This paper explores the critical difference a certified Action Learning Coach makes to the outcomes of the Action Learning process, which underscores WIAL's insistence that the coach is indispensable to achieving breakthrough solutions with Action Learning. Real-life coaching examples are used to illustrate three key benefits of having a coach:…

This article walks through the experience of two instructors from Northeastern State University who helped the College of Business and Technology implement work-based learning. Work-based learning was implemented in response to the changing needs of businesses, however, there were some struggles that had to be worked through in order to make this…

Critical Action Learning (CAL) is a well-established approach to action learning. However, it has not necessarily been clear to action learning practitioners what makes CAL 'critical' and what are the implications in practice. In CAL, the facilitator has a key role in helping the set to engage with underlying emotions and power relations that are…

A Chinese financial company, through the introduction of action learning methodology, identified core problems from strategy, and finally solved the core strategic problems by forming action learning teams of middle and senior managers, and in the process improved the mindset and capabilities of middle and senior managers. This account of Practice…

This account explores the experience of an action inquiry approach to develop a coaching culture within a public service organisation. We position action inquiry as a fresh interpretation of action learning that draws on a variety of roots and traditions and focuses on the nurturing of the collective capacity to lead through everyday interactions.…

The educational benefits of challenge- or problem-based approaches to learning are now well established. Action Research (AR) and Action Learning (AL) together provide educators with an ethic, a research methodology and a pedagogical strategy for harnessing and developing the motive power of purposeful activity for reflective enquiry in teaching…

The requirements of accreditation can add benefits of providing continuity and the impetus enabling engagement in a busy world full of distractions, that can pull people away from the important but less urgent realm of learning. But it can at times have a cart-before-horse impact; the danger is people can elevate the completion of a portfolio for…

To contribute to current debate concerning approaches to teaching and learning for researching complex work-based problems, we focus on the Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) programme. We examine the development of an integrated action learning approach as part of a part-time DBA offered by a university in the UK. In adopting the lens of…

This paper explores the literature around online and blended learning. The impetus came from a cohort of 60 students being led through their dissertation by an e-learning evangelist. Initially the pedagogy closely followed Salmon's Five Stage Model, Wenger's Community of Practice, and traditional Social Constructivism pedagogies. In hindsight, it…

This article sheds light on employee wellbeing. We reveal how an 'adapted' action learning intervention (a change laboratory) introduced prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, enabled learning and action to emerge within an educational programme. We utilise the theoretical lens of activity theory to illustrate the challenges and tensions of…

This article explores how P (programmed learning) in Revans' formula L=P + Q accumulates from one action learning research initiative to another. Drawing on three inter-organizational action learning research initiatives, it shows how the L (learning) from conducting action learning in an initiative in one network built new P on network action…

This account of practice is about the 'Scale Up' programme, an attempt by an external consultant and their client to implement a model of Action Learning in an academic environment. It tells the story of establishing an Action Learning programme for local business leaders in collaboration with an academic business school. The programme involved…

As Action Learning has evolved, it has been adapted to promote learning in various contexts. In this account of practice, we share our perspectives as facilitators of the application of action learning principles within Reflective Practice Forums for Mentoring and Coaching Programme Managers. The ethos of action learning was adopted with the…

The act of theorising turns the attention from the outcome of theory generation to the act of theory generation itself. Revans' systems "alpha," "beta" and "gamma" provide a foundational action theory that grounds the theorising process in action learning. This is the core of theorising in the praxeology of action…

The paper is an essay, rather than a researched academic work and explores the difference between two different ethe, neoliberalism and action learning. It considers two historical modernities and the emergence of a third, situating action learning and neoliberalism within this framework. It asserts that action learning and neoliberalism are…