Action learning facilitation: practitioner insights

Abstract

The facilitator role in action learning first appears in the mid-1970s before that the role had no place in Revans writing. Despite his misgivings, Revans did reluctantly accept the role, however preferred the term advisor thus emphasising the advisory nature rather than facilitator which in its literal sense means to ‘make things easy’ something no advisor would ever promise! These misgivings are emphasised in the term he used for facilitators calling them as ‘fer-silly-taters’ for those not familiar with northern England dialect the translation is ‘for silly potatoes’. (Pedler and Abbott 2013). These doubts about facilitation came from the fear that the role of facilitator would become an expert role in its own right and easily becoming an attractive career option for teachers and trainers. Revans was keen to stress that action learning set members, both individually and collectively, should control their own work and not rely on ‘yet another round of dependence upon ambiguous facilitators’ (Revans 2011, 9) Despite this, we know that much of the action learning that is practiced in organisations and education settings is reliant upon active facilitation. Many assuming it to be a specialised form of small group facilitation; although from this starting point, interpretations, as we can see in generally in the Accounts of Practice section in this journal, can proceed in quite different directions. In this issue, the Accounts of Practice section has focussed specifically on facilitation in action learning and explicitly sought out contributions from facilitators who might not normally contribute to the journal. This journal has been a space to encourage practitioners to gain new insights into their work and help them improve their effectiveness and contribution to their clients and wider community. The dedicated Accounts of Practice (AoP) section of the journal offers an alternative to the style usually found in an academic journal to attract and encourage more practitioners to write about their experience of action learning. Increasingly, social media and blog posts on platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter have become a place where professionals across all fields tend to share their experience and practice, usually in very short pieces with an indication of how long the piece will take to read! We wanted to reach into action learning facilitators who might have a preference for these media. As practitioners and facilitators of action learning ourselves, we are aware of a significant number of facilitators of action learning who practice without access to ALRP and were curious to understand what could be learned from this cohort of practitioners. However, we needed to find a way to not only reach these professionals but also to persuade them to write for what is still perceived by some as a traditional academic journal. We therefore decided to conduct a mini-inquiry using some reflective questions and asked people to produce short blog-style pieces to reveal insight into action learning facilitation in the practitioner world. The following questions were suggested as a starting point, although we were not seeking definitive answers. These were offered to stimulate reflective practice but we were genuinely interested in the reflective pieces andwhatwas alive to practitioners in the field.