Facilitating the facilitators of action learning in China: practices and prospects

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the learning and experience of Western action learning facilitators engaged in developing Chinese facilitators of action learning, all of whom were also managers, as part of a qualification programme based in China. The Western facilitators interviewed for this study had been specifically asked by their hosts to deliver a ‘Revans’ based approach’ to action learning which was to include an emphasis on organisational as well as individual development. This paper suggests that the facilitators interviewed here saw themselves as being and acting very much according to Revans’ classical principles. The paper highlights some of the complexities inherent in facilitating action learning in China, and the complex and in some cases contradictory nature of facilitators’ learning about their own practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Revans’ action learning
• facilitation
• China
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Cheryl Brook is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Development at Portsmouth University Faculty of Business and Law. Her teaching and research interests include action learning, work-based learning and organisational learning.

Christine Abbott is an Associate of the Open University Business School, UK. She is an action learning consultant and Director for the Centre for Action Learning. Her publications include (jointly with Mike Pedler) Action Learning Facilitation: A Practitioners Guide (McGraw Hill, 2013) and (jointly with Paul Taylor) Action Learning in Social Work (SAGE, 2013).