Action Learning in Social Work

Christine Abbott, Paul Taylor, Author

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781446275351, 9781446275344
• eBook ISBN: 9781446293737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Throughout their careers, social work students and practitioners need to demonstrate an understanding of critical and reflective practice. The Professional Capabilities Framework sets out how newly-qualified social workers can achieve this, and become ?critical practitioners? who are able to make decisions in fast-moving situations. This book is a complete guide for those practitioners who wish to engage with action learning as a way of developing critically reflective practice. 

The authors use Action Learning to explore fundamental aspects of good social work including for example person centred and anti-oppressive practice. The notions of social and emotional intelligence and being critically reflective are also explored in the context of action learning. This book is practical, skills-based and essential reading for all social workers who wish to extend their understanding and knowledge. 

Part 1

Principles

Chapter 1

Action learning: an introduction

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PROFESSIONAL CAPABILITIES FRAMEWORK

This chapter will help you demonstrate the following capabilities:

• Ethics and Values 2.2 – Recognise and, with support, manage the impact of own values on professional practice.
• Critical Reflection and Analysis 6.3 – With support, rigorously question and evaluate the reliability and validity of information from different sources.
• Professional Leadership 9.2 – Recognise the value of, and contribute to, supporting the learning and development of others.

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Introduction

This chapter introduces the principles of action learning as proposed by its originator, Reg Revans. It covers Revans’s early influences, both personal and professional, in the formation of the principles and practices of action learning. We discuss the various approaches today, modes of learning and the relationship between action learning and social work practice education and supervision. We introduce the notion that through action learning we can all generate and act on knowledge rather than passively accepting the results of research produced by experts.

Revans is considered to be the father of action learning; however, in his extensive writing on the subject he never provided a definitive statement and, as Mumford (1995) noted, he alternated the emphasis regularly. However, what Revans did do was explain his ideas behind the concept:

The central idea of this approach to human development, at all levels, in all cultures and for all purposes is, today, that of a set, or small group of comrades in adversity, striving to learn with and from each other as they confess failures and expand victories . . .

(Revans, 1980)

In all Revans’s writings it is evident that he intended action learning to be a deeper, more revolutionary process than other pedagogical models. He intended it to be more than ‘learning by doing’ and posited the argument that learning is about individual and organisational development and as such it contains within it a moral philosophy involving a number of factors.

Honesty about oneself

Revans spent time in Belgium on an action learning programme where the top managers were asked what was the most valuable question they had learned – the answer was ‘What is an honest man, and what do I need to become one?’

Wanting to achieve something good in the world

Revans often uses quotes from the Bible, Koran, Buddha and philosophers to illustrate the point:

But be doers of the word, and not only hearers of it, blinding yourselves with false ideas.

(Letter of St James, Chapter 1 verses 22–25 AD 60 in Revans, 1983)

To do a little good is better than to write difficult books. The perfect man is nothing if he does not diffuse benefits on other creatures, if he does not console the lonely. The way of salvation is open to all, but know that a man deceives himself if he thinks he can escape his conscience by taking refuge in a monastery. The only remedy for evil is healthy reality.

(Buddha in Revans, 1980: 13)

We ought to do our neighbour all the good we can. If you do good, good will be done to you: but if you do evil, the same will be measured back to you again.

(Bidpai, Panchatantra c.326 BC in Revans, 1980: 141)

For friendship

Revans (1983) cites John Macmurray in ‘The self’ as agent as the ultimate purpose of the action learning moral philosophy:

All meaningful knowledge is for the sake of action, and all meaningful action for the sake of friendship.

Revans’s ideas challenge current views of management and learning. Action learning’s aim of an upward communication of doubt, in the belief that the doubt ascending speeds up wisdom from above, is an ambitious vision. A colleague of ours remarks cynically that in some organisations it is more like doubt ascending speeds up retribution from above!

Revans used the quotation from Buddha, above, to summarise the educational needs of our times. Pedler summarises the definition and assumption of action learning as a pedagogical approach thus:

Action learning is an approach to the development of people in organisations which takes the task as the vehicle for learning. It is based on the premise that there is no learning without action and no sober and deliberate action without learning. On the whole, our education system has not been based upon this principle. The method has been pioneered in work organisations and has three main components – people, who accept the responsibility for taking action on a particular issue; problems or the tasks that people set themselves; and a set of six or so colleagues who support and challenge each other to make progress on problems. Action on a problem changes both the problem and the person acting upon it. It proceeds particularly by questioning taken-for-granted knowledge.

(Pedler, 1997: xxii–xxiii)

Described as a method of ‘small group learning’, Gaunt emphasised action learning as being:

the art of development – development of problems into opportunities and of people from what they are now to what they may become potentially.

(Gaunt, 1991)

More recently, it has been described by McGill and Brockbank as:

A continuing process of learning and reflection with the support of a group of colleagues, working on real issues . . . [it] can achieve improvement and transformation in a wide range of applications and disciplines including professional, training and other contexts.

(McGill and Brockbank, 2006)

The origin of action learning ideas

Action learning comes from a strong value base and is seen by many as a way of working – even a philosophy. There appear to be a number of key events in the early life of Revans that shaped his ideas of learning and development. His father was a naval architect and was engaged in the investigation of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. He recalls how his father heard stories from sailors who had tried to warn the authorities of the risks involved and how these risks were ignored. He remembers his father telling him that what he learned during the investigation process was the need to value all views regardless of hierarchy for it was here that the distinction between cleverness and wisdom could be found. In this context he learned from his father the importance of seeking understanding, not just knowledge.

Revans was a member of the Society of Friends or Quakers. The Quakers are a society of equals and therefore do not have a clergy. Often in Revans’s writings there are references to ethical values and principles, a desire for social harmony and respect for others’ views, honesty and social responsibility. His work today may indeed be termed as promoting inclusivity and participation. Boshyk and Dilworth (2010) draw the comparison of the Quaker practice of the clearness committee and action learning sets. The clearness committee is a communal approach to problem resolution. It starts with the principle that, when we face a problem that is ours to resolve, the inner resources are present but often obscured by layers of interference. The clearness committee works by a person calling a group of diverse people whom they trust to help them become clear with honest authentic, challenging loving questions. Crucially in terms of action learning, it prohibits advice.

Later, when he was a research scientist at the Cavendish Laboratory (1928–1935), Revans describes how at the research seminars fellow researchers were encouraged and became skilled at describing their ignorance and trading that ignorance with others. He found the process of questioning each other in a precise deliberate way and reflecting on the ignorance together helped all present to gain insights on their research. Revans left the Cavendish Laboratory when it became apparent that there was military interest in the work being carried out on splitting the atom.

In 1944, Revans joined the newly nationalised coal industry where he was employed to be responsible for education and training. His first reaction was to spend time as a miner working at the coalface with experienced miners who were well educated in the harsh reality of coal extraction. Apart from not assuming knowledge about something he had never experienced, he noticed how reliant each miner was on the other for safety and teamwork, which reminded him of the work at the Cavendish Laboratory. Revans believed that individual colliery managers could use the methods from the Cavendish Laboratory to come up with creative solutions to problems, without the need for experts and lecturers. He noted that learning was more productive when it came out of mutual enquiry, allowing managers to question their own experience and reflect on their own actions in relation to their current challenge.

Revans sums up his experience thus:

To most servants of the Coal Board in 1950, as the National Health Service today, the key to successful re-organisation has nothing to do with the capacity of its employees to learn from their experiences of success and failure; it is still a matter of the ‘right’ central plans fed into the ‘right’ administrative structure.

(Revans, 1980: 23)

Revans became a Professor of Industrial Administration (now would be known as management) in the UK, a position he held at Manchester University for ten years. After becoming increasingly dissatisfied with an education system that he believed focused too much on the input of knowledge with little reference to practice, he resigned and concentrated on developing the practice of action learning.

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REFLECTION POINT

• Where do your ideas about learning stem from?
• How do those ideas reflect your own values?
• How do you act on those values in supporting your, others’ and organisational and professional learning?

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Since Revans’s articulation of the notion of action learning, it has been applied throughout the world (Smith and O’Neil, 2003), including in the UK in organisations as large as the NHS through to groups of sheep farmers in rural Wales. In the field of social work a number of approaches to action learning have been utilised (Table 1.1); however, all are based on the principle that action learning is learning through experience, with the task, and the problem or challenge being the vehicle for learning.

Table 1.1 Approaches to action learning

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Characteristics

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Face-to-face set meetings with members from different organisations or roles within an organisation, each bringing their own problem or challenge to the meeting

Each member works on tackling an ongoing ‘problem’ of their own – that is, a challenge or initiative that has hitherto not been solved

Participants describe their projects and proposed act...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Principles
• Part 2: Context
• Part 3: Practice
• References
• Index