Action learning takes a health cure

Abstract

Mine host Action learning—an approach to education that emphasises the distinctions between doing things oneself and talking about things getting done by others in general—has celebrated its silver jubilee. For it was in 1952 that the writer, having given up his post with the National Coal Board through lack of confidence in traditional methods of management education, persuaded the National Association of Colliery Managers to try action learning. 22 members formed themselves into a consortium, chose management apprentices to work with them, exchanged underofficials for the collective study of four prevailing operational problems, and voted for one of their fellow members to be seconded to work full‐time with the writer; our task was to build out of this miscellany a network of mutual advice, criticism and support. The theory was that each mine formed so individual and complex an organism that only those presently working in it could hope to improve the way it functioned, and only those themselves trying to change their own systems could understand the inner resistances to offering and receiving usable advice, even in a market of comrades trying to deal with identical troubles. Action learning is intended therefore to ensure that managers shall learn better to manage with and from each other in the course of tackling the very problems that it is their proper business to tackle; it has no truck with academic simulations of any kind.

Citation

Revans, R. (1978), "Action learning takes a health cure", Education + Training, Vol. 20 No. 10, pp. 295-299. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb002016