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REMINDER: Deadline for Abstracts is September 30, 2017

Call for Abstracts - Journal of Management Education Themed Issue

"The Shadow Side of Experiential Learning"

The co-editors are developing a themed JME issue for early 2019 publication on a topic rarely addressed in the SOTL literature: the shadow side of experiential learning. In particular, we wish authors to engage JME readers in a conversation that involves expressions of, evidence of, and/or explorations of the shadow side of experiential learning (EL) practice, related student outcomes, or larger experientially grounded educational systems. As the leading management education journal devoted to EL research and practice, we seek to augment the SOTL literature by considering experiential learning's challenges, disappointments, surprises, ironies, paradoxes, and potential for harm.

As a journal, JME's commitment is to engaged teaching and learning. Yet, every practice has a shadow side (Gemmill, 1986; Jung, 1967) that mirrors its more visible manifestations. Unacknowledged, the shadow side encourages a type of 'fantasy world' where lack of balance and negative outcomes may flourish (Bowles, 1991). Thus, we believe our responsibility as journal editors is to consider how experiential learning might engender injury, where it can go awry, and/or how it challenges students in unhelpful ways. By engaging with the shadow, we hope to make evident various unseen elements of EL practice while translating these "undiscussables" (Argyris, 1986) into enhanced learning outcomes for students as well as opportunities for faculty development and nurturing within our robust and caring MED community.

In pursuing this special themed issue, we acknowledge a seminal debate about EL's effectiveness for learning outcomes published more than a decade ago in Educational Psychologist. Kirschner et al. (2006) led the discussion with a provocative article asserting that minimally guided instruction– under which EL techniques fall-"does not work" for student learning. Schmidt and colleagues (2007) responded with a careful rebuttal, claiming that the key to whether EL 'works' or not depends predominantly on the learning outcomes desired. That conversation informed our 2015 JME editorial, "Breaking Through without Crashing Through" (JME 39:5), where we questioned our own lack of criticality with respect to EL practice and learning outcomes. Through this themed issue, we continue to assert the importance of a holistic picture of experiential learning in order to generate a more comprehensive EL conversation.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

1. First-person experiences with experiential learning practices that ended badly, or presented the author with unexpected and difficult outcomes;
2. Empirical work that provides evidence of paradoxical outcomes related to the use of EL;
3. Theoretical or conceptual work that challenges any of the underlying assumptions of experiential learning practices and uses;
4. Considerations of learning outcomes, classroom management issues, internal institutional norms or policies, or other external factors for which experiential learning techniques may be inappropriate or present particular challenges;
5. Concerns about the institutionalization of experiential education via governing bodies, accrediting bodies, academic institutions, or other advocacy groups like the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) or the Gallup/Purdue research effort;
6. Ways to think innovatively about, or experiences with, forms of experiential learning viz student development and readiness trajectories;
7. Considerations about experiential learning practice, methods, and outcomes as related to greater visibility of students' mental health issues;
8. In an age of assurance of learning prescriptives and pushes for documentation of "learning," we sometimes cannot really know what students learn until much later in their lives, so how does that fit with EL's promise and perhaps our own needs to respond to external stakeholders?
   
   

Submission and paper development process

Interested authors should prepare a 750 word (maximum) abstract detailing the topic they would like to explore, the most relevant literature within which the topic is grounded, and, most importantly, a brief discussion of the implications for teaching and learning if the paper is developed. Deadline for submission of abstracts is September 30, 2017. Jeanie Forray, Kathy Lund Dean, and Sarah Wright, serving as the themed issue's action editorial team, will review all abstract submissions.

Submissions should be made via the JME manuscript system at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jome . During submission, authors should select the special themed issue type "Shadow Side of Experiential Learning" and will be asked to supply a cover letter, keywords, and brief abstract (200 words). Authors will be required to upload a title page with full author contact information and the main document of no more than 750 words for this initial submission. Authors of abstracts that the editors would like developed into full papers will be notified of this decision no later than October 30, 2017. Full papers should be between 2500 and 3000 words (maximum) and submitted no later than February 28, 2018. All manuscripts invited for submission to the themed issue will be sent for blind peer review to members of JME's Editorial Review Board.

Topic development opportunities

Interested authors are invited to discuss potential topics with the JME editors prior to submission of abstracts. Queries may be sent to editor@mobts.org or, if authors will be attending the 2017 Academy of Management meeting in Atlanta, all three of the action editors will be available for conversation. Interested authors are encouraged also to attend the JME/MED/NDSC reception in Atlanta, on Saturday August 5^th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm at the Center for Civil & Human Rights, where the JME editors-in-chief and associate editors will be available for idea sharing and discussion. 

References

Argyris, C. (1986 Sep/Oct). Skilled incompetence. Harvard Business Review, 64(5), 74-79.

Bowles, M. L. (1991). The organization shadow. Organization Studies, 12(3), 387-404.

Gemmill, G. (1986). The dynamics of the group shadow in intergroup relations. Small Group Behavior, 17(2), 229-240.

Jung, C. G. (1967). The collected works of CG Jung. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Kirschner, P.A.; Sweller, J.; and Clark, R.E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.

Schmidt, H.G.; Loyens, S. M. M.; van Gog, T.; and Paas, F. (2007). Problem-Based Learning is compatible with human cognitive architecture: Commentary on Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 91-97.