describe a range of effective teaching practices. Even when it is said that knowledge is constructed, this may be viewed as little more than a metaphor. There are however, behind these labels, epistemological theories such as radical constructivism and social constructivism which pose serious challenges to traditional views that perception is guided by contact with an independent reality and that science involves a search for objective truth. Many significant philosophical objections can be raised against these theories. The links between the theory and teaching practices of proven value are tenuous. There is an alternative explanation of the origins of teaching practices associated with asynchronous discussions.

Asynchronous discussion makes it possible for all students to make an initial written contribution based on both research and industry experience, as well as an extensive participation in a written debate. The relative ease of assessing contributions to a written debate helps overcome the problem of the seminar where only one person may get credit for his or her contribution. Contributions can to a great extent be made when it is convenient for both moderator and students.

The present study has considered the case of one institution; it will be useful to examine it for many.

Asynchronous online discussion is one of the highest forms of Socratic dialogue.

This is a different approach to the traditional belief and new ideas for consideration are presented. The Socratic dialogue has been developed as both an oral and written tradition from the works of authors like Plato, through to the development of the medieval university with its disputations and oral examinations, the introduction of seminars in research based universities inspired by Humboldt, the development of scholarly journals, and on to the asynchronous online discussions in the era of the Web.

In response to the National Leadership Education Agenda, this application brief furthers priority one, addressing the teaching, learning, and curriculum development of leadership education. The ability of students to demonstrate leadership outcome mastery in areas of communication, self-awareness, interpersonal interactions, and civic responsibility (Seemiller, 2014), is valued across disciplines. Socratic Circles provide a structured discussion learning strategy based on Socratic pedagogy (Copeland, 2005), beneficial to the practice of leadership outcomes. Discussed are descriptions of implementation methods; outcomes related to Seemiller’s (2014) Student Leadership Competencies; and practitioner reflections of the use of Socratic Circles in college level leadership courses.

This chapter addresses how Black, Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Multi-academy Trusts (MATs) with track records of outstanding school improvement navigate turbulence when leading school improvement to optimise students’ learning. There are different ideas of what it means to have equitable access and equitable outcomes in education systems, and beyond, and how to live a good life on the journey to both. These different ideas and values’ systems have different intersectionalities of recognition by ‘the other’ in societies. Crenshaw argues, once these intersectionalities of discrimination have been identified, it will be possible to understand what Dewey calls their intrinsic nature and to seek ways to reconnect the isolated, and marginalised that are subjects of discrimination. The BAME CEOs articulate the current Public Governance of Education Systems that induces fear of forced takeovers and job insecurity creates a kind of divide and conquer approach of colonialism and intersectionalities of discrimination. The chapter identifies BAME CEOs want to create cultures where they can make a commitment to take the time to know the self, in relationship with the other, and build bridges between different groups in society for equity, renewal, trust, and peace in our time. The BAME CEOs wishing to empower others to engage in this moral training for democracy in education need to have and share the thinking tools to prevent community members from being manipulated by people who wish to rush them into new ways of thinking and doing. Change requires giving mature citizens the time and space to think things through by: asking good questions, critiquing the evidence underpinning the change, inquiring into the logic of the change and holding the moral compass of the change to check the direction steers a sure and steady ethical course with what Adler calls the primary virtues of social justice, prudently and with courage.