Exploring the processes of action learning in the National Health Service : dilemmas and paradoxes of evaluation

Botham, D

Abstract

Action Learning has become one of the most important
processes for accelerating change and development to
emerge in the National Health Service within the last
few years.
This thesis is concerned with an exploration of action
learning through a piece of evaluative research which
focuses on three management development programmes.
The study can be seen as having three anchors. Firstly,
the three programmes with their stated aims, sponsored
and located within the North Western Regional Health
Authority, between 1987-1990. Secondly, the use of
action learning as the principal framework of
evaluation. Thirdly, the movement towards a
self-reflexive study as the evaluation progressed.
This means that as the methodology became more
sophisticated it became entirely committed to the
principles of action learning and required a full
collaborative approach. But as the three programmes
continued to develop, considerable problems arose in the
disentanglement of various levels and forms of learning
in order to do justice to its complexity.
The study was able to reveal and explore the tensions
which existed between these 'established' programmes and
the adaptations made by the participants working on and
evaluating their own learning.
The findings offer important insights into the
complexities of a human learning process which is
critical and aware of its own changes, thus refuting the
notion that action learning is merely a novel way of
learning-by-doing.
In the context and parameters of this piece of research,
action learning is seen as a powerful, but often slow
and painful process, which changes the barriers to
development by questioning that which has established
itself within the processual inner-world of
participant-managers and the mainly procedural
outer-world of their organisations, in this case the
NHS.

Citation

Botham, D. Exploring the processes of action learning in the National Health Service : dilemmas and paradoxes of evaluation. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 22, 2021
• Award Date: Apr 1, 1993