Identity Work and Pedagogy: Revisiting George Herbert Mead as a Vehicle for Critical Management Education and Learning

Although identity has become an excessive preoccupation of people in everyday life, centrality to critical management learning and education has sometimes been ignored. In essay, we explore the strengths and limitations but also the neglect of Mead’s analysis of and identity for developing a pedagogy that facilitates critical management learning. a sociology of knowledge, we trace this neglect to earlier research where, with limited, Marxian inspired critical research tended to eschew a concern with processes of self-formation of subjects. We argue that Mead’s ideas on reflexivity and indeterminacy central to learning to think differently, which is the benchmark for teaching from a critical perspective. Drawing on Foucault, we theorise identity work in the context of/knowledge relations in ways that help us to transform our pedagogy. Overall, we seek challenge not only our students but also ourselves in reflecting on identity work to facilitate of thinking and feeling differently in teaching and learning.