Definition of Action Learning
Only those who have experienced a formal action learning program understand the difficulty in attempting to define action learning. This results from participant's learning being far greater than the sum of the individual learning components that make up an action learning event. Action learning goes beyond problem solving, acquiring new knowledge and facts, and developing new skills, to deep learning that can penetrate the heart and core of the individuals involved. Reg Revans' always attempted to avoid a definition for fear he would not do justice to the concept and theory of action learning. However, the following definition "was used in a memorandum Action Learning and the Developing Countries, prepared in 1974 for The Council for Technical Education and Training in Overseas Countries (TETOC)" (Revans 1982, p. 627):
“Action Learning is a means of development, intellectual, emotional or physical, that requires its subjects, through responsible involvement in some real, complex and stressful problem, to achieve intended change sufficient to improve his observable behaviour henceforth in the problem field. Learning-by-Doing may be, perhaps, a simpler description of this process, although action learning programs presume a design and organization unnecessary in the everyday actions that supply the learning of young animals and small children. In most of the action learning programmes developed by the writer, subjects learn with and from each other by mutual support, advice and criticism during their attacks upon real problems, intended to be solved in whole or part. The learning achieved is not so much an acquaintance with new factual knowledge nor technical art conveyed by some authority such as an expert or a teacher (although such fresh acquaintance is not ruled out), as it is the more appropriate use, by and reinterpretation, of the subject's existing knowledge, including his recollections of past lived experiences. This interpretation is a social process, carried on among two or more learners who, by the apparent incongruity of their exchanges, frequently cause each other to examine afresh many ideas that they would otherwise have continued to take for granted, however false or misconceived. Action learning particularly obliges subjects to become aware of their own value systems, by demanding that the real problems tackled carry some risk of personal failure, so that the subjects can truly help each other to evaluate in what they may genuinely believe. Action learning demands real-time and hence observable activity on the subject's parts and thus tests whether the subjects are committed to what they can, in other conditions, merely asseverate. This may well be done by followers of the case study, business game or other simulation, but is impossible in the Me-Here-and-Now of operational reality. Action learning therefore leads the subjects to undeceive themselves in ways denied to the seminar; since it also bears keen witness to the quality of its organizers it will never become the common practice of business schools.” (Revans 1982, p. 627)
The
last line of this definition is changing, as more educators, higher learning
institutions and e-learning adopt action learning programs and principles.
The needs and demands of adult learners, leadership development programs
and organizational learning theories have brought this about.