Managing the monsters of doubt: Liminality, threshold concepts and leadership learning

Abstract

In this article we argue that management and business undergraduate students who are engaged in learning about leadership occupy a liminal space or state of between-ness. Drawing on anthropological conceptualizations of liminality in which those undergoing liminal rituals must grapple with symbolic monsters, we point to the experience of doubt and uncertainty as 'monsters' with which

Desperately seeking fixedness: Practitioners’ accounts of ‘becoming doctoral researchers’

“…Yet, this was not without tension owing to the challenges of the DBA liminal space. First, and unsurprisingly as glimpsed below, supervisors provided an important form of scaffolding since, in their role as a 'host', they 'are one who has gone before' (Hawkins and Edwards 2015) and have faced similar monsters themselves during their own transition to a competent researcher. They were thus able to provide guidance through the dangers and uncertainty that were encountered when students became stuck as the next two typical illustrations indicate: These quotes enable a fleeting glimpse of how supervisors were deemed able to dispel monsters of doubt arising from threshold concepts and which subsequently facilitated their movement forwards.…”

“…More specifically too we shed light on how students negotiate these struggles of incoherence or what have been termed 'monsters of doubt' (Hawkins and Edwards, 2015;Turner, 1979).…”

Understanding Sustainability Through the Lens of Ecocentric Radical-Reflexivity: Implications for Management Education

“…in context, and is based on a degree of suspicion and/or doubt about our self and organizational practices. Doubt can lead to generative learning (Hawkins and Edwards 2015) and may be carefully facilitated in the classroom in various ways: arts-based methods such as visual inquiry and poetic writing (Gaya and Phillips 2016;Page et al 2014); reflexive writing (Bissett and Saunders 2015) including how sociomateriality can be understood as involved and represented in their writing (e.g. Muhr and Rehn 2015); and by engaging in dialogue around threshold concepts that encourage reflexivity and can lead to acting in more moral and responsible ways (Hibbert and Cunliffe 2015).…”

Mastering threshold concepts in tertiary education: “I know exactly what you are saying and I can understand it but I’ve got nowhere to hook it.”

“…This indicates that students may still be in the 'liminal state' (Meyer & Land, 2003) of learning. Two recent publications addressing TCs in leadership also highlight difficulties in identifying TCs in leadership and the divide between the conceptual and the experiential: Yip and Raelin's (2012) article identifies only "two leadership concepts-situational and shared leadershipthat qualify as threshold concepts" (p. 334) and Hawkins and Edwards (2013) suggest that in order to cross the leadership threshold, students "must grapple with symbolic monsters … and experience doubt and uncertainty" (p. 1). In sum, there is little question that focus on TCs and threshold crossings can add to leadership teaching and learning but much research remains to be done in this area.…”