What is it about?
How to combine academically-oriented and action-oriented learning designs. The article focuses on programmes for experienced managers and professionals who are studying primary through their attempts to improve the management of organisations in which they are employed.
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Why is it important?
Action learning is rooted in practicalities of work, evolving situations and the micro-politics of organisational life. Insights and undemanding can be profound, and people often ask if this can be accredited for academic qualifications. However this usually exposes several problems, many arising from the fact that academic learning is evaluated by external authorities (professors, examiners, established canonical texts), while acton learning is self-evaluated by the learner. Making this difference explicit, and using methods that retain a critical perspective on 'who says what counts', provides a solution.
Perspectives
Writing this paper helped me to understand dual role of facilitator and professor. As a tutor on MBA-level programmes with managers from international organisational and blue-chip companies, I experienced tensions between helping them be more effective in their jobs, and helping them pass the assignments and exams. The paper explains the root causes of these tensions and has proved valuable when designing action-learning programmes, in-company educational courses, and for senior staff responsible for supervising facilitators, tutors and professors.
Prof Jonathan R Gosling
Exeter University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Action Learning and Academic Qualifications, Management Learning, June 1994, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1350507694252006.
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