Table Of ContentABC of ACtion
LeArning
Dedicated to Janet Barbara Craig whose support made
Action Learning possible in the country of its origin.
ABC of Action
Learning
Reg Revans
First published 2011 by Gower Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright© reg revans 2011
reg revans has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
revans, reginald W., 1907-2003.
ABC of action learning.
1. executives--training of. 2. organizational learning.
3. Active learning.
i. title
658.4'07155-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
revans, reginald W., 1907-2003.
ABC of action learning / reg revans.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-2703-2 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-2704-9
(ebook) 1. Organizational learning. 2. Active learning. I. Title.
HD58.82.r48 2011
658.3'124--dc22
2011008340
ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-2703-2 (pbk)
Contents
Preface vii
Editor’s Note xi
1 the Characteristic Assumptions of Action
Learning 1
2 essential Logistics 17
3 the Characteristics of the Manager 41
4 The Influence of Top Management 53
5 the Philosophy of Action Learning 63
6 What Action Learning is not 77
7 Some experiences of Launching Action Learning 95
8 the enterprise as a Learning System 111
9 Annotated Bibliography 121
10 further information 131
Index 133
v
Preface
Written for the 1998 [Lemos & Crane]
edition of this book
these ideas have emerged from my experiences of action
learning over thirty years and more; they are intended to help
those who might wish to contribute to our understanding
of this educational approach by becoming involved in it.
Although many practitioners are in the field of commercial
management, it is pretty clear that action learning has a
growing appeal to those in many other forms of human
development such as hospitals and schools. this suggests that
fresh and stimulating use will be made of the ancient idea
of learning by doing, perhaps generating as wide a variety of
new approaches to the mastery of our troubles as that of the
current unrealities strutting with such confident insouciance
in the pageantry of higher education.
Since action learning suggests that we may best master
whatever unknown challenge appears by working with others
who seek to triumph in the same way, its programmes should
be collectively designed and launched by those who hope
to profit from them. This symposium is thus in no sense
prescriptive; it merely assembles what has emerged from many
previous endeavours and is offered between one pair of covers
to save the time of any who may now feel bold enough to set
vii
ABC of ACtion LeArning
up programmes of their own. the more substantial elements
of action learning, as they have evolved from my pioneering
programmes abroad – learning communities, sets, clients
and client groups; paradigms of action, learning, advice and
research; vocabularies of managerial debate, project sequences,
diagnostic and therapeutic question triads; exchange options
and management levels – are identified and related in the
following pages.
Some readers may feel the presentation a little too condensed;
the 29 words for example, of the three therapeutic questions of
section 8 (iv) in Chapter 2, should well be the theme of a major
treatise upon the nature of human action. But i do not offer
here such a treatise; this ABC should be taken as a simple paint
box, filled with a few primary colours for composing whatever
patterns of curative enquiry seem appropriate to its users. i
leave it to other to market the Painting-by-Numbers packages
that have become the ways and means of the management
education trade, in which the elements of action learning
listed above are offered under a great variety of ingenious
brand names, from management action groups to executive
exchange enrichment experience, and from developmental
practice to mission-oriented psychosynthesis. However this
may be, there is still great scope for experimenting with the
substance of action learning as well as in seeking new names
under which to sell it.
Action learning is not new; like all organic growth, it depends
more upon the reinterpretation of old and familiar ideas than
upon the acquisition of new cognitive knowledge. Much of this
symposium will therefore be familiar to students of learning
and management decision. But the detailed elements of many
new subjects can also be familiar to an observer without the
subject itself being readily perceived. there is something
viii
prefACe
fresh in each of Shakespeare’s plays, even although they are
formed from the same words from the same old dictionary.
What impresses us is that he can build from the very words
we understand – and sometimes even use ourselves – such
wonderful patterns and analogies.
I make this commonplace remark because I am often told
that managers who argue about their tasks with each other,
or visit each others’ places of work, are already ‘doing action
learning’. I hope that those who read what I have written in
the following pages will agree that, whilst action learning
must necessarily involve managerial conversation and even
the visiting of unfamiliar sites, it is very much more than both
of these.
r W revans
21 Tilstock
Whitchurch
Shropshire
SY13 3nS
March 1998
ix
