Abstract:

Post-industrial society is producing profound changes in business environments and, consequently, in business education. As markets become more competitive, information more accessible, employee groups more diverse, and organizational structures flatter, teaching and learning are also becoming more flexible, collaborative, and task-oriented, with the student playing a central role in the learning process (Davey et al., 2018). In this environment, experimental learning has gained attention in business education. Yet strangely, despite experimental learning theorists repeatedly stating that reflective capacity is central to learn from experience, reflection has not received the same attention as action in business education (Cicekli, 2013). Educators perhaps forget that reflection is the binding element that allows learning from experience to be transformed into improved action and behaviour (Schon, 1987; Boud and Walker, 1998; Raelin, 2007) “…learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing. And reflecting is not an escape but an essential part of the management process – and probably its weakest component in today’s hyper world” (Mintzberg, 2004, p.228).

Also remarkable is the fact that, in the rare cases where reflection is implemented in business higher education, it is often connected with unilateral and objective assessment. Studies that looked into the role of reflection in the context of business education often describe how students and teachers benefit from feedback questionnaires, reflective essays or self-evaluation reports – which after being completed are not discussed either by student or teachers (Sadler and Good, 2006; Mulder et al., 2014; Reilly, 2017; Cathro et al., 2017). Although deem relevant, this form of objective feedback is distant from what the theorists of experimental learning cited above suggest since reflective learning is grounded in the collective discussion of the experience in its whole, including feeling, emotions, and motivations while reflective essays are mostly descriptive and often unexamined monologues (Raelin, 2007; Boud and Walker, 1998) ".…if students are to learn from feedback, they must have opportunities to construct their own meaning from the received message: they must do something with it, analyse it, ask questions about it, discuss it with others and connect it with prior knowledge." Nicol et al. (2013, p.2)

At the same time, business education literature is, to date, in a deficit of more empirical evidence on how exactly does emotion-embedded reflection support experiential learning and what are the concrete outcomes of this process. Much has been written on the benefits of reflective learning but less has been actually implemented - and consequently empirically investigated - in business schools (Cajiao and Burke, 2016). Given this background, our study contributes to theory by exploring how an undergraduate business program called Management Experience Program combines experimental learning with three different reflection mechanisms (reflection during practice, group feedback and individual feedback) in order to foster in students the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to operate in the 21st-century business environment. More specifically, the study aims to offer an empirical look into how exactly experiential learning can be enhanced by reflection as well as shed light into how different reflection mechanisms can foster different groups of competences.

Keywords:

Reflection, experimental learning, management education, business education, feedback, action.