Four schools of action learning

Action learning has a history of more than 60 years of practice. During the late 1920s a group of research scientists "found that meeting to question their successes and failures, in a very deliberate and precise way, and then reflecting on them together, helped them to gain insights and act more appropriately" (Rimanoczy 2007:247). The various types of action learning were organised in 1999 (p. 248) into four schools:

1. The Tacit School entail that people learn incidentally from real problems while working.
2. The Scientific School follow Lewin's action research cycle but focus on learning.
3. The Experiential School base their learning process on Kolb's learning cycle, by starting with action, followed by reflection on the action and changes to future action.
4. The Critical Reflection School does what its name implies; the reflection deepens to explore beliefs and assumptions. [Action Reflection Learning falls within this school).

Two consistent elements were found across the four schools, namely:

• Working on real problems that are ambiguous.
• Participants meet to report progress and discuss problems.

Rimanoczy, I. 2007. Action learning and action reflection learning: are they different? Industrial and Commercial Training, 39(5), 246-256.

Comments

[Anne]

Hi, Thomas. "Action reflection learning". What a fancy way of saying "experience"! Me, I ain't got much book larnin' but I sure larned a lot jis by livin. An bein curious. An arskin lots of questions.
The most important word in the world? "Why".
Anne

[Thomas]

Dear Anne, I fully agree and value your comment. In another post (http://psychsoma.co.za/learning_in_vivo/2009/06/suoervision-mentoring-coaching-ex-cathedra.html) I refer to John Launer's finding. He remarks that he carried out a literature review of supervision, coaching and mentoring and to him literature "seems to exist on islands that are not in communication with each other".

I have undertaken some elementary research on What do we call that part of an academic program, which concerns the learning by students
from experience within the occupational field? and found an array of assiciated meanings (http://www.apjce.org/volume_8/apjce_8_2_93_107.pdf).