Learning from difference and similarity: Identities and relational reflexive learning

Abstract

Within organizations there is reciprocal interplay between identity construction and learning. Processes of learning are enabled and constrained by identity practices; concomitantly, the possibilities for learning are shaped by the identity positions available to individuals. There is a dynamic between the impositions of organizations and people’s freedom to shape their identities and learning plays a crucial role in this. Our purpose in this special issue is to contribute to the understanding of the intersection of identity work and learning as a response to experiences of being different. Experiences of difference include moving into a new role, encountering a disjuncture with others while in a role or a difference in broader life which is reacted to as if it were a problem in an organizational setting. Being different produces a variety of challenges and the papers in this special issue trace how people cope with vulnerabilities, develop resilience and often collaborate in their learning. We focus on how people reflect on their own identity and learn and how, by learning together with people who have similar experiences, micro-communities can support, develop and enhance their insight and identity-positions.

Immigrant academic mothers negotiating ideal worker and mother norms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Duoethnography as a co-mentoring tool for transformative learning

“…And we feared that not being an ideal mother would result in us failing to transfer and preserve the sanctity of our Indian cultural identity in our children. Said another way, while our marginalized identities as immigrant academic mothers provided the thrust to engage in transformative learning needed for us to understand “how am I (or we) different to others or the normative expectations of the role I am in?” ( Beech et al, 2021 : 396), those identities also deterred us from benefiting from such learning. Through delineating this nuanced impact of our marginalized identity on the process of transformative learning, we add to the recent work of scholars on identity-learning intersection demonstrating “the often intimate and nuanced ways that identities inform and are informed by processes of learning” ( Beech et al, 2021 : 396).…”

“…Said another way, while our marginalized identities as immigrant academic mothers provided the thrust to engage in transformative learning needed for us to understand “how am I (or we) different to others or the normative expectations of the role I am in?” ( Beech et al, 2021 : 396), those identities also deterred us from benefiting from such learning. Through delineating this nuanced impact of our marginalized identity on the process of transformative learning, we add to the recent work of scholars on identity-learning intersection demonstrating “the often intimate and nuanced ways that identities inform and are informed by processes of learning” ( Beech et al, 2021 : 396). Specifically, we show how for each tension we experienced during the remote working and parenting situation, transformative learning experienced through challenging our subject–object equilibrium presented opportunities for us to question socialized expectations and undertake identity work through trying to self-author our worker and family identities that were supportive of our evolving self-concepts ( Kegan, 2000 ; Snow and Anderson, 1987 ).…”

“…Thus, this "inward cognitive process of identity creation and maintenance" (Kreiner et al, 2006(Kreiner et al, : 1032 challenged us to affect personal change within gendered and racialized contexts (academic and family) (Foucault, 1977), where who we wanted to be as professors and mothers (i.e. self-authoring of work and family identities) was in friction with the normative expectations (Beech et al, 2021). Given this, it would be interesting to explore how different types of marginalized identities (e.g.…”

Experiencing communality in collective activity: Four ways to generate sameness in differences

“…This perspective is extremely important for a world of management where one is expected to conform to roles, evaluated against performance criteria, or engage in emotional labour – where achieving or enacting one’s own sense of identity, of being oneself and addressing differences within a commons, can be challenging (Cunliffe and Locke, 2020). It is also at the heart of learning processes, which are both enabled and constrained by identity practices and experiences of sameness and difference (Beech et al, 2021).…”

“…This issue has been addressed in various ways within Management Learning. Beech et al (2021) argue that learning occurs in micro-communities as one encounters difference and collaborates with people who have similar experiences. And given the journal's roots, Perriton and Reynolds (2018) reflect on how the philosophy of exploring difference that is embedded in Critical Management Education has been eroded by 'structural realities in UK education ' (p. 532).…”