There is increasing evidence that action learning is valuable in a higher education setting. This paper goes on to report a personal development programme, based on principles of critical action learning, where the aim is to equip early-career scientists and engineers working in a university setting with the knowledge, skills and confidence to…

During my first year of practice as a new action learning facilitator undertaking an "ILM Level 5 Certificate in Action Learning Facilitation", an innovative Individual Service Fund pilot was launched by "Certitude", the organisation for which I work. The aim of this pilot was to enable people with learning disabilities and…

This account of practice describes the introduction of an accredited postgraduate management qualification which used action learning as a major contribution to a blended learning approach in a fragile cross-border setting on the edge of Europe. Conventional management education has frequently been challenged on the grounds of relevance, efficacy…

This account of practice provides a practical example of the use of action learning within a masters educational programme, an MA in Change Management designed and delivered by a collaborative partnership between the Isle of Anglesey County Council (ACC) and Liverpool Business School (LBS), Liverpool John Moores University. The account has been…

Here, we argue that action learning (AL) has been evolving into different variations, whose respective advocates appear to concentrate on one of the several components inherent in Revans' formulation of AL as L = P + Q. They do this--sometimes inappropriately--to the virtual or relative exclusion of other aspects, and this has consequences for the…

Technology and millennials have created a shift in the world and how it operates. This impact has been experienced in the field of occupational therapy education. As a result of this paradigm shift, an analysis of effective teaching methodologies was carried out to assess the most effective way to engage the millennials in an analysis of…

This paper is based on the experience of incorporating action learning within a Master's degree programme over a period of 14 years. The MA in Leading Innovation and Change was launched in 1995. It was first developed, and subsequently delivered, by a small group of staff working collaboratively across organisational boundaries. It is currently…

The aim of this article is to explore several decades of experience of action learning and to distil lessons from that experience that are worth sharing with other practitioners. The method is to systematically collect the experiential data within three categories (sense-based, affective and cognitive data), interrogate them to draw out lessons…

The University for Applied Management is a semi-virtual institution widely using blended learning as an integrated approach of face-to-face instruction and e-learning. Virtual action learning is offered in all bachelor and master programmes. The module is transfer orientated and aims at encouraging reflection and supporting students to develop a…

This paper describes the delivery of action learning sets to students on the peer educator course provided by the Dementia Studies Department at University of Bradford. Our understanding of action learning sets is laid out together with our rationale for their use on this course. Feedback is presented that described a conflicted, even confused…

Recent calls to close the rigour-relevance gap in business school education have suggested incorporating principles and ideas from action learning in small business management education. In this paper we discuss how business simulation exercises can be used as a platform to trigger students' learning by providing them with a platform where they…

Knowledge and its applicability nourish each other in schools where teachers critically analyze data and, through team discussions, have the opportunity to solve the challenges that education presents every day. The premise of this model is that all participants have an active role in the function of creating praxial knowledge. This article…

This paper explores the role that action learning might play in micro and small enterprise development. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses upon the distinctive characteristics of smallness and ownership and their implication for management development processes in the owner managed firm. In particular the impact of personal…

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.

Becoming a "winning organization" when one currently is an "ugly ducking" can be a difficult and strenuous task. BAT Niemeyer in the Netherlands succeeded in making such a transformation over the course of four years. Action learning was used, among other methods, to steer part of this transformation, in which employee involvement was heavily…