Additional Information
Part of action research is to be open-minded and to know that, as we are teaching, we are also learning. Hear what the amazing student has to say about what we can learn from our students:
Strengths of Action Learning
Strengths of Action Learning include:
- Relevance to students
- Teaches complex problem solving
- Develop skilled leaders and develop teams
- Produces tangible outcomes: empowering
- Promotes “best practice”
Limitations in Action Learning
While there are a great many resources noting the strengths of action learning, limitations have also been noted including:
- Necessary to organize multiple AL events to make it effective
- Design/content of AL program is crucial to success
- Reflection process built in
- Learn group dynamics
- Effective facilitator essential
What Action Learning is NOT:
Action learning is not about solving peoples' problems for them, advice giving, telling people what to do. What makes action learning different from some types of problem solving forums is that:
What Makes Action Learning Different
What makes action learning different from some types of problem solving forums is that:
- You learn through taking action rather than diagnosing, analyzing and recommending.
- You work on your own projects
- You learn from each other.
- You are expected to take action
- You are accountable to one another.
- You have a coach who reflects back your learning, keeps you focused and in line with the ground rules and conventions of Action Learning.
International Foundation for Action Learning
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Action Learning is a Product of Action Research:
Action research involves the process of actively participating in an organization change situation whilst conducting research. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices and knowledge of the environments within which they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers work with others to propose a new course of action to help their community improve its work practices.
Information Regarding Action Learning in the Primary Grades from the University of Tasmania
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Leadership in International Management's List of Publications Relating to Action Learning.
Click the LIM logo to open their website.
Action Learning Strategies for Humanities Curricula
Role-Playing Games
The instructor provides either real or imaginary historical contexts along with a range of relevant characters/roles; students are encouraged to research these contexts, characters, and/or roles, and then to improvise dramatic interactions among their characters during class periods.
Collective Problem Solving
Both conceptual and practical problems will sometimes resist solution because problem-solvers are unable to frame their questions in original ways; collective problem solving exercises encourage small groups of students to take a problem (e.g., how to interpret a literary text or historical event) and reformulate it (i.e., conceive it differently, even oddly) in at least ten new ways (for example, one could begin to reformulate the classic problem of explaining Hamlet’s inaction-- his psychological disposition--as a moral problem: why is Hamlet caught among competing moral values?). The focus of this sort of exercise is not on providing solutions but on rethinking the nature of the problem itself.
Class Encyclopedia
Students are encouraged to select a special range of topics from the entire set of course concerns/issues, and to write “encyclopedia entries” that they would imagine being of use to the next “generation” of students who take the course.
Thematic Analysis
Literary, scientific, political, philosophical (etc.) achievements can be understood as “events” that emerge from the intersection of thematic trajectories. (One might, for example, see The Wizard of Oz as a literary event shaped by thematic tensions like: (a) gold vs. silver currency standards, (b) aristocratic vs. populist models of government, (c) industrial vs. agrarian economies, (d) absolute vs. relative conceptions of moral goodness, (e) developmental vs. fixed accounts of character, and so on.) Students are encouraged first to identify and then apply thematic trajectories from their “other” courses (whatever else they happen to be studying) with/to an “event” under analysis in the “home” course (origin of the project).
Models
Students are encouraged to build simple models as contexts for extending their understanding of key course-specific concepts. This sort of exercise encourages students to ask: What would a good model look like? How should the model actually be constructed? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the model? Suppose, for example, one wants to explain relativistic gravitation; would placing an ant and a lead weight on the surface of a balloon provide a good model? Computers provide an excellent resource for this sort of work (SimCity is a nice example of a commercial product that enables multi-level modeling of techno-sociology-political problems, ideas, issues, etc.).
Thinking Together
Students are encouraged to “work through” their own understanding of course material by presenting what they’ve learned in a particular course to a group of children. There shouldn’t be any a prior restrictions placed on what or how much a given age-group can learn (in other words, one shouldn’t begin with the supposition that, say, a group of five-year old's won’t be able to understand the allure of gambling in a Dostoevski novel or how prime numbers can be used to write unbreakable computer access codes); the task is for the college student to capitalize on both the curiosities of children and h/er own creative resources, rather than to rely on the vocabularies, formula, and background assumptions typically found in textbooks and exploited by university instructors when presenting the same material.
Cognitive Analogies
Students are encouraged to imagine multiple ways in which an idea, fact, explanation, procedure, etc. could be understood. How, for example, might a painter represent Darwin’s ideas about kin selection? Or, how might the musicological structure of a Beethoven violin sonata be realized with tinker toys? Or, how might Oedipal conflicts serve to represent the confinement of negative electrical charge to specific nuclear orbital’s?
Adapted from http://web.archive.org/web/20080203085818/
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~phil/courses/Leon/learn.html
The instructor provides either real or imaginary historical contexts along with a range of relevant characters/roles; students are encouraged to research these contexts, characters, and/or roles, and then to improvise dramatic interactions among their characters during class periods.
Collective Problem Solving
Both conceptual and practical problems will sometimes resist solution because problem-solvers are unable to frame their questions in original ways; collective problem solving exercises encourage small groups of students to take a problem (e.g., how to interpret a literary text or historical event) and reformulate it (i.e., conceive it differently, even oddly) in at least ten new ways (for example, one could begin to reformulate the classic problem of explaining Hamlet’s inaction-- his psychological disposition--as a moral problem: why is Hamlet caught among competing moral values?). The focus of this sort of exercise is not on providing solutions but on rethinking the nature of the problem itself.
Class Encyclopedia
Students are encouraged to select a special range of topics from the entire set of course concerns/issues, and to write “encyclopedia entries” that they would imagine being of use to the next “generation” of students who take the course.
Thematic Analysis
Literary, scientific, political, philosophical (etc.) achievements can be understood as “events” that emerge from the intersection of thematic trajectories. (One might, for example, see The Wizard of Oz as a literary event shaped by thematic tensions like: (a) gold vs. silver currency standards, (b) aristocratic vs. populist models of government, (c) industrial vs. agrarian economies, (d) absolute vs. relative conceptions of moral goodness, (e) developmental vs. fixed accounts of character, and so on.) Students are encouraged first to identify and then apply thematic trajectories from their “other” courses (whatever else they happen to be studying) with/to an “event” under analysis in the “home” course (origin of the project).
Models
Students are encouraged to build simple models as contexts for extending their understanding of key course-specific concepts. This sort of exercise encourages students to ask: What would a good model look like? How should the model actually be constructed? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the model? Suppose, for example, one wants to explain relativistic gravitation; would placing an ant and a lead weight on the surface of a balloon provide a good model? Computers provide an excellent resource for this sort of work (SimCity is a nice example of a commercial product that enables multi-level modeling of techno-sociology-political problems, ideas, issues, etc.).
Thinking Together
Students are encouraged to “work through” their own understanding of course material by presenting what they’ve learned in a particular course to a group of children. There shouldn’t be any a prior restrictions placed on what or how much a given age-group can learn (in other words, one shouldn’t begin with the supposition that, say, a group of five-year old's won’t be able to understand the allure of gambling in a Dostoevski novel or how prime numbers can be used to write unbreakable computer access codes); the task is for the college student to capitalize on both the curiosities of children and h/er own creative resources, rather than to rely on the vocabularies, formula, and background assumptions typically found in textbooks and exploited by university instructors when presenting the same material.
Cognitive Analogies
Students are encouraged to imagine multiple ways in which an idea, fact, explanation, procedure, etc. could be understood. How, for example, might a painter represent Darwin’s ideas about kin selection? Or, how might the musicological structure of a Beethoven violin sonata be realized with tinker toys? Or, how might Oedipal conflicts serve to represent the confinement of negative electrical charge to specific nuclear orbital’s?
Adapted from http://web.archive.org/web/20080203085818/
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~phil/courses/Leon/learn.html
Physical Education Action Learning Lesson Plan
Columbus Across the Ocean: The Nina, The Pinta, and the Santa Maria
Objectives: To complete the task, teams need to use critical thinking and reasoning skills, teamwork, listening skills, teamwork, and skills in both giving and following directives to accomplish task.
Teams try to cross the ocean using two mats (boats) without falling into the ocean (the gym floor). To complete the task, teams need to use critical thinking and reasoning skills.
This game can be used around Columbus Day in October and as an interdisciplinary tie-in to history, briefly discuss Columbus' trip and have teams select their "ship" name from those that Columbus took on the first journey around the world: The Nina, The Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
Materials: Two gym mats for each team. The mat needs to be large enough so all students can stand on it, but small enough so students cannot easily maneuver around on the mat.
Directions:
Solution: Ideally, students get on one mat, transfer the second mat to the front of the mat they're on, and then get onto that mat and continue on until they have crossed the ocean. While the activity seems easy enough, students often take several attempts before they are successful.
Objectives: To complete the task, teams need to use critical thinking and reasoning skills, teamwork, listening skills, teamwork, and skills in both giving and following directives to accomplish task.
Teams try to cross the ocean using two mats (boats) without falling into the ocean (the gym floor). To complete the task, teams need to use critical thinking and reasoning skills.
This game can be used around Columbus Day in October and as an interdisciplinary tie-in to history, briefly discuss Columbus' trip and have teams select their "ship" name from those that Columbus took on the first journey around the world: The Nina, The Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
Materials: Two gym mats for each team. The mat needs to be large enough so all students can stand on it, but small enough so students cannot easily maneuver around on the mat.
Directions:
- Students work in teams of five to eight, depending on the size of the mats and/or class.
- Teams start off at one end of the gym. Their instructions are to get from the England (the starting point) to America (the opposite side of the gym) without leaving the mat and touching the ocean.
- If a team member touches the sea, the whole team must return to the start and begin again.
Solution: Ideally, students get on one mat, transfer the second mat to the front of the mat they're on, and then get onto that mat and continue on until they have crossed the ocean. While the activity seems easy enough, students often take several attempts before they are successful.
"The Use of Action Learning Strategies for Cooperative Education or Work-integrated Learning Projects"
An article from the Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Issue 4-1, 2010.
useofactionlearningstrategiesforcooperativeeducation.pdf | |
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