'Best Paper' award to MSC researcher, Maribel Blasco

Maribel Blasco has been awarded the prize for ‘Best Paper 2016’ by the journal Management Learning, for her article: ‘Conceptualising curricular space in busyness education: An aesthetic approximation’ published in Management Learning, 2016, Volume 47 (2).

Space is vital for meaningful learning and for innovative, creative thinking, yet students report congested and rushed curricula that produce exam-targeted learning, cognitive overload, a sense of meaningless and intellectual claustrophobia. The article argues that productive learning spaces must be purposefully built into management curricula. It proposes rethinking curricula as three-dimensional artefacts comprising structures and content that together expand or shrink different kinds of space. The Japanese concept of ma - meaning ‘inbetweenness’, ‘interval’, ‘negative’ or ‘empty space’ - is proposed as a fruitful way of thinking about space in curricula not as wasteful or as a void to be filled but as the element that enables learning to result from exposing students to structures and content. The article outlines several strategies for reinstating space in management curricula.

The editors found the article ’exceptional’ and’ a significant and thought-provoking contribution to the field’. It can be accessed through CBS library at this link.

A blog post containing a short presentation of the article, and preliminary results from subsequent empirical research on this topic, may be found at Center for Responsible Management Education.