From experience to knowledge in professional IT management education: exploring the applicability of classroom learning to real-life contexts

By understanding knowledge to be performative – a ‘dynamic and ongoing social accomplishment’, rather than a representation or commodity – we view knowledge, or more accurately ‘knowing’, as a capability that emerges from, is embodied by, and embedded in recurrent social practices. The fluent knowing-in-practice that distinguishes an expert practitioner from a novice is developed through the reflexive interaction of the practitioner with their peers and their real-life work practices . Our key aim in this research was to explore whether it is possible for the abstracted classroom setting to approximate real-life work contexts, thereby enabling the active physical, mental, and emotional engagement of learner/practitioners within their community of practice, which have been demonstrated in the literature to be central to learning. How might training programmes actively engage learners in this way? We explored these questions through focus groups and interviews with participants on a professional IT management training programme and found that real-life contexts can be approximated to an extent, such that learner/ practitioners are enabled to learn from their own and each other’s experience of addressing issues in relation to IT management.