Sisters - and brothers - are doing it for themselves
The concept of “action learning” has always been central to the design of IDeA improvement programmes. A search on IDeA Knowledge pulls up 102 references and the Agency supports, or has supported, numerous action learning “sets” as part of its work.
Action learning advocates that people learn through self reflection and that self reflection can be helped by a group of people asking the right sort of questions. The group asking the questions is the learning set. The theory of action learning was developed by Professor Reginald Revans who promoted the idea that, for adults in particular, learning comes from people learning with and from others.
The concept is important for the IDeA and provides an intellectual underpinning to the central role of peers in sector (local government) self improvement. In a peer review councillors and officers challenge colleagues in other councils, and indeed action learning questioning styles are encouraged as part of the process. In a review both the challenged and challengers benefit and in some situations the peers seem to gain as much from the process as the people being reviewed.
Hard evidence that self-reflection generates improvement is provided by the research Warwick Business School did into the impact of the Beacon Scheme. While the Beacon Scheme is designed to identify, celebrate and disseminate best practice, the research established that Beacon Councils, and the staff involved, improved as a consequence of articulating to others why they were good. Constantly doing this, and a number of councils constantly apply for Beacons Status, encourages an organisational culture of self reflection enhancing the overall capacity for improvement
An area we are starting to reflect on is our approach to working with the sector to generate “best practice”. Beacons and action learning theory suggest that the process of developing a practice may be as important as the outcome itself. If we focus on the “case study” or the “tool kit” and forget about how the case study is generated we may be missing an improvement trick. By commissioning consultants to write the case study its possible to miss some of the self reflection potential associated with practitioners doing it for themselves.
I am the Director of Services at the 
I think this is yet more justification for the new approach we are taking with the ‘Knowledge Hub’. Tighter integration with the conversations that take place in developing good/next practice - e.g. CoPs, with a place for storing and interrogating the outcomes - i.e. the Hub.
I was thinking the other day that the Hub may eventually become both the platform for CoPs and the repository of the dynamic knowledge developed by the CoPs, thus ensuring tight and seamless integration.
Steve
I agree that self-reflection is an essential part of learning and improvement, whether that be for individual or organisational development. But I also think there’s tremendous value in assisted self-reflection. That assistance is much more powerful when it comes from a peer - i.e. a peer-colleague in an action learning set or as partners work together in area self-assessment in advance of CAA or with a little help from your critical friends at the IDeA.