The Intuitive Artistry of Action Learning in Organizations

Action Learning and action research are forms of learning by doing. The method of action research was originally credited to Kurt Lewin (1948: 202-3) but action learning was a development associated most commonly today with the pioneering work of Reg Revans (1982, 1998). Some forms of action research and learning are gaining a greater level of academic acceptability (Burgess, 2006). Practice or taking action in the real world necessarily involves interacting at some level with other people. For many action researchers, such activities ought to be part of a democratic, participative process (Greenwood& Levin, 1998; Kemmis, 2001). Heron argues that you can only study people if you deal with them as persons. That is, deal with the ‘subjects' of your research as intentional ‘actors' in their own life-drama and thus as meaning makers as well as ‘meaning-takers' (Heron, 1996).Others have since differentiated categories or modes of learning called Participatory Action Research and Participatory Action Learning which basically focus upon the empowering aspect of this approach to learning for individuals and/or communities. Yet others have defined categories called action science and action inquiry. However, as these are all derivatives of the two original modes in many ways, I will focus on Action research and Action Learning. I tend not to separate the two and rather regard them as two sides of the same coin. The two concepts have often been regarded as separate activities: one about finding new knowledge or re-interpreting old knowledge, the other about application of that knowledge. That is groups of learner-researchers working on their own, real, practical problems with a focus on learning geared for implementation in the learners' work or social life. The groups involved in action research and action learning are called learning sets