Adapting for change: action learning as a method of working with uncertainty

The three accounts of practice (AoPs) that follow are written during the ambiguous and uncertain period occasioned by the Covid-19 Pandemic and were presented at the ALRP Action Learning Conference entitled Making a Contribution in a Practice Field ∼ Action Learning in a Changing World. The conference itself had had to adapt to a virtual platform due to the pandemic. It is no surprise then that each of these AoPs hold threads of what is increasingly referred to as adaptive action learning. If not a major theme, there is in these accounts reference or acknowledgment of the challenges that the pandemic inflicted upon their already demanding circumstances. Action Learning is utilised by all the authors as an adaptive means to enact change in their particular organisational context. However, on closer reading we can also see more subtle adjustments occurring. The use of virtual action learning, previously written about in this journal as an exception, has during the past 18 months become the prevailing norm. Its use however is not simply a technical means to a lockdown end. The nuanced personal and interpersonal adaptations necessary for virtual action learning are also alluded to in this set of AoPs. For some it is the support of being in a community space, for others it is the space for reflective practice that working virtually at home has offered and for others it is the elusive social nature of action learning, whereby the whole is different to the sum of the parts. In Action Learning a Catalyst for Change: The Wicked Problem of Employment with a Chronic Health Condition, Vaughan and Jolliffe describe the process of using action learning as a catalyst for change in the workplace. The action learning process is used to inform a research project confronting the management of chronic health conditions at work. Vaughan, an HR practitioner undertaking a Master’s programme in HRD describes how the homogenous group of HR practitioners also studying, offered support, challenge and critical feedback to her research approach in the action learning sets. The process was particularly important since she was using a very personal health challenge to explore the treatment of other chronic health conditions. The AoP is written from a dual perspective co-authored by a set member and the set facilitator who is credited with creating the conditions in which the group were able to offer not just support but critical reflection and challenge that enhanced learning to influence their research approach and methods. Vaughan describes the action learning process as one that enabled her to ‘ ... interact, contribute, be vulnerable and tackle insecurities’ which helped her confidence both in the set and in the workplace. This theme, of using reflective practice within executive development to encourage the student to engage with their workplace context and research, to enable change through learning and action is clearly illustrated by Marguet and Wilson in Looking at the Bigger Picture: Designing and Facilitating Action Learning across Boundaries. The authors themselves senior lecturers within the School of Business and Law explore what happens when action learning practitioners and advocates come together to share their experiences within the context of the business school which uses action learning to support the programmed learning experience. They argue that ‘actioning learning requires a safe environment to explore and challenge