Reflective Inquiry

Action Learning (AL) is a reflective inquiry process to reinforce learning through application and reflection. Participants work in a small, diversified team to support and challenge each other to achieve project outcomes. This collective result-driven learning process creates accountability, actions and increased knowledge. Action Learning involves working on real problems or opportunities, focusing on learning and actually implementing solutions. The topics of AL projects are sponsored and aimed at organizational as well as personal development. Pioneered by Professor Reg Revans in early 70’s and developed worldwide, it provides a well-tried method of accelerating learning which enables people to handle difficult situations more effectively.

“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 to improve his observable behavior henceforth in the problem field.”– Reginald Revans (1982)

“Action learning is a dynamic process for solving organizational problems, advancing individual skills, building teams, and developing leaders.” – Association for Talent Development (2020)

Learning Transfer

Integral uses Action Learning (AL) in our learning solutions design, such as leadership development, project management, strategic thinking, talent development, problem-solving, change management. This “learning by doing” methodology is particularly powerful for learning transfer and measurement of learning effectiveness in the workplace.

During the AL process, participants will learn from each other’s experiences and knowledge specific in their expertise and organizational function. For example, Integral has rich experience in applying AL in client’s talent development program. After completion of talent development workshops, participants in groups will be assigned AL projects by the senior leadership team. Integral then facilitates an AL project planning workshop for the groups to define the stakeholder expectations, plan the tasks and schedules, and build the team commitment. As an external coach during the AL process, Integral consultant monitors the project progress and guides the groups towards the project outcomes.

In a nutshell, we believe that well-defined objectives and scopes, clear roles and responsibilities, effective stakeholder management, evidence-based findings, committed project plan, sufficient communication and monitoring, and feasibility of recommendations are an essential for Action Learning to be successful.

References

Association for Talent Development (2020). The action learning process.  Retrieved from https://www.td.org/newsletters/the-action-learning-process

Revans, R. W. (1982). The origins and growth of action learning. Studentlitteratur.