Exploring post-growth teaching practices in UK business schools
Call for participants: early- to mid-career academics based in UK business schools with both interest and experience in embedding post-growth and degrowth into responsible management teaching
Closing date: 31 July 2021
CUSP researcher Dr Simon Mair and his colleague Dr James Scott Vandeventer at Huddersfield University are looking to recruit early- to mid-career academics based in UK business schools who are teaching post-growth and degrowth perspectives for a project funded by the UK and Ireland Chapter of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).
Participants will take part in small learning sets and can expect to build a network of like-minded colleagues and resources to support their teaching of post-growth and degrowth perspectives.
Project overview
We live in times of compounding and accelerating growth-driven crises, from the climate emergency to rampant inequality and a host of other well-documented challenges. In this context, it is incumbent to examine how the next generation of leaders are being equipped to tackle the challenges of growth.
The recent uptake of responsible management in business schools is a promising development (e.g. Nonet et al., 2016). However, the exact scope of what this responsibility entails has been left underdeveloped, allowing contradictions in business and management education to persist. Chief among these is the notion that continued growth—of business, of industries, and of economies—will resolve confounding social and ecological challenges. The panacea of growth has been thoroughly rejected (Jackson, 2017), and an increasing number of business school scholars are becoming sympathetic to post-growth and the related notion of degrowth (Vandeventer and Lloveras, 2020), little attention has been paid to the progress—or lack thereof—in translating these critical ideas into teaching and learning.
Calling for participants
To investigate the above question, we are looking for participants who are early- to mid-career academics based in UK business schools with both interest and experience in embedding post-growth and degrowth into responsible management teaching. We are particularly keen for participation from those who are developing their own teaching materials related to post-growth and degrowth in undergraduate or postgraduate teaching.
Participation in the project will involve attending an initial launch meeting, and active engagement in several small ‘learning sets’ which will meet 3-4 times online. These learning sets will be geared toward sharing experiences and pedagogical best practices, as well as the challenges encountered. The project is expected to last until Spring 2022, after which there will be a closing event held in person (subject to UK government guidance).
Contact
If you are interested in participating, please send a short (1 paragraph) explanation of why you are interested in the project and how you are integrating post-growth/degrowth into your teaching to James Vandeventer (j.s.vandeventer [at] hud.ac.uk) by July 31st 2021.
