Seeing and sensing the railways: A phenomenological view on practice-based learning. Issue 1 (February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Willems, Thijs
• Is Part Of: Management learning. Volume 49:Issue 1(2018:Feb.)
• Page Start: 23
• Page End: 39
• Publication Date: 2018-02
• Subjects: Embodiment -- phenomenology -- practice-based learning -- practices -- sensible knowledge; Industrial management -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Executives -- Training of -- Periodicals; Organizational learning -- Periodicals; Knowledge management -- Periodicals; 302.35
• DOI: 10.1177/1350507617725188
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1461-7307

Abstract

This article explores the role of embodied, sensible knowledge in practice-based learning. Despite recent efforts to conceptualize how practitioners become skillful through corporeal and sensible learning, it still seems under-theorized and hard to understand what this exactly entails. The aim of this article is to account for the inherently embodied and sensible nature of knowledge by drawing on a 2-year ethnographic study of train dispatchers in a railway control room. Embodied and sensible knowledge is developed through the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, as phenomenology is a way to theorize the body beyond being an object to, instead, account for embodiment as lived and experienced. The data show that such knowledge can be understood as a matter of 'attunement': dispatchers become progressively skillful in bringing their bodies and senses in tune with practical situations and perturbations in the environment. The article contributes to a richer understanding of embodiment, especially in the relation between knowledge and practices, in organization studies and management learning.