Book Review

Arts-Based Approaches to Business Education 

Reviewed by John Townsend

If you are searching for a way to make sure that the design and teaching delivery methods of your business education modules are truly fit to meet your students’ needs as we move toward the second quarter of the 21st century - this could be the book for you!

As highly experienced educators/trainers themselves, Bronte van der Hoorn and Paul Donovan have put together this extremely persuasive and well-researched manual on why and how to design student-centred learning experiences based on the performing, narrative and visual arts. 

In other words it’s about how we business educators can tap into our students’ sensitivities and tastes for drama, music, poetry, films, painting, photograpy etc. in order to accelerate their learning.

The book is basically divided into three parts.

As a seasoned trainer of business-oriented trainers I found the arguments in the first, ‘why’ section particularly convincing. The authors provide us with a whole range of research results and global educational and institutional directives as well as their own successful experiences to help us overcome any hesitations we may have in using these (at first sight) challenging teaching methods. 

In fact, my own use of improvised theatre, storytelling, film and drawing/painting as a basis for accelerated learning course design has led me to agree with the authors’ conclusion that “arts-based approaches to business education provide rich rewards to those who are willing to be creative, curious and courageous in their teaching practice”.

The book’s second section provides the still-hesitant teaching practioner with a very helpful 17-point checklist of personal and evironmental considerations to address before launching arts-based modules and the final, ‘how to’  chapter is a compact gem of step-by-step guides to creating, preparing, running and debriefing art-based learning modules. Examples and vignettes abound to help any timid traditionalists summon “ the courage to take ‘the risk’ of being playful in pursuit of a better learning outcome for students”.
 
For me there’s only one thing missing from this otherwise complete manual for the 2020’s business educator. In a book called “Art-based Approaches….” there’s no art!

Let’s just hope that, as a result of a successful first edition, the publishers will increase the next editions’ budget so as to include as many visuals as possible to illustrate all the real life examples described by Bronte and Paul. 

A picture for every thousand words?!

As business educators and trainers we are faced with student groups whose everyday world is a rich audio-visual tapestry of television, social media, musical concerts, serious and not-so-serious literature, cinema and dance. Can we afford not to create learning designs which are congruent with this stimulating environment?

You can purchase the book from the publisher HERE.