Developing an Arts Based Curriculum for HRD Practice
Andrew Armitage
Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University
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Diane Keeble-Ramsay
Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University
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Developing an Arts Based Curriculum for HRD Practice
Andrew Armitage and Diane Keeble-Ramsay
Abstract
Purpose:
Sullivan (2005:215) notes ‘Responding to information in an insightful fashion through constructive dialogue means that private views need to enter into public discourse, for it is within the interpretive community of the field that alternative visions are most keenly felt’. Linstead (2000:84) has noted that, ‘across the social sciences, few attempts to radicalise the forms in which social investigation finds its expression have been attempted outside of social anthropology’. Bolton (2001) has also noted that expressive forms of reporting organisational reality, such as storytelling, and poetry are still under theorised, notably within the field of Human Resource Development curriculum design and pedagogy. The study attempts to remedy by this by addressing the question how are HRD professionals’ organisational experiences constructed and appraised through their emotional responses?
Design/Methodology Approach:
This paper, through the lens of arts based methods, asks how HRD professionals experience and perceive their working lives. It considers the emotional responses to their organisational roles and tensions faced. This was achieved by attempting to access their perceptive ‘reality’ through the representation, and medium of, arts based approaches. The of dialogue groups founded upon the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire were used to help the professionals conceptualise their organisation through the arts based approaches, for example, poem houses, poetry, drawings, paintings or narrative fiction they engaged with.
Findings: The study explored the relationship that individuals have with the organisation which might be represented through their creation of products, drawings, poetry and narratives which
Research and Practical Implications: The paper seeks to represent the use of arts based instruments (ABIs) for the purposes of developing a pedagogy which allows teachers or researchers to consider other ways of developing understanding of responses to organisational settings.
Originality: The study seeks to combine a variety of ABIs in the consideration of the organisational realities perceived by participants which has not been addressed through this range of ABIs.
Limitations: The study is limited to the participants selected and does not attempt to provide generalizability but to gain insights through the consideration of the development of curriculum by addressing emotional responses.
Key Words: Arts Based Curriculum, CHRDE, Freire
Introduction
In his book The Value of Arts for Business, Giovanni Schima poses the following questions: what is the value of arts in business? What is the role of the arts in management? How can the arts contribute to develop organisations to boost business performance? Why do organisations need to absorb the arts in their working mechanisms and business models? (Schima, 2011: xv). There has been a growing interest in arts based management education in recent years. This is exemplified with the Art of Management and Organisation biannual conference, which brings together and bridges the gap between business, the arts, creativity, and academia, and sets out an alternative perspective for researching, managing, and engaging with business and organisational life where creativity and innovation play a central part for business success.
Gibb (2006:166) notes that people development ‘is not about the science of skills development in isolation, but about how to think about people and their potential’, this arguably is the challenge now facing contemporary target setting and managerialist organisations. Kerr and Lloyd (2008:489) quite righty ask ‘Therefore what can be done to educate management to nurture and support the creative human potential and resilience of their employees?’ In answer to their own question they suggest management education needs to facilitate leaders who can promote and support employee creativity by setting creativity goals, and investing in arts based transformative learning programs, as well as becoming learning leaders (see also, Buchen 2005; Zhou 2007). This they argue can only happen ‘if those in leadership roles are in touch with their own creative capabilities’ (489) because ‘... the very essence of 21st Century leadership increasingly demands the passionate creativity of artists ...’ (Adler 2006:493–494).
In terms of the design of learning practices, leadership development requires reconsideration. As Nissley (2008:22) states, ‘[t]oday’s leaders must leverage the creative energy of the workforce to compete in the creative economy [and we need to think] creatively about how we develop creative leaders and creative leadership in organizations.’ Oakley (2007:11) notes ‘there is no agreed definition of creativity’ among educational policymakers, academics, teachers or employers’. However, Kerr and Lloyd (2007:485) in the context of their work define creativity as ‘the creative human attributes and qualities concerned with imagination, inventiveness, improvisation, insight, intuition, and curiosity – the natural ‘artful’ genius and talent of people’. They go on to state that that these creative capabilities ‘are sought after by business for long-term’ and suggest that ‘management education must follow suit in providing artful learning experiences to assist with developing creative habits. The transformative potential of arts-informed research speaks to the need to develop representations that address audiences in ways that do not pacify or indulge the senses but arouse them and the intellect to new heights of response and action. The educative possibilities of art-informed work are foremost in the heart, soul, and mind of the researcher from the onset of an inquiry.
Goleman (1998:100) has suggested that ‘the art of innovation is both cognitive and emotional. Coming up with a creative insight is a cognitive act – but realising its value, nurturing it, and following through calls on emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, persistence, and the ability to persuade’. This is important not only for individual development but also organisational competiveness, as Zhou (2007:17) notes ‘to stay competitive….organizations are required to encourage all of their employees to be creative, not just those who hold traditionally “creative types” of jobs’. Thus, learning opportunities enabling expanded awareness, adaptability, resilience, resourcefulness and play are imperative for management educators and business organisations in the 21st Century (Claxton 1999 cited in Kerr and Lloyd, 2008:489).
Following on, the desired presence of innovation requires organisations to provide a culture that both supports and invests in developing creativity and provides appropriate resources for that to happen’. These sentiments are echoed by Schima (2011:1-2) by stating that ‘In today’s complex business landscape, as organisations are challenged by new and increasingly complex problems, the arts provided a new “territory” to inspire executives both to see their organisations differently and to define innovative management systems’. The value of researching art-based modes towards development then is twofold. Firstly, to explore the experiences of human resource development (HRD) professionals and contemporary organisation life using art based methods to unlock the hidden realities or potentially silent cultures of the organisation (see for example, Armitage and Keeble-Allen, 2010; Armitage 2011 and 2012).
Secondly, as a way to engage professionals differently within their professional and organisational lives, to propose pedagogical approaches and the design of HRD curriculum delivery using art based methods. It is intended that this might facilitate better understanding in terms how employees respond to their daily situations, problems and dilemmas in the workplace more critically though the engaging with arts based approaches.
Problem Statement
Bolton (2001) has noted that notably within the field of Human Resource Development curriculum design and pedagogy, expressive forms of reporting organisational reality, such as storytelling, and poetry are still under theorised. The study attempts to remedy by this by asking the question:
How are HRD professionals’ organisational experiences constructed or appraised in terms of leading to their emotional responses?
This study aimed to explore HRD professionals’ experiences through their perceptions of their working lives. Through the lens of art based methods, its objectives include:
1) To understand how HRD professionals emotionally appraise experiences within their organisational lives.
2) To conceptualise the organisation through the representation and medium of arts based approaches, for example, utilising poem houses, poetry, drawings, paintings, narrative fiction, and the use of dialogue groups will be adopted to allow them to access their ‘realities’.
Further this provides a medium by which we can capture emotional responses. This approach is founded upon the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1970, 1972).
Arts Based Education as a Transformative Pedagogy
Paulo Freire (1998) notes teaching requires a recognition that education is ideological, involves ethics, a capacity to be critical and also to recognise our conditioning, humility and abilities for critical reflection. This challenges educational practices which challenge what it means to be “critical” and how new principles of a pedagogy that counters modernism might be constructed. This might not be an easy task. As Grey (2005:62) notes, “the context for the development of management education was very much that of the emergence of complex, large-scale industry, and, associated with that, the growing separation of ownership and control”. Currently textbooks, case studies and classroom simulations dominate business pedagogic practices. This has resulted in a “contract of cynicism where faculties deliver and students accept knowledge which, both know to be virtually useless” (Grey, 2005:64).
This might suggest that if critical management education (CME) or critical HRD education (CHRDE) are to challenge powerful historical organisational or cultural discourse then it has to review its pedagogic project, which are located within political, social, and cultural contexts. This concern was described by Greene (1978:12) claiming that discovery had been taken out of learning in many teaching/learning situations by noting that, “The self as participant, as inquirer, as creator of meanings has been obliterated”. These sentiments are articulated by Margaret Macintyre Latta (2004:94-95) in her essay Traces, Patterns, Texture: In Search of Aesthetic Teaching/Learning Encounters where she states “Rather than conformity, being rewarded, in [these] classrooms, difference is not cause for alarm but celebration”.
The need for creativity and innovation has been identified as being central (see, for example, Davila, Epstein and Shelton 2007; Florida, 2002; Gibb, 2006; Hartley 2005). Kerr and Lloyd (2008: 487) note that this is a consequence of the growing recognition from business and government globally that creativity, innovation and a more creative workforce are necessary for the competitiveness of organisations in the global economy. An alliance between arts, organisational aesthetics, and disciplines such as management, leadership, and human development has also emerged as areas of research (see, for example, Cummings, 2000; Linstead and Höpfl, 2000; Strati 2000; Armitage, 2014; Darsø 2004). In her book Artful Creation: Learning-Tales of Arts-in-Business Lotte Darsø (2002:43) identifies behaviours and competencies that reflect instrumental (improved performance) benefits from arts-based learning.
For example:
‘… certain artistic capabilities [which] are important for business and can be taught by artists, such as presentation and communication skills, listening skills and storytelling. The same goes for team building and collaboration inspired by ensemble and rehearsal techniques, as these are used by musicians and actors. A variety of business people, from managers to human resource consultants, can benefit from these approaches.’
Oakley (2007) advances the benefits of arts in education for a creative workforce, emphasising ‘the need to develop communication, leadership, entrepreneurship, team work, creative skills, cross-cultural understanding, problem solving, emotional intelligence and right-brain stuff’ (Kerr and Lloyd, 2008:488). She notes that a focus by economic policy makers across the world on things ‘creative’ is driven by factors such as creative inputs in innovation policy, a need for new ways of working, and a changing contemporary workplace (Oakley 2007 cited in Kerr and Lloyd, 2008:6). As Kerr and Lloyd (2008:487) note ‘Given these needs, the exposure to learning in and through the arts offers a broad, hands-on approach to management development, with the arts providing alternative ways of seeing, thinking, intrinsic benefits that help discover, for example, other ways of thinking than the taken-for-granted’. This they claim has ‘benefits, for example, such as captivation, pleasure, expanded, capacity for empathy, cognitive growth, creation of social bonds, and expression of communal meanings are not only of intrinsic value to the individual but extend to the public realm … and community cohesiveness’ (487) (see also, McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakara and Brooks 2004).
These learning benefits are ‘derived through development of intrinsic (self-enriching) motivation and are supported in transformative learning processes, such as are found in arts-based learning (Kerr and Lloyd, 2008:7). This has been exacerbated by the competitive challenges of the new business landscape and importance of adopting innovative means to train and develop mangers and leaders (Adler, 2010). This view has been witnessed by several arts based initiatives in curriculum designing and delivery and according to Schiuma (2011:132) who provides several such example, ‘The inte.g.ration on arts-based learning processes in business schools’ curricula is gradually spreading’.
It can be argued that pedagogy involves the relationship between student and teacher, the learning context, and learning process (Bonk and Smith, 1997; Waters, 2005). This is important to any critical pedagogy but more specifically for authentic educational discourse that informs professional and workplace practice, the structuring of opportunities to facilitate participation and change (Freire, 1987; Freire and Faundez, 1989; Tadeu de Silva and McLaren, 1996; Billet, 2001; Moore. 2004). Further, Hughes and Moore (1999:3-4) suggest that ‘pedagogy can be discovered in any social context where knowledge is distributed and used’. Critical pedagogy is more than just superficial contact with “others” and the “what is” that confronts individuals in their daily lives and establishes a relationship of respect, honesty and trust between teachers and students, employer and employee, provider and client, institutions and society (Freire 1972; Freire and Faundez, 1989). It is engagement with the world. It is the humanising of debate that gives the process its value as an instrument for beneficial change.
Freire (1970 and 1972) defined a critical pedagogy as the contextualisation within society, organisations, and history (Lodh and Gaffikin, 1997) in the recognition that this is a human, not a scientific, endeavour (Arrington and Puxty, 1991 and Francis, 1990). This has led some to advocate dialogue as the means for the creation of democratic, emancipatory, and transformative practices within the sphere of pedagogy and communication between individuals and groups (see for example Boal, 1974; Freire, 1970; Bohm, 1996; Isaacs, 1999; Hermans, 2001; Giroux, 1997; Archer, 2003). For Freire (1970), transformation is central to emancipatory practices. It is central to an individual’s awareness that they ‘exist in and with the world’ (Freire, 1972:51) being, but knowing, subjects who have an engagement of social, historical, political and cultural (Giroux, 1997). Freire (1972:51) coined the word conscientization to capture this concept as ‘conscious beings that men are not only in the world but with the world, together with other men’. For transformative practices to become reality, Freire puts dialogue at the centre of human encounters such as learning and problem solving processes, advocating that it can only be achieved if those involved are exposed to emancipatory practices that nullify powerful discourses (see also Senge, 1990; Schein, 1993; Giroux; Isaacs, 1999; Oswick et al, 2008). This can only be achieved according to Boal (1974:xvi) by the awakening of individual freedom within the context of social-political-economic situations and as a challenge to the ‘given’ dominating orthodoxies of those who occupy positions of power and control and manipulate those with less power.