Blurred practice: creating a community of reflective practioners in management education

This paper attempts both to weave and to unravel conceptual links that may occur in the process of creating a learning community in a department of management. The intention is to assess synergies to be gained from exploring the labyrinth of paradoxes that exist in and between research, education, strategy and organization. We think there are and that they may be illuminated by considering a management department as a community of reflective practice. This paper provides and invites commentary on the conceptual basis for such a project. The metaphors of Petri dish, soup, and tapestry come to mind as one considers community of practice, learning to teach and teaching learn, management education and the management of education, organizational learning and the learning organization, the teaching of strategy and the strategizing about teaching, and so on. The argument is that when lecturers reflect communally on their practice as educators and consider how they organise and strategise their teaching they may well enrich both their teaching and the content of their organization and strategy courses.