Daniel Dayton

Dayton, D. K. (2013, August). Socially constructed management communication and practice: A phenomenological study.Academy of Management Annual Conference Proceedings.

Dayton, D. K. (2012, August). The social construction of organizational learning: Examining the epistemology of master degree curricula.Academy of Management Annual Conference.(Winner of the Barry Armandi Award for Best Paper in Management Education and Development).

Dayton, D. K. (2011).Communicating quality: The social construction of management and leadership. Mason, OH: ALEF Consulting/Amazon Publishing.

Dayton, D. K. (2011).Communicating organizational quality: A phenomenological study through the lenses of organizational learning and complexity leadership theories. Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest/UMI Publishing.

Dayton, D. K. (2008).A coordinated theory of leadership: A synthesis of three theories of leadership. Capella University.

Dayton, D. K. (2007).Evaluating the dark side of leadership: A historical analysis of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Capella University.

Dayton, D. K. (2007).The arts, music, and religion in management education.Capella University.

Dayton, D. K. (2002). Copyrights and music. Keller Graduate School of Management MBA Thesis.

Teaching is a natural extension of the research that I am currently conducting in Organizational Quality, and Organizational Communications, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership. I have a strong commitment to heightening the scholarly and philosophical level of education in management curricula, by challenging the students' critical thinking and building upon the social-constructionist nature of human communication that is so endemic to management and organizational quality. Consequently, the courses I teach challenge the students to think outside the box, moving beyond a transactional learning paradigm (inherent to information-centered instruction) to a transformational learning paradigm, deeply imbued with learning-centered philosophy. The curricula of courses that lend themselves well to this teaching philosophy include Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Theory and Behavior, and Management Theory and Practice.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Daniel K. Dayton, PhD

“What is the nature of knowledge?”

Perhaps the first, and most critical step in developing assessment methodologies for subjective levels of knowledge evaluation and creation is familiarity with the students themselves. By getting to know our students, we have a much richer opportunity to engage them in the process of developing their learning, which is critical to the creation of a learning-centered environment. Learning-centeredness must be supported by authenticity of communication to foster the required genuine dialogue that must exist for its creation and sustenance. To accomplish that, I employ a social constructionist ontological view to create truly dialogic environments in which learning is created anew for each class based upon the interactions of the students and the professors. True learning-centeredness is a deeply-held philosophy in which the learning environment is co-created by the educators and the learners. My role is to facilitate this process.

If we as educators aspire to elevate our students’ learning above the Analyze level of Bloom’s taxonomy to the Evaluate and Create levels, then a learning-centered environment, based upon a socially-constructed ontological view of knowledge is a necessity. A significant objective in all of the classes that I teach is to go beyond the textbook material to assist the students in developing their critical thinking abilities, which engages those faculties that are required at the Evaluate and Create levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, once they have successfully calculated the financial ratios for a set of companies, the next step is to evaluate the results of those calculations. This requires some measure of subjectivity, because it depends upon the nature of the industries, the overall economic climate, the regulatory climate, and the attitudes of consumers and producers, and more. For many students this is something that they have rarely experienced in the classroom.

By engaging students in a process in which I assist them in developing those critical thinking abilities, we are necessarily drawing significantly from the students’ own life experiences. This is representational of a reality that is socially constructed amongst the students and with myself. In that reality, there may, indeed, be objective facts, but the evaluation of how they interact in understanding possible future realities delves into the realm of the subjective. In fact, it must do so. Why? Because the most basic tenet of the learning-centered instructional environment is that the students play a key role in constructing their own knowledge—not merely at the Understand level of Bloom’s taxonomy, but extending to the levels of Evaluation and Creation of knowledge.

Teaching is a natural extension of the research that I am currently conducting in Organizational Quality, and Organizational Communications, Management, and Leadership. I have a strong commitment to heightening the scholarly and philosophical level of education in management curricula, by challenging the students' critical thinking and building upon the social-constructionist nature of human communication that is so endemic to management and organizational quality. Consequently, the courses I teach challenge the students to “think outside the box,” moving beyond a transactional learning paradigm (inherent to information-centered instruction) to a transformational learning paradigm, deeply imbued with learning-centered philosophy.