Becoming a scholarly practitioner involves developing a disposition that treats management practice as a subject of inquiry, having a propensity for critical reflection and the ability to use systematic data and research to inform and evaluate practice. It also involves contending with the tensions of professional practice and academic scholarship, making sense of the intricacies of crossing intellectual boundaries, building an identity as a scholar-practitioner and developing a critically reflexive praxis, thus enabling students to acquire distinct competencies in framing, inquiring, and addressing managerial problems as practitioner-scholars who act as boundary spanners between academia and management practice. The module's purpose is to introduce students to the concept of relational engaged scholarship, in addition to exploring their wider knowledge bases and systems, multiple forms of knowing, critical perspectives on knowledge, and start to think about contribution, impact and dissemination to a variety of stakeholders across those knowledge systems. The approach adopted is in line with Raelin (2007), who proposes a symbiotic relationship between theory and practice. Learning as a scholar-practitioner is discursive and deliberative, therefore learners are encouraged to organise their inquiry and reflections into an evolving scholar-practitioner narrative that can be shared with others in order to build a Community of Practice in which to nurture their growth and development.

The principles of relational engaged scholarship, in particular the scholarship of integration and the scholarship of application; Mode I and Mode II knowledge production; diverse knowledge systems and their dialectical interplay; multiple ways of knowing; critical perspectives on knowledge as process and as socially constructed, continuously evolving, dynamic, contested, value-laden and political; professional identity and scholar-practitioner transition; leveraging pre-understanding; multiple meanings and approaches to impact with a focus on relational and processual views; structures and platforms as socio-material arrangement of relations between multiple stakeholders providing places and spaces of engagement; reflexive practice and the development of a disposition of authentic inquiry toward their management practice.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: Analyse and evaluate their professional practice, its embedding knowledge system and its knowledge base with regard to diverse forms of knowing, knowledge modes, knowledge objects, and how knowledge is valued from diverse perspectives and levels. Examine the generative tensions/paradoxes at the nexus of diverse knowledge systems and produce a systematic action plan regarding how to navigate challenges that will arise when navigating between knowledge systems as emerging scholar-practitioners. Critically explore pluralistic framings of impact across multiple knowledge systems, scales and temporal horizons and generate potential knowledge objects, communication and dissemination pathways for their research findings. Cultivate a reflexive practice via writing as inquiry and dialogic engagement with other stakeholders, with an emphasis on the interweaving of theory and practice, a reflexive and critical engagement with pre-understanding and existing professional knowledge, and developing a disposition of authentic inquiry toward their daily professional practice. Generate brokerage, bridging and boundary spanning activities as relevant to their specific context that integrate across knowledge systems.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: N/A

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: N/A

Leveraging the transformative potential of sitting at the nexus of both scholarship and practice, and the associated tensions and disjunctures that will cause, the module draws on both Dewey's experiential learning theory and Archer's critical realist social theory, with a key integrating learning artefact of the module being our distinctive PRIsm journal, which is rooted in praxis (P), reflexivity (R), and critical inquiry (I), complementing other evidence-based, research led and impactful teaching methods. In addition to self-reflection, the module will also leverage peer to peer discussion, critical debate, case study analysis and collaborative enquiry. Students will be introduced to their Praxis Pods in the first Immersive Residency and will engage in multiple Action Learning Sets in order to build Action Inquiry skills. The module is designed to be highly interactive and encourage a deep reflexivity regarding the student's own management practice, in addition to encouraging the development of interiority regarding values, theories, pre-understanding and worldview. The UL graduate attributes of "agile", "responsible", "articulate", "courageous", and "curious" will be developed as students immerse themselves in discussion, peer learning, individual and group project work and self-reflection.