An examination of integrated teaching and learning approaches in marketing education

This thesis is submitted for the award of the PhD by Published Work. It lies within the field of marketing education and contributes to understanding how marketing educators can enhance students' higher level thinking skills by using and refining learning approaches that integrate knowledge gained in different settings and domains. Three approaches are investigated for this purpose: simulation games, dissertation study, and cross-disciplinary curriculum design. In the first two, simulations and dissertations, students are required to transfer in knowledge and skills learned in prior settings and to integrate this learning with new material in order to successfully complete the learning task. While the first two approaches come with existing frameworks that students can engage with in selected modules, the third involves designing new curriculum for Master's level International marketing programmes. The latter considers both the benefits and the constraints of integrating ideas and theories from other disciplines in order to enhance students' conceptual understanding and improve their decision making skills in the complex and multidimensional arena of international business and marketing. The impetus for my research arises from experiences teaching marketing students over the past four decades and a recurring and perhaps increasingly urgent call from the professional and business education literature for educators to better prepare students for the complex, cross-functional, and unpredictable decision-making environments that characterise modern business. In particular, both researchers and employers argue that problems facing decision makers are rarely confined to single disciplines, but are in fact multi-disciplinary and require employees to think critically and integrate ideas from a range of sources. Research into the integration of learning, however, demonstrates that students need particular skills to be able to integrate ideas effectively and that educators should -provide both integrative exercises and supporting frameworks for students to do so. The submission is made up of eight publications and at the meta level addresses two research questions related to how educators can meet these challenges: What are the main learning benefits and constraints for students and educators of integrated learning approaches where students are required to link knowledge, concepts and skills from new and prior learning and what recommendations can be made to support students and educators with these experiences? Findings have identified clear learning benefits, but also student, tutor, situational and institutional challenges that can either reduce the effectiveness of more integrated approaches and/or enhance their deployment and learning potential