The requirements of accreditation can add benefits of providing continuity and the impetus enabling engagement in a busy world full of distractions, that can pull people away from the important but less urgent realm of learning. But it can at times have a cart-before-horse impact; the danger is people can elevate the completion of a portfolio for…

Critical Action Learning (CAL) is a well-established approach to action learning. However, it has not necessarily been clear to action learning practitioners what makes CAL 'critical' and what are the implications in practice. In CAL, the facilitator has a key role in helping the set to engage with underlying emotions and power relations that are…

A Chinese financial company, through the introduction of action learning methodology, identified core problems from strategy, and finally solved the core strategic problems by forming action learning teams of middle and senior managers, and in the process improved the mindset and capabilities of middle and senior managers. This account of Practice…

The act of theorising turns the attention from the outcome of theory generation to the act of theory generation itself. Revans' systems "alpha," "beta" and "gamma" provide a foundational action theory that grounds the theorising process in action learning. This is the core of theorising in the praxeology of action…

This article walks through the experience of two instructors from Northeastern State University who helped the College of Business and Technology implement work-based learning. Work-based learning was implemented in response to the changing needs of businesses, however, there were some struggles that had to be worked through in order to make this…

This account of practice is about the 'Scale Up' programme, an attempt by an external consultant and their client to implement a model of Action Learning in an academic environment. It tells the story of establishing an Action Learning programme for local business leaders in collaboration with an academic business school. The programme involved…

The paper examines whether, if leadership is defined by the willingness to tackle wicked issues, and if action learning is employed for leadership development purposes, do the action learning participants on leadership development programmes address such wicked issues? It adopts a version of dialogical sense-making to consider this and describes…

This paper explores the literature around online and blended learning. The impetus came from a cohort of 60 students being led through their dissertation by an e-learning evangelist. Initially the pedagogy closely followed Salmon's Five Stage Model, Wenger's Community of Practice, and traditional Social Constructivism pedagogies. In hindsight, it…

The paper is an essay, rather than a researched academic work and explores the difference between two different ethe, neoliberalism and action learning. It considers two historical modernities and the emergence of a third, situating action learning and neoliberalism within this framework. It asserts that action learning and neoliberalism are…

This article sheds light on employee wellbeing. We reveal how an 'adapted' action learning intervention (a change laboratory) introduced prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, enabled learning and action to emerge within an educational programme. We utilise the theoretical lens of activity theory to illustrate the challenges and tensions of…

To contribute to current debate concerning approaches to teaching and learning for researching complex work-based problems, we focus on the Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) programme. We examine the development of an integrated action learning approach as part of a part-time DBA offered by a university in the UK. In adopting the lens of…

This paper deals with the on-going practice of a critical action learning set who come together to meet their needs for coaching supervision as a group of executive coaches working from, and within, the University sector in South Wales. The reasons for the successes of, and the challenges around, this practice of four years standing have been…

Action learning within community-based research is a powerful capacitator of social action. Here, we consider three aspects of action learning that are vital to enable this: (i) developing self-directed and lifelong action learning; (ii) generating local and theoretical knowledge through action research and reflection on learning; and (iii)…

This paper presents a fresh conceptualisation of critical action learning by energising critique in action and in learning, embedding this as integral to Continuous Professional Development (CPD). The criticality that action learning promotes could be most impactful, in fostering a mode of learning -- "Learning in Crisis" -- that…

This paper explores selective literatures in the two fields of action learning and innovation, and seeks insights into the processes of, and connections between, innovation, engagement and implementation. We searched the action learning articles for references to innovation, beginning with the work of Revans, who highlights the innovation paradox,…