Using Action Research to Connect Practice to Learning: A Course Project for Working Management Students

Abstract

A long-standing challenge for management educators concerns developing pedagogies that confront the complexities associated with the process of managing. Faculty need to simultaneously acknowledge the practicality of content as well as the salience of students’ experience. This article proposes action research to raise pedagogy above methodology to surface epistemological and ontological aspects—distinguishing between descriptive, interpretive, and critical theoretic approaches to knowledge. Starting with an actual organizational problem, students invoke descriptive, interpretive, and critical theoretic approaches through observation, explanation and sensemaking, and critical reflection. As action research is grounded in democratic principles, student commentary illuminates the pedagogy as it unfolds.