The educator’s LSP journey: creating exploratory learning environments for responsible management education using Lego Serious Play

Abstract

Research into responsible management education has largely focused on the merits, attributes, and transformation opportunities to enhance responsible business school education aims. As such, a prominent part of the literature has occupied itself with examining if responsible management modules are inherently considered a non-crucial element of the curriculum and determining the extent to which business schools have introduced such learning content into their curriculum. However, there has been scant research into how to apply novel teaching approaches to engage students and promote responsible management education endeavours. As such, this paper seeks to address this gap through the development of a teaching framework to support educators in designing effective learning environments focused on responsible management education. We draw on constructivist learning theories and Lego Serious Play (LSP) as a learning enhancement approach to develop a pedagogical framework titled The Educator’s LSP Journey. LSP is chosen due to its increasing application in learning environments to help promote critical discourse, and engage with highly complex problems, whether these are social, economic, environmental, or organisational. Therefore, this paper contributes to the responsible management education discourse by providing educators with a practical methodology to support student engagement and co-creation of knowledge by fostering exploratory learning environments and enriching the practices of active learning communities.

Ducks, elephants and sharks: Using LEGO® Serious Play® to surface the ‘hidden curriculum’ of equality, diversity and inclusion

“…LSP, thus, facilitates the discussion of complex issues (Dann, 2018) through creating a playful, positive activity that encourages sharing while simultaneously defuses tensions (Wheeler et al, 2020) through two ‘safety protocols’ (Dann, 2018). The first one is that participants are asked not to offer their own opinions and interpretations of other people’s models and stories; any questions posed should be neutral and open-ended (Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021; McCusker, 2020). This means that participants have a choice about how much to disclose regarding their thoughts and feelings surrounding the models they created.…”

“…Second, LSP is appropriate for exploratory research (Gkogkidis and Dacre, 2021), where there are no single ‘correct’ answers. Participants are led by a trained LSP facilitator through a series of activities, each probing increasingly deeper into the subject matter through model building and through participants’ interpretations of their own models which effectively serve as the stimulus for self-exploration and group discussion, enabling knowledge sharing, problem solving, and decision making.…”

Embedding Sustainability in Complex Projects: A Pedagogic Practice Simulation Approach

“…A carefully developed exercise can simulate not only the planning phase but also the execution phase and can introduce learners to the dynamic and often disordered nature of real-life projects (Gkogkidis & Dacre, 2021;Pontin & Adigun, 2019;Yao & Tite, 2019).…”

“…A balanced curriculum including case study examples covering both successful and failed projects with strong sustainability elements, pedagogy around the skillset required and an opportunity to apply, practice, and develop through project simulation exercises could offer insights in embedding sustainability into complex project management pedagogy (Gkogkidis & Dacre, 2020, 2021.…”

“…There is widespread agreement that sustainability is an area of focus which needs to be considered and addressed within responsible management practice (Gkogkidis & Dacre, 2021). Many authors address this subject area and consider methods for embedding sustainability within a project management curriculum.…”