Action Learning in Health, Social and Community Care

Principles, Practices and Resources

John Edmonstone

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351970891
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

This comprehensive guide covers all aspects of action learning, one of the most widely used development methods in health, social and community care. The book addresses the theory and practice of action learning in these fields, and considers action learning as an adult educational ethos as well as a helpful tool. Based upon emerging experience, it identifies good practice in action learning and offers a wide range of resources to enable individuals and organisations extract maximum benefit from this approach.

Offering practical tips grounded in sound educational principles, this book is invaluable reading for all senior managers and professionals considering using action learning for leadership, management and organisation development purposes, including organisation development practitioners and action learning facilitators, and for medical and healthcare educators and their counterparts in social and community care looking for a general introduction to this growing field.

Part 1

Principles

1What is action learning and what is it for?

2How does action learning differ from other development approaches?

3Action learning as ethos and method

4The benefits of action learning

1

What is action learning and what is it for?

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

(T.H. Huxley)

The working definition of action learning given in the Introduction to this book may seem to many people deceptively quite simple, yet it encompasses some very important ideas concerning both adult learning and organisational change that are significantly more complex and are central to what action learning is all about.

Adult learning

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.

(Galileo Galilei)

It has become increasingly clear that learning is an organismic or natural process, rather than one that is ego-driven (1). This means that it is not something necessarily which I purposively ‘do’ but rather that it happens of itself, often despite what ‘I’ want and not necessarily because of it. It is not confined only to formal and structured settings such as schools, colleges, universities or training centres, on educational programmes or on training courses, but is also informal in nature and so predominantly experiential, non-institutional and sometimes incidental – that is, it is often unintentional and a by-product of other activity (2).

As the theoretical physicist David Peat once wrote:

Knowledge cannot be accumulated like money stored in a bank, rather it is an ongoing process better represented by the activity of coming-to-knowing than by a static noun. (3)

Therefore, there is no such thing as ‘not learning’ because, in fact, we learn all the time, so learning is really continuous throughout our life. It takes place in all domains of human experience, and learning in one domain is therefore potentially transferable to others. The major issue is really whether the social and organisational contexts within which we operate either enable or disable our natural learning process. It is also clear that:

●Learning starts from not knowing: It is only when people admit that they do not know how to proceed, that they are therefore ‘stuck’ or ‘lost’, that they then become open to learning. There are no experts in those situations where there are no ‘right’ answers and no seemingly obvious ways forward. Where no right answers exist then people must act in order to learn. Action learning can therefore be seen as a practical means of sharing and exploring our ignorance and as acknowledging that we do not know which direction to take.

●Learning involves the whole person: In practice, people do not separate their emotions from their intellect. It has been noted that:

Emotions play a central role in decision-making. The illusion that they can be somehow removed or put on ice whilst rational decision-making is in progress is neither helpful nor possible. Equally, the failure to manage feelings compromises the balance between thought, feeling and action. (4)

●People learn only when they want to do so: People have an unlimited capacity to learn from their own experience, but a limited capacity to learn from being taught. Effective learning is therefore voluntary, self-directed and intentional. It is an active and learner-driven process, rather than a passive or teacher-driven one.

●People who take responsibility in a situation have the best chance of taking actions that will make a difference: A belief in the capacity of people to make a difference in their lives is a key value embedded in action learning. Each individual needs to work out what really matters to them and what it is that they really want to do. This enables them to make choices and thus to take actions and then to learn from this.

●Much learning is episodic in nature: Learning seems to take place in short bursts of relatively intense activity that absorb the learner’s attention and is captured by the phrase ‘I’m on a steep learning curve right now!’ The pace and intensity of learning then typically lessens when the immediate purpose has been achieved and at that point people resort to a much slower pace of learning before a further intensive episode takes place, stimulated by a further question, issue or challenge which demands resolution. This is because learning is a situated activity. What people learn, the pace at which they do so and the quality and depth of their understanding are all very much related to the circumstances in which they have to live and work.

●The urge to learn is stimulated by the difficulties we want to overcome: The ultimate purpose of learning is to make a difference. People learn best from what they are doing, so real-life work and life challenges provide us with the best motivation to learn. We therefore learn best when applying new ideas or information to current problems and when exchanging feedback with others around practical applications. People who take responsibility in a situation have the best chance of taking actions that make a relevant difference. Learners can cope with difficulty and complexity from the outset, provided that they can see that such difficulty and complexity are directly relevant to their learning process.

●Learning is also about recognising what is already known: Inevitably learning is based upon, and so builds upon, previous experience. It is not only the acquisition of yesterday’s ideas but also includes trying out new and unfamiliar approaches. This means asking useful questions in conditions of uncertainty and this, in turn, inevitably ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Who should read this book?
• Acknowledgements
• Author
• Introduction
• Part 1: Principles
• Part 2: Practice
• Part 3: Resources
• Index