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L.C. Koo: L.C. Koo is Quality Service Advisor, Belgian Bank, Wanchai, Hong Kong
What is action learning ?"
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing (Aristotle).
I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand (Confucius)."
The ancient philosophers have passed onto us the wisdom of action learning. The concept of action learning was structurally and systematically applied in education by Reg Revans in the early 1940s. As the contemporary action learning guru, Revans has never provided a single and comprehensive statement of action learning and at different times he emphasized one aspect or omitted another (Mumford, 1995). The following quotes from Revans provide some ideas about the action learning approach in adult education:"
Action learning is a means of development, intellectual, emotional or physical that requires its subject, through responsible involvement in some real, complex and stressful problem, to achieve intended change sufficient to improve his observable behaviour henceforth in the problem field (Smith, 1997).
...an approach to education that emphasizes the distinctions between doing things oneself and talking about things getting done by others in general ... to ensure that managers shall learn better to manage with and from one another in the course of tackling the very problems that it is their proper business to tackle; it has no truck with academic simulation of any kind (Newton and Wilkinson, 1995).
Action learning differs from normal training that its primary objective is to learn how to ask appropriate questions in conditions of risk, rather than to find the answers to questions that have already been precisely defined by others - and that do not allow for ambiguous responses because the examiners have all the approved answers (Keys, 1994).
But learning cannot be solely the acquisition of fresh programmed knowledge ... Managers need also to improve their ability to search the unfamiliar, and inappropriate programmed knowledge may inhibit this ... Action learning is the Aristotelian manifestation of all managers' jobs: they learn as they manage, and they manage because they have learned - and go on learning (Dilworth, 1996)."
Bourner et al. (1996) describe the approach of action learning as the process of reflection and action, aimed at improving effectiveness of action where learning...