Page 85 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

by reflection on action, preferably with the support of other group members. Any further action should focus on changing previous patterns of behaviours.
Critical Reflection
J. Mezirow (1990)
Proponents of this school see “reflection on action” as a necessary but insufficient condition for learning. They believe that participants should also go deeper and examine the assumptions and beliefs that influence their practice. Reflection at this deeper level focuses a participant’s attention on the root of the problem and transform previously held perspectives of the same problem.
According to Marsick and O’Neil (1999), all three schools of AL share a common feature, that is the fact that the four to six group participants in an “AL set” (i) meet on equal terms and (ii) are engaged in solving problems which are not structured, not easy to understand and leading to several options for solutions. A number of AL sets will need the assistance and benefit from the support of a learning coach, i.e. a “set adviser”. As argued by Wenger (1998) the action learning “set” can be defined as a Community-of-Practice (C-o-P), characterised by three dimensions: (i) a group (community) with interaction to share ideas, (ii) involved in a specific domain (interest), and (iii) sharing the development of a number of ideas and concepts of professional practices as created values for the selected and specific domain of interest.
Evidence is given by an impressive number of contributions (e.g. Revans, 1971,1982, 1983, 1991; Donnenberg, 1999) that AL is an effective methodology for transformational change, development and achievement of a positive result. According to Zuber-Skerritt (2005, p. 50) “AL means learning from and with each other from action and concrete experience, as well as taken action as a result of this learning”.
The history, developments and the variety of directions, derived from the basic concept of Action Research (AR) are discussed, elaborated and commented in the Chapter Three.
A preliminary conclusion is that for the interpretation of OL in organisations, the paradigms, mentioned previously, had their influence on the interpretation of OL in a variety of OC’s, albeit in distinct proportions. Analysis of OC’s from the perspective of their acceptance, interpretation, processing and implementation of newly acquired knowledge, disseminated externally or internally, shows rather subtle differences (Smircich, 1983). The study of OL from a “cultural” perspective does not require
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