This paper explores the professional practice of the Action Learning (AL) facilitator through a process of critical inquiry, self-reflection and evaluation of action learning practice within a Higher Education Leadership Programme, commissioned by an English NHS Mental Health Trust. Action research was adopted as the overarching research approach…

Insights into the learning environment are required especially when applying action learning commonly used in management development programmes (MDPs). The study reports on an emerging action learning conceptual framework that fosters an environment for individual transformative learning in an MDP. The purpose of this research was to make clear…

The mission of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is to safeguard the public interest in sound standards of higher education qualifications and to inform and encourage continual improvement in the management of the quality of higher education. As part of this mission, QAA undertakes reviews of higher education provision…

The article describes the experience of forming a set in a higher education institution and offers some observations and insights gained from the perspectives of the role of the set adviser, cultural differences and the challenges of attempting to align theory, practice and experience.

This paper presents research with small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners who have participated in a leadership development programme. The primary focus of this paper is on learning transfer and factors affecting it, arguing that entrepreneurs must engage in "action" in order to "learn" and that under certain conditions…

This article provides an account of self-managed action learning (SMAL), where it came from and how it has been implemented in practice. Self-managed action learning offers a way of realising action learning without the continuing presence of a set advisor in set meetings to facilitate the process. It enables participants to manage and facilitate…

The aim of this article is to explore several decades of experience of action learning and to distil lessons from that experience that are worth sharing with other practitioners. The method is to systematically collect the experiential data within three categories (sense-based, affective and cognitive data), interrogate them to draw out lessons…

This paper explores the role of "action" in entrepreneurial learning and illustrates how programs designed to support action learning can enhance management development in entrepreneurial businesses. The paper begins by exploring action learning and the way "action" is conceived in different types of program. In the second part, the paper details…

The Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in Education (SPEED) project ran in 12 higher education institutes in the UK between 2006 and 2008, providing an innovative, action learning-based route that enabled students to start new business ventures as self-started work experience, and has influenced successor programmes. The paper addresses three…

Action learning is based on the premise that action and learning are inextricably entwined and it is this potential, to enable action, which has contributed to the growth of action learning within education and management development programmes. However has this growth in action learning lead to an evolution or a dilution of Revan's classical…