Reflective Learning in Practice

Anne Brockbank, Ian McGill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317069546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Education
• Index: Business

This book gathers together details of seventeen case studies of learning in practice, after having set the issue of reflective learning in a theoretical context. The cases are drawn from a wide range of situations and discuss both apparent successes and failures. The cases are used as a basis to develop general findings. These general findings are expressed as themes and questions so that, as readers come across new circumstances, they are not limited by prescriptive recipes. Instead they are empowered by having both an open and focused approach: open because the starting point is questions rather than answers, and focused because the questions direct attention to factors that have been found to be influential for effective, reflective learning. The crucial factor is the ability of managers and others to extract quality learning from experience. Reflective Learning in Practice develops an approach that will help this to happen.

Part 1
Purpose and Themes

Chapter 1
Our Purpose

Anne Brockbank, Ian McGill and Nic Beech

The idea of a learning organization continues to stimulate the imagination and encourage new approaches to learning and development at work. However, the reality of such an organization remains elusive. Organizations may be moving towards that reality, and may be at different stages of the journey, a journey which can be seen as a continuous and reflective learning process. The kind of learning now sought by organizations addresses the challenges of continual change in a variety of economic, social and political contexts.

The key purpose of this handbook is to unlock the learning process that first leads to and supports improvements in organizational performance and secondly leads to transformational change that so often is elusive or happens serendipitously or not at all. Improvement and transformational change requires a learning process that is explicitly and intentionally created and reflective in approach. We are endeavouring to get into the 'black box' of what the appropriate conditions are to create reflective learning in organizations that consciously support learning for improvement and transformation of products, services, processes and strategies.

We define reflective learning as a process which involves dialogue with others for improvement or transformation whilst recognizing the emotional, social and political context of the learner.

This book is designed in three parts. Part 1 gives the purpose and outline of the book, introduces some of the theories underpinning reflective and organizational learning, and offers some practical ideas for realizing such learning. Here we have sought to give primacy to the data (detailed in Parts 2 and 3), and to draw from them themes and theoretical reflections which relate to practice, as the intention is not to move into a purely theoretical approach, but to seek integration between useful theory and theoretically insightful practice. Part 1 concludes with Chapter 5 which highlights the key themes that are reflected in the contributions in Parts 2 and 3. The themes are presented as questions rather than statements. The reason for this is that the complexity of the topic, the various impacting factors and the possible processes and outcomes of learning, mean that it is inappropriate to offer simplified unitary assessments. Rather, we seek to pose questions which would be useful to those pursuing, contemplating and researching reflective learning. The emergent themes also offer a map of sorts which may be helpful to the reader in deciding how they navigate through the reported learning journeys in Parts 2 and 3.

The aim of the cases in Parts 2 and 3 is to offer examinations of practice which give as honest as possible accounts of the learning processes in the organization concerned. These are real stories of the excitement and struggle which organizational learning implies. Part 2 draws together studies which report on learning processes that had some programmed element at their centre. In some cases there were formal, award-bearing courses, but in most they were tailor-made programmes designed to serve a particular purpose in the organization. One thing that all have in common is that while the programme may be a starting-point, it is not the end of learning, and a key contribution to learning in these cases was the informal and action-based learning that occurred outside the classroom. Part 3 introduces a series of chapters which are fairly diverse, but have the common aim of enabling reflective learning, while choosing a variety of means to this end. None of the cases is an exemplar of a learning organization, but perhaps because of this they have interesting 'real world' problems and solutions, steps forwards and backwards which may hold insights for others engaged in reflective learning. Our conclusion in Chapter 22 summarizes the role of reflective learning in organizational learning.

Clearly a learning organization not only enables the individuals within it to learn as individuals, very much in the traditional Human Resources way, but additionally develops intellectual capital through organizational learning. The potential effects of such learning are increased performance through shared knowledge and skills. In addition, where organizations understand the learning process itself, then they are likely to achieve transformation through creative and innovative differentiation. This book addresses possibilities about how such learning can be, or is being achieved, explicitly and implicitly. Conditions for intentional learning are given as well as what is needed for less explicit learning for individuals, groups and organizations.

We do not assume that the learning environment is neutral in organizations. Our definitions of learning emphasize the social context and therefore the power nexus experienced by learners. The individual's responsibility for learning is accepted, as well as the organization's responsibility for their learning, without assuming that learning takes place within a neutral context. The factors of class, race, gender, status and relative opportunity are real elements in a learning environment. In this respect the book offers no easy solutions, preferring to grapple with the uncomfortable realities about learning in organizations, and our contributors reflect this position.

Chapter 2
The Nature and Context of Learning

Anne Brockbank, Ian McGill and Nic Beech

The nature of learning

There is no science or theory of learning which embraces all the activities involved in human learning. Most of what we do, think, feel and believe is learned so the field of activities is wide and varied. There is little agreement among researchers about what learning is, for example the behavioural psychologist tends to identify learning in changed behaviour, while cognitive psychologists seek for change inside the learner as evidence that learning has taken place. Traditional academic learning has tended to emphasize learning as exclusively a mental process, whereas progressive approaches to learning insist that learners must be active and learn by doing. Recent progressive ideas include emotional elements in learning and we recommend that all three domains are attended to – that is, doing, thinking and feeling – for deep and significant learning.

Early research on learning, dominated by behaviourism and cognitive psychology, limited itself to measurable, observable behavioural outcomes. These early 'testing' methodologies paved the way for categorization and inventories from which educationalists, trainers and indeed recruiters, could interpolate the intellectual/personal capacity of the learner. The testing methods of these early researchers reveal their model of the human learner as passive receptacles. The previous learning, past experience and expectations of learners were largely ignored, as only what was ostensibly being measured was relevant.

Researchers have tried to redress the balance by exploring the impact on learning of individual differences, giving taxonomies of learning styles which recognize that individuals may vary in their response to learning opportunities (Kolb 1984; Honey and Mumford 1992). Such typologies have left the actual learning process as mysterious as ever, but the acknowledgement that individuals learn differently has alerted trainers to the danger of an approach which assumes that learners are all the same. We return to learning typologies below.

New research has taken into account how people learn as well as what they learn, by using 'asking' methodologies known as phenomenography (Mann 1987). Such studies revealed a variety of orientations, approaches and strategies, suggesting that deep holistic learning is preferable to surface serialist learning, and is likely to be achieved by learners who take responsibility for their own learning, and are motivated by their own learning ambitions. The move from 'testing' to 'asking' uncovered the importance of context in the learning process, revealing that learners 'play' the system of learning, by compliance with powerful forces, often against their own instincts and best interests (Marton 1981; Saljo 1988; Pines and West 1986). The importance of the sequencing of learning, and the possibilities for interactive reflections has been stressed both in the emergent themes drawn from the cases, and in the detail of several of the cases in Parts II and III.

The move towards asking learners builds on the ideas of personal construct psychology, allowing the learner to create their own constructs and meanings in describing their learning (Kelly 1955), as well as recognizing that learning and knowledge is created within a social context. When learners themselves are consulted about their learning they are revealed as active responsible adults who are capable of sharing their meanings and justifying their understandings. The socially constructed nature of knowledge has been explored at length elsewhere (Berger and Luckmann 1966), and we note below the power of the social context in learning. The social systems in which a learner is embedded will dominate much of her learning, as 'no human thought is immune to the ideologizing influence of its social context' (Burr 1995, p. 21). The workplace has its own ideology, often invisible to learners. However, the power of the learning context can be used to enable development towards a more general concept of ideology, through recognition of other and self as sources of knowledge, and reflective learning offers a method for doing this. The value, cultural, emotional and interactive contexts of learning can be seen to vary considerably in the cases presented, and this highlights the importance of raising such issues for consideration both in learning design, and explicitly with learners.

Most modem theories promote the concept of reflection as essential for deep and significant learning. We summarize below the theory underpinning our approach to learning and, in particular, reflective learning, in organizations which seek development and growth. A detailed discussion of the requirements for reflective learning can be found in Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education (Brockbank and McGill 1998).

We define reflective learning as an intentional process, where social context and experience are acknowledged, in which learners are active individuals, wholly present, engaging with others, and open to challenge, and the outcome involves transformation as well as improvement for both individuals and their organization.

This type of learning process is inherently complicated, and it takes place in complicated situations. It is therefore inappropriate to prescribe one best way of doing reflective learning. The approach taken here is to raise a series of questions and issues that are intended to help others make their own journey. To coin a phrase: the only real path is the one you see after walking across the desert when you look back and see your own footsteps. In Chapter 5, on emerging themes, we extract some of the main questions that reflect the paths that others have trod

Learning as a social activity

We start from the value that people are abundant in their resources. They bring their experience to learning situations. This contrasts crudely with the view that people are 'empty vessels' to be filled. This metaphor is discussed in detail in Chapter 20 on knowledge management and learning. But learning does not occur in a vacuum. The context in which learning may happen is crucial. Learning is a social process, which will influence the degree of 'agency' (autonomy) experienced by the learner. Hence the learning context will affect how autonomous the learner feels. The social process is critical to learning. By social process we mean the context and conditions in which learning takes place, which will influence how intentional learning situations are created and undertaken.

A social constructionist stance, drawing on the work of Berger and Luckmann (1966), holds that our realities are deeply influenced by our life experience. So learning contexts are themselves socially constructed. In addition the social constructivists tell us that 'we create rather than discover ourselves' and we do this through engagement-with-others, using language in discourse (Burr 1995, p. 28). For reflective learning, the recognition that 'the self' may take an infinite variety of forms (Gergen 1989), that our conceptual space is created through our language (Potter and Wetherell 1987), and that our context is defined by the prevailing discourse (Grant et-al. 1998), enables learners to access their potential and challenge what constrains their learning.

The prevailing discourse is defined as 'a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that, in some way together produce a particular version' (Burr 1995, p. 48) of events, person, or class of person. So examples of how discourse prevails are given by terms like 'attitude problem', down-sizing, on-message, globalization, unionized, eco-warrior. Identities are constructed through discourse-for example, how intelligent someone is judged to be may relate to their physical appearance and to how they are allowed to talk without interruption. These factors are differentiated between the genders. The operation of discourses is not power-neutral, but rather is imbued with power relations which impact on how people are defined and granted or not granted voice, resources and decision-making powers. The individual is not a given, as the self is continuously constructed through the social relationships, discourse and practices of the organizational culture in which he or she is embedded (Townley 1994).

Hence as learners we enter a system that is not value free, where power is exercised that can influence our progress and affect our learning context. These contexts exist across a whole spectrum of organizations, from formal educational institutions to public companies and voluntary organizations, In-house learning is explicitly aimed at fulfilling the purposes of the organization and these are generated by 'leaders' within the organization, who ideally will be the designers of learning. The reality is rather different in our current corporate world, where the legal rights of proprietors take precedence over those of the employee, let alone the client or customer.

In addition, there will be implicit learning which takes place informally as individuals come to grips with the culture and 'ways of doing or saying things around here', that is, the learning climate and the dominant discourse.

The social nature of learning offers opportunities for the learner to reflect upon her learning not only by herself, but with others. Being able to undertake reflection alone is necessary but not sufficient. The tendency to self-deceive, collude and be unaware is ever present. When others are present the learner has potentiality for challenge which may not be available alone. As meaning is created in relation to others, then reflection and the creation of meaning is inevitably a social process. The context in which such reflection occurs is the learning relationship.

The learning relationship is one that can occur formally or informally, explicitly or implicitly. When people in an organization find themselves in an enabling learning role, the stance they create with the learner(s) is crucial. Without explicit recognition of the interaction as embodying a relationship, then in working with these conditions we may be less effective. There is a tendency for knowledge to be treated as static, disembodied, as a product rather than process where learners may be detached from the knowledge being imparted. Moreover the enabler may also treat the learner as detached, disembodied, object, passive. This is a very limited form of relationship inhibiting learning for the learner. Similar hierarchies can occur in line relationships in organizational contexts.

In recognizing the interaction as constituting a relationship between enabler and learner and between learners, we are saying that the outcome of the interaction, that is, the knowledge, comes through communication. As one writer has expressed it: 'and what is implicit in communication is the sense that the other person can understand and make sense of what is being said. Where this sense is absent, what is ostensibly being offered is unlikely to be assimilated' (Salmon 1980, p. 14). We will examine the form of the interaction in more detail inChapter 4 in relation to dialogue and reflection.

Power and passivity in learning

If learning takes place in a social context then we must examine the issue of power. Many writings on the learning organization and materials relating to development, particularly management development, treat that development in an individualistic and decontextualized manner. In other words the idea that the individual manager is responsible for their own development suggests that their progress is a product of their own motivation, commitment and drive. Some of the tools for enabling managers to determine their progress, for example, learning styles, assume a neutral context, as if the manager was somehow the same gender, class, and race and that the notions of diversity, status and relative opportunity did not exist. There is also a tendency to ignore the impact of discourse, culture and ideology on learners.

For effective organizational learning, there is a need to recognize power relatio...