Health management education with a paintbrush

The ‘paradigm-shifting’ (Chia, 1996) qualities of art are highly relevant in education. For example, art has been used to help prepare management students for approaching complex problems (Nissley, 2010), and also to help health professional students become aware of their values, deepen their reflection and so inform ethical decision-making (Kinsella & Bidinosti, 2016). To investigate the place and function of art-making in health management education, I interviewed two experienced health managers studying at Masters-level. Both students had elected to complete an arts-based assignment. One student used painting to explore lateral violence in her surgical ward, and the other used photography to better understand communication patterns in her operating theatre. To further our conversations and to understand arts-based learning from within − through art itself − I made my own artworks and showed them back to the students at a subsequent interview. The data suggest that art-making can change a student’s perspective on management practice and that arts-based learning occurs as a movement from the unknown to the known, rather than as a process of building on what the students already knows. The two cases, including interview material, students’ artworks and my own artworks, will be discussed.
References
Chia, R. (1996). Teaching paradigm shifting in management education: University business schools and the entrepreneurial imagination. Journal of Management Studies, 33(4), 409-428.
Kinsella, E. A., & Bidinosti, S. (2016). ‘I now have a visual image in my mind and it is something I will never forget’: An analysis of an arts-informed approach to health professions ethics education. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 21(2), 303-322.
Nissley, N. (2010). Arts-based learning at work: Economic downturns, innovation upturns, and the eminent practicality of arts in business. Journal of Business Strategy, 31(4), 8-20.