LEYES FINANCIERAS UTILIZADAS EN LA PRÁCTICA 1 Capitalización simple.

Above I have outlined how perceptions of online learning as a dialogic construction of knowledge leads us to re-consider the role of online students as knowledge constructors,

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and that a networked learning pedagogy, which promotes online learning environments as platforms to foster criticality and emancipation, echoes critical scholars‟ perspectives on management students‟ learning in face-to-face classrooms. In this sense, I have argued that the potential of online MBA classrooms to promote criticality can be examined using our understanding of CME scholars‟ perspectives and approaches to promote reflective learning in their face-to-face classrooms. The aim of this section is to point out that currently we do not have literature that takes an overtly critical and dialogic approach to the facilitation of online classroom dialogue, and that CME literature can offer us (again) some insights onto teachers‟ facilitation role which aims at promoting reflective learning amongst students.

In a report titled “Quality Issues in Distance Learning”, the AASCB International‟s Distance Education Task Force emphasises the importance of having faculty members who understand the shifts in their roles when teaching online (AACSB, 1999). A number of studies in distance learning argue that the role of online tutors is concerned with engaging students, facilitating collaborative learning, and providing guidance, feedback and support (e.g. Nijhuis and Collis, 2000; Ricketts et al., 2000; Coppola et al., 2002; Easton, 2003). Leidner and Javenpaa (1995) were among the first to suggest that online management teachers/tutors need to adjust their teaching paradigm to better fit the characteristics of the medium (May and Short, 2003). However, research into the nature of teachers‟ roles in facilitating online classroom dialogue appears to be populated with different insights (Dysthe, 2002), which transgress the image of online tutors as knowledge dispensers in virtual classrooms. Online tutors appear to facilitate a polyphonic setting, in which online students co-construct meanings in their responses to each other in online classroom dialogue.

For instance, Anderson et al. (2001) describe facilitating online classroom dialogue as supporting and encouraging participation by modeling appropriate behavior and commenting on students‟ responses, encouraging learners who participate less, and holding back particular groups from dominating discussions. Salmon (2000) asserts that the role of an online tutor shifts from a traditional content transmitter to a facilitator of the construction of meanings. The role of online tutors, according to Salmon (2000:494),

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is to “engage their students so that the knowledge they construct is usable in new and varying situations”. Ramsey (2003), reflecting on her own online teaching experience, claims that online tutors need to position themselves and their students as co-learners. This stance, according to Ramsey (2003), involves limiting an online tutor‟s presence as an expert who has the authoritative words. Ramsey (2003) perceives an online tutor as a companion, sharing struggles and encouraging students‟ participation. Similarly, Brower (2003), and Arbaugh et al. (2009) suggest that online tutors should promote students‟ discovery - and not be tempted to dispense wisdom - and only intervene when a redirection is needed. Brower (2003) advocates a „silence is golden‟ principle in her facilitation of online dialogue but recognizes that the absence of visual cues and body language can place an online tutor at a disadvantage, unable to observe students‟ reactions during their classroom engagements.

These are all thoughtful attempts showing how online tutors draw on social constructionist assumptions of learning to change their teaching practices. However, there is little literature that takes an overtly critical or dialogic approach to online facilitation in management classrooms. For instance, Redpath (2012) argues that facilitating online dialogue can involve promoting the exploration of ideas, probing and reflection and summarizing discussions. Hay et al. (2004) describe the role of online tutors as promoting reflective learning. With these limited attempts to adopt a more critical perspective onto online facilitation, we can draw some insights from CME literature, where perspectives on the roles of both the teacher and their students appear to be well-established.

Holman et al. (1997:143) assert that management students learn better through “a responsive, rhetorical and argumentative process that has its origins in relationship with others”. This means that participative, less hierarchical educational settings are encouraged (Reynolds, 1999), and that the roles of both the teacher and the student need to be altered (Dehler et al., 2001). As students are becoming active constructors of their own knowledge and meanings (Dehler, 2009), educators are providing „a space‟ for their students‟ learning (Dehler et al., 2001). As argued in a networked learning pedagogy, Cunliffe (2002) and Raelin (2007) agree that teaching in a face-to-face participative

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setting is a form of „facilitation‟. Dialogue, debate and discussion are crucial vehicles to thinking critically and differently in management classrooms (Cunliffe 2002; 2009). Currie and Knights (2003) assert that changing the role of management educators involves advocating pluralism and difference in the classroom. Their view echoed Grey and Mitev (1995), who assert that teachers should expand rather than restrict the ways in which students regard the world.

Raelin‟s (2008:521) view of the classroom dialogue as a vehicle for the “creative interaction of contradictory and different voices” is helpful here; delineating possibilities of learning in a democratic setting in which different perspectives and views are voiced. He claims that newly constructedknowledge is an endpoint of a process of dialogue and engagement. For Hedberg (2009), if all of the reflective learning in classroom is designed to be done privately, in isolation from others in the classroom, then students will miss the opportunity to learn from others. Hence, the image of a classroom as being dominated by the sole voice of an expert teacher is replaced by another which envisages classrooms as a polyphonic setting (Ramsey, 2008) constructed by participants‟ multiple voices (Bakhtin, 1981). Bakhtin, a Russian philologist, uses the term monologism to describe a situation where a speaker‟s voice dominates and his/her discourse is authoritative, demanding allegiance from his/her listeners (Bakhtin, 1981). This, then, fits in with a knowledge transmission model of teaching and where a teacher acts as the sole knowledge expert in classroom.

In the polyphonic classroom, knowledge construction is neither referring to teachers‟ or theory‟s talk nor to students‟ implicit knowledge, but rather to a „knowing of the third kind‟ (Shotter, 1993) or meanings co-constructed in joint action. Center to the view of the polyphonic classroom is the attention given to the dialogic practices of teachers and their influence on the kind of learning that is taking place in management classrooms (Cunliffe, 2002; Ramsey, 2008). Cunliffe (2002) argues that teachers should create „dialogic opportunities‟ in their conversations with students and should themselves, act as learners. What Cunliffe means is that teachers should use students‟ conversations to trigger reflective learning. She explains from within her teaching practice how she was able to shift a conversation from a simple reflection on the validity of Maslow‟s

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hierarchy of needs in interpreting an experience of working in a team to a reflexive one about the nature of theories in general and the assumptions that they represent reality (Cunliffe, 2002).

A polyphonic classroom is, thus, different from a student-centered one, in that the former requires all voices (i.e. of both the teacher and students) to share responsibility in the learning process. As such, Cunliffe (2002) proposes that learning in management (polyphonic) classrooms is better viewed through the lens of co-authorship. Authorship means that management students and teachers “are collaborators… in (classroom) conversations in which everything is prospective learning” (Cunliffe, 2002:48, my bracket). Both teachers and management students are partners, and play active roles in the learning process (Cunliffe, 2002).

The notion of managers as practical authors is traced back to Shotter‟s (1993) work (Holman et al., 1997; Cunliffe, 2001). Shotter (1993:148) claims that management is not only about reading situations from different perspectives. It is also about producing meaningful accounts to what may seem to others as ill-defined, complex, and chaotic- like situations (Shotter and Cunliffe, 2003). The authors explain the essence of authorship in terms of an individual‟s ability to make sense to others in his/her talk;

“ practical authors speak in such a way that other participants can creatively respond in their own unique way but in ways that still make sense to all those involved”.

(Shotter and Cunliffe, 2003:17) It is in this sense of authorship that I speak of teachers and management students as practical co-authors, sharing responsibility in the dialogic process of learning (Cunliffe, 2002). From a CME stance, practical authors are those whom in their conversations with others in the classroom, engage in reflective dialogic practices in a way that make sense to others. However, good (reflexive) authors are also good „listeners‟: are able to see something new or „moved‟ by others‟ responses to them (Shotter and Cunliffe, 2003). In the classroom, good authors are students or teachers whose reflective, emancipatory learning opens up for them a possibility for change.

The next and final section is set to offer the reader an overview of this study‟s focus and purpose, and in commitment to the literature review carried out in this chapter. It points

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to a potential research gap, using the ideas of Shotter (1993; 1996; 2006) and Cunliffe (2002; 2002a; 2008) to define reflective learning in the context of an online MBA classroom dialogue and propose Bakhtin‟s work to guide its investigation and so set the foundation for this study‟s methodology.