The Action Learning Story

The concept of ‘Action Learning’ was pioneered by the British business thinker Reginald Revans in the mid-20th Century. It was prompted by experiences of his own professional life. As an experimental astrophysicist at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Revans worked alongside eight Nobel Prize winners and witnessed their meetings every Wednesday to discuss their experiments. They did not meet to convince each other how clever they were, but to describe and explore their difficulties openly in order to help each other understand them, and to use those insights to experiment further. Revan’s action learning approach therefore emphasises how important it is to share questions and doubts, rather than success stories, in order to realise potential:

”Swop your difficulties, not your cleverness”

Later, in professional roles as Education Director at the National Coal Board and the NHS, his experiences reinforced his core belief om the potential released by the ability to own up to ignorance without fear of ridicule or reprisal, and the inability of tradtional “Chalk and Talk” teaching methods to solve practical problems, or provide a framework for real human growth.

In 1955 Regans became the first professor of industrial management at Manchester University, where he continued to promote management as something pragmatic, concrete and rooted in experience. And management education based on his ideas of “teaching little and learning a lot”.

Action Learning Philosophy

Action learning is an early form of experiential learning. It promotes ‘deep’ learning that goes beyond acquiring knowledge of a skill by reading a book or listening to a podcast or lecture. Instead, action learning is about behavioural change. It is about doing something differently, about applying a new skill or a new insight in practice.

Mandy Chivers and action learning scholar Mike Pedler (2004) identify four key principles underlying Reg Revan’s action learning approach:

• Learning starts from not knowing

  It’s only when we admit that we do not know hwo to proceed that we become open to learning. There are no experts in those situations to which there are no right answers. Where there are no wright answers you must act in order to learn.

• People who take responsibility in a situation, have the best chance of taking actions which will make a difference

  Emancipation and a belief in the capacity of people to make a differenc in their lives is a key value of action lerning embedded in which are assumptions.

• Learning involves both programmed knowledge (what is taught or read) and questioning insight

  Learning cannot be solely the acquisition of programmed knowledge (yesterday’s ideas) but must also include questioning insight and trying out unfamiliar ideas. Learning is about posing useful and discriminating questions in conditions of uncertainty. Learning involves reik and taking actions which might not work.

• Learning should be greater than the rate of change

  An organisation that continues to express only the ideas of the past is not learning. Training programmes that teach us keep us proficient in yesterday’s techinques. They do not ell us what to do when we meet a new opportunity.

Further References and Reading

Journal

Action Learning: Research and Practice - 3 issues per year
Edited by Mike Pedler, Taylor & Francis ISSN: 1476-7341 (electronic) 1476-7333 (paper)

International Associations

The International Foundation of Action Learning in the UK, IFAL
The World Institute for Action Learning (USA) WIAL
The Australian Action Learning / Action Research Association ALARA

Practical Guides

The ABC of Action Learning
by Reginald W Revans, 1983, 3rd edition 1998. Lemos & Crane

Action Learning: A Practical Guide (2nd edition)
by Krystyna Weinstein, 1998. Gower Publishing

Action Learning: A Practitioner's Guide
by Liz Beaty, Ian McGill (revised Ed edition 2001) Publisher Routledge

Action Learning for Managers (2nd edition)
by Mike Pedler, 2008. Gower Publishing

Action Learning in Action: Transforming Problems and People for World Class Organizational Learning
by Michael J. Marquardt (1999). Davies-Black

Action Learning in Practice (3rd edition)
by Mike Pedler (Ed), 1997 Aldershot: Gower