Action Learning

Ian McGill, Liz Beaty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135381295
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Action learning is a method of learning that takes place in a group - of colleagues or students. It is widely used in a wide number of educational fields, particularly where learning in groups is appropriate. Action learning is established in both higher education and in professional learning and training situations. First published in 1995, this is a guide to using action learning techniques successfully.;Written by two leading figures in the field, this revised edition retains the same practical guidebook approach to how action learning works. Key points include being a facilitator of action learning, and running workshops for a variety of situations, including higher education, organizational change and professional development.

Chapter 1
Using the Guide

Action learning is a process of learning and reflection that happens with the support of a group or 'set' of colleagues working with real problems with the intention of getting things done. The participants in the group or 'set' each take forward an important issue with the support of the other members of the set. The process helps people to take an active stance towards life and helps overcome the tendency to be passive toward the pressures of life and work.

The guide is for users to practise action learning - the how and doing of action learning. There is much written at theoretical and descriptive levels and many examples of the practice of action learning sets. Our endeavour is to detail how action learning can be made accessible so that users can create and run action learning sets themselves with growing confidence. We set out the key procedures and skills that participants need to gain effectively from action learning. We review the potential of action learning for continuing professional development, management development and show how it can be a significant vehicle for learning in higher education.

Users of the guide

The guide is intended for people who want to use action learning. It is for those who wish to introduce the idea to their colleagues and for those who wish to take part in action learning for effective personal learning and development. The guide can be used to introduce the concepts and processes involved to new practitioners and as a manual for those who facilitate action learning.

The guide is a practical contribution for individuals to engage in their personal development. By 'personal development' we mean how a person can reflect on their work and life (we prefer not to make a separation between work and the rest of our lives) with a view to making things happen or change. At a task level it may be tackling a problem like making better use of time or working through a project. At a more reflective level it may be whether to change the direction of a career or how to find the 'right' balance in life between competing interests.

We use the term 'manager' frequently in the text. We use a very broad definition of managers as people who take responsibility for their lives and work. In this sense 'everyone a manager' enables all to think and act managerially (Boydell et al, 1991). This also means that within organizations all staff can be considered in terms of their developmental needs.

Action learning in companies and the public and voluntary sectors

For organizations wanting to develop their staff, action learning sets provide a means of enabling that development to happen. The process combines a person's direct work experience with their learning as opposed to the traditional separation of direct work experience from learning associated with education. Being in-house, about real issues and continuous, a person's learning tends to be cumulat ive and relevant as opposed to off-site workshops and resident ials that may not be geared to the individual's needs and where the fall-off in learning is known to be significant. Moreover, the action learning process develops and enhances skills and qualities that are required by organizations for their effective operation, contributing to the development of the organization as well as the individuals employed.

Our guide is addressed to those in industrial and service organizations (private, public and voluntary) who can influence and determine staff and management development policy and its implementation. The guide is for staff to use as a resource in securing their own development needs and enhancing their skills through participation in action learning sets.

Continuing professional development

As professionals, once qualified and trained, we can no longer rest on the laurels of the letters after our name. Given the obsolescence of knowledge and practice it is inevitable that development is part of professional life as opposed to something gained and boxed neat ly in the past. Many professions are meet ing the need by introducing programmes of continuing professional development as a requirement to maintain individual quality of work and in the process maintain the integrity and credibility of their profession.

Continuing professional development is significantly based in the practit ioner's experience, centred on relevant problem-based learning, selfdirected and structured to encourage reflective learning. We endorse the practice that centres on the learner professional. We are also aware of the effort, potential pain and struggle associated with 'keeping-up' as well as the pleasure and affirmation associated with maintaining professional credence. Learning and development can be very hard work, however well integrated into professional life.

Professional development is rightly self-directed. Implicit here is the tendency to believe that the learner professional is on their own because the learning is managed by the individual learner. Part of our reason for advocating action learning is that we believe learning is also very much a social process. We learn with and from each other in dialogue. The guide is designed to enable professionals to work together on their continuing development with the structured support and challenge of others using action learning.

Action learning in higher education

Higher education has traditionally been characterized by a clear separation from industry and service organizations. Characteristically, students get taught/learn in colleges and then go on to work following completion of the course with little linkage between the two worlds. Moreover, students of higher education have traditionally been taught didactically, 'one subject/discipline' in lecture-receiving mode. The trend toward student-centred learning, transferable skills and closer links with industry and services has required higher education institutions to look to ways of linking with the 'outside' world and introducing more effective methods of student learning. Action learning provides a method of enabling that learning as well as acquiring and enhancing a significant range of transferable skills.

In higher education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels the guide is useful to teaching staff, including course organizers, who wish to move toward alternative teaching and learning methods. Course designers and teaching staff can adopt the method, develop the skills, and use action learning sets as a primary mode of learning or as a supplement to other methods. Student learners can use the guide to enhance their practice in action learning sets.

Independent action learning sets

One of the liberating features of action learning for us has been the ability to create our own sets which were independent of the organizations in which we happened to be employed. Indeed our experience of independent sets has been one of the motives in compiling this guide. Independent sets can be self-facilitated by the members; alternatively the set can be facilitated by a set adviser who has the skills to get the set up and running. Once the set members have acquired the skills the set adviser withdraws.

We found that the support and challenge of a set met many of our needs for our own personal development. We could share the struggle of learning and grappling with change which otherwise we do in isolation from others and without the feedback of others. Realizing that we need not be on our own in whatever our struggle gave us a strong commitment to action learning.

Colleagues, friends and students can therefore use the guide to set up their own action learning sets.

Action learning for trainers and developers

Trainers, consultants and developers may also find our guide useful to extend their repertoire as professional practitioners and advocates of effective development using action learning as the method of development.

How the guide is organized

We seek to enable people to benefit from using the guide to do action learning as opposed to simply reading about action learning. The organization of the chapters reflects that purpose.

Part I, Doing Action Learning (Chapters 2 to 6), conveys detailed descriptions of the practice of action learning for those who wish to be effective set members and for those who facilitate action learning. These chapters are intended for readers to become familiar with the method and feel confident about doing action learning.

Chapter 2 sets out what action learning is. The aim is to de-mystify the term, encourage the use of action learning and to explain how to organize and run sets. Chapter 3 defines how a set works once the set has formed. Set meet ings are put into the context of the action which a set member takes between set meetings. We describe the basic procedures of the set - what to do and when - and examine in more detail the processes of set meetings - the how of action learning set meet ings. It is important that the set reflects on its processes: how the set is working, what is happening below the surface. An examination of the process, as opposed to what is being discussed (a set member's issues or content) deals with how individual set members are feeling and how the whole set is working. Chapter 4 examines how to be an effective set member from three perspectives: as a set member receiving support; as a set member giving support to another member who is addressing his/her issue; and finally as part of the whole set. Facilitators, when to use them, their role and qualities forms the basis of Chapter 5. Here we examine how the skills and qualities needed by facilitators are acquired and enhanced. This chapter is useful for set members as it may help them 'model' their own set practice on the facilitator for, in a sense, all members of the set are facilitators. Further, facilitators should, in our view, be aiming to make themselves redundant as the set becomes self-facilitating and independent of the facilitator. Chapter 6 introduces different types of action learning, how it can be used as a training and development vehicle in organizations, in higher education, and outside organizations amongst friends and collea gues. Sets may start as self-facilitated sets. This chapter will help those who wish to initiate self-facilitating sets by explaining the how of self- facilitation.

Part II, Developing Action Learning Skills, Chapters 7 to 9, introduces the skills used for effective action learning. Given support for the idea of action learning, how is it introduced to potent ial users? To obtain a real sense of what action learning will be like it is insufficient merely to describe it in words. Chapter 7 shows how action learning can be introduced to potential users by doing it. The chapter provides a workshop format for the person introducing it and shows how to design and run the workshop. The workshop conveys to participants an understanding of what it would feel like to be in a set. Once participants agree to become part of a set they enter the formation stage which is usually the first meet ing. This is the stage when participants really decide to continue. Membership of the set must be voluntary to ensure real commitment.

There are a number of basic (but sophisticated) skills that we bring to all interpersonal situations. An action learning set places significant emphasis on some of these. Examples include our skills of listening, reflect ing back, disclosure, empathy, giving and receiving feedback, questioning and specifying actions. The aim of Chapters 8 and 9 is to make the skills required for effective set membership more explicit and to enable potential set members to reflect on and enhance their own skills.

In Part III, The Uses of Action Learning, we consider the relationship of action learning to learning and development. Applications include its use for continuing professional development, management development, the contribution to learning in higher education, and the features in the guide that we consider take action learning forward. In Chapter 10 we examine the potential richness of action learning for real learning and development alongside some forms of traditional learning. In addition we relate action learning to some theories of learning.

In Chapter 11 we examine the contribution that action learning can make to add qualitatively to the experience of continuing professional development by enhancing the structured support to learning. In Chapter 12 we consider how action learning can contribute to management development in organizations in terms of relevance and the development of the whole person. This fits with the trend of ensuring that employees can be adaptive in their own interests as well as that of the employer. We go further in these chapters to show how action learning can contribute to the systems for management development, organizational learning and the notion of the learning company (Pedler et al, 1991).

In Chapter 13 we examine how action learning can be used in higher education: as an effective means of enabling and enhancing transferable skills and learning to learn into course development and delivery; to provide more flexible teaching/learning methods; as a basis for greater interaction with industry and the service sector.

Finally, in Chapter 14 we examine the features of the guide that we consider take action learning forward, particularly with this second edition, and extend its use in contributing to individual, organizational and social change.

Routes through the guide

People will have different purposes in using the guide. We do not intend that the guide be taken in at one reading from page one onwards. We have included a glossary for users unfamiliar with action learning. We suggest some routes, depending upon the intention, role and background of the user, as:

• a potential set member intending to join an action learning set - Chapters 2, 3, 4 and later 8 and 9;
• an existing set member wishing to reflect upon and enhance their experience of sets - 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and Part II, 10, 11 and 12 and/or 13, 14;
• set members with some experience of action learning on wanting to work in self-facilitated and possibly independent sets - 5, 6, 8, 9 and 14;
• facilita...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the revised second edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Using the Guide
• PART I DOING ACTION LEARNING
• PART II DEVELOPING ACTION LEARNING SKILLS
• PART III THE USES OF ACTION LEARNING
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Addresses
• Index