The role of the blended action learning facilitator: an enabler of learning and a trusted inquisitor

This paper reports on a research study that involved the use of blended action learning to support leadership development within the New Zealand education sector. An important contributor to the success of this technology-enabled approach to professional learning was the role taken by the blended action learning facilitator. Two complementary aspects of this role were: enabling learning, the main focus of which was encouraging participation in online interactions; and acting as a trusted inquisitor, a process involving both supporting and challenging participants in their leadership learning. This study found that the balance between these two roles varied over the course of the blended action learning groups and this led to the identification of five distinct stages of blended action learning facilitation.     

The leadership crisis – can Action Learning Questions provide any answers?

This article provides a reflective account of the author's experience over the past 12 years of introducing a structured approach to accredited action learning to corporate organisations. The generic Action Learning Question method is outlined and specific examples of programmes in the financial services/banking and education sector are described. Included is an example of how Action Learning Facilitators have been developed. It is proposed that this approach has a place in supporting leadership development in a period of great uncertainty and change.     

Resistance in action learning: struggling with self-efficacy and the social Self – and what about the set advisor?

This account of practice explores the concept of resistance in action learning. Resistance is conceptualized as an attempt of self-protection that is manifested in action learners' struggles with their sense of self-efficacy and their social Self. These struggles are an inherent part of the action learning process and may elicit defensive undercurrents that constrain learning. I contribute to debates on criticality in action learning by recognizing the centrality of resistance as a source of learning for participants and set advisors. The intended contribution of this paper is to illuminate the importance of engaging with these limiting processes which can spark a powerful learning experience that reverberates long after the action learning programme has finished. Furthermore, I reflect on the opportunities this alternative view on resistance may provide for us as action learning facilitators and discuss how we may incorporate these reflections in our practice.     

Participating in a Collaborative Action Learning Set (CAL): beginning the journey

Action learning is being increasingly utilised as a strategy to underpin practitioner focused development and research projects in healthcare generally and nursing in particular. Whilst facilitators of and participants in action learning have a variety of resource materials to guide their practice and participation, there continue to be few systematic and/or evaluative accounts of the experience of participating in action learning for potential action learning participants to draw upon. This paper attempts to address this agenda. The paper presents an interpretive evaluation of the experience of nurses participating in action learning as the learning strategy underpinning a 3-year emancipatory practice development/practitioner research programme. In particular, the paper focuses on the experience of ‘joining a learning set’. This focus has been adopted as the theory of action learning emphasises the principle of ‘voluntariness’, but yet action learning is increasingly being pre-prescribed as a component of development and research programmes. Such was the case with the programme reported on in this paper. The paper describes an approach used to evaluate learning that was adopted in this programme and in particular the initial evaluation stage that focuses on participants' feelings about joining an action learning set. The data collection and analysis processes are described and the key themes arising from the analysis (‘self-preservation’ versus ‘development of self’) discussed. It is concluded that working with principles of enlightenment is essential to successful action learning and the transformation of workplace cultures.     

Action learning in ActionAid Nepal: a case study

This article describes an example of how action learning was used as a framework for an organisational intervention to fundamentally change the organisational culture over a period of time. It also identifies our learning over that period of time and what worked well (and not so well) in an International Non-Governmental Organisation in Nepal.     

Action learning and organisation development: overlapping fields of practice

This paper explores the relationship between action learning and Organisation Development (OD). It proposes that they are overlapping fields of practice, with interesting similarities and differences. Both fields of practice are experienced as challenging to conventional ways of viewing organisations and people but are also subject to increasing challenge themselves and both aspects are examined. Two accounts of practice are included, which cast light on action learning and OD and some preconditions for a more fruitful future relationship between the two fields are proposed.     

突出实用性的工学结合课程开发研究与实践

通过研究分析课程开发流程与课程开发实践,为高职院校教师实施课程提供了好懂好用、简便易行、适合国情的课程开发范式,它可指导高职院校的课程改革,为＂以学生为主体＂的行动导向教学提供前提和保障,使课程彻底摆脱传统学科体系课程模式的窠臼,实现课程转型,形成具有高职特色的课程开发模式,从而有利于教师转变观念,增强课程改革的信心。     

工作过程系统化课程设计及其教学实践

德国职业教育在新的“学习领域”课程指南中明确规定,“学习领域”课程就是工作过程系统化的课程,而工作过程导向是“学习领域”课程方案的基础。因此,基于工作过程的行动导向教学过程设计必然要注重对职业教育和职业培训过程进行工作情境设置,以明确“工作过程为导向”的职业教育目标,其目的在于使职业教育培训能更好地适应工业发展中注重工艺流程过程的需要,以及技术创新和机制改革的需要。本文在对基于工作过程的教学过程设计作了介绍和分析的基础上,提出了一个学习领域课程设计的案例。     

Empowering or disabling? Emotional reactions to assessment amongst part-time adult students

This article focuses on emotional reactions to learning and assessment. It draws on a qualitative research project involving first-generation adult students on a foundation degree programme. Endorsing the notion of emotional reactions as situated in participants' lived power relations, we map out emotional patterns to Semester 1 and then explore in more detail, participants' particular emotional reactions to assessment. We found three key themes: higher education assessment as an unknown risk; assessment success ‘out of the blue’ and assessment as trauma and euphoria. A major aspect of the project was to offer socially constructed pedagogic developments in response to these themes and nurture emotion as positive energy for transformation.     

From nurturing the H in HR to developing the D in OD – systemic benefits where action learning and organisational development combine

The authors review the Organisational Development and Design (OD&D) capability building programmes they have facilitated in the UK Civil Service and consider the learning and impact which they have had at an individual and organisational level. These programmes have been delivered to over 350 professional civil servants across a broad range of business functions, ministries, departments and agencies. This paper builds on the article published in this journal entitled ‘Nurturing the H in HR’ (Hale, R. and Saville, M. 2014. “Nurturing the H in HR: Using Action Learning to Build Organisation Development Capability in the UK Civil Service.” Action Learning: Research and Practice 11 (3): 333–351) which explained the early stages of programme roll out. Data to inform these findings has been drawn from a desk based review of the postgraduate level accredited papers written by participants as an integral requirement of the programme and an impact review exercise which used a storytelling approach in order to understand and interpret real accounts of practice. It can be seen how combining the Action Learning Question methodology with a humanistic approach to organisation development has made a significant cultural contribution beyond individual learning and this is impacting the wider system of a complex and dynamic government organisation that has faced, and most likely will continue to face, unprecedented and unpredictable political, social and economic change.