The Handbook of Action Learning

John Edmonstone is a leadership, management and organization development consultant with extensive experience within the public services both within the UK and internationally in the human resource and organization development fields. He has worked regularly with action learning in the UK, Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Indonesia. He is the author of: The Action Learner’s Toolkit (2003), Action Learning in Healthcare: A Practical Handbook (2011) and Action Learning in Health, Social and Community Care: Principles, Practices, Resources (2018) together with many journal articles on action learning in the international journal Action Learning: Research and Practice. John Edmonstone is on the Editorial Board of the journal Action Learning: Research and Practice where he guest-edited a Special Issue on Action Learning in Healthcare (2022). He has attended and presented all of the bi-annual international conferences sponsored by that journal from 2008 to 2023. He is Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, having previously held similar appointments at Keele, Sheffield Hallam and Queen Margaret Universities. He has facilitated action learning sets in healthcare, local government and higher education.

1. What is Action Learning? 2. Underlying Principles, 3. Distinctions and Differences, 4. Preparing for Action Learning, 5. The Action Learning Set, 6. Choosing the Issue, 7. The Key Skills, 8. The Energy Investment Model, 9. Dealing with Anxiety, 10. Supporting, Recording, Ending, 11. The Facilitator Role, 12. Action Learning Organisation-Wide, 13. Action Learning and Culture, 14. Evaluating Action Learning, 15. Action Learning Resources