Action Learning Literature Review 

by Colleen McHugh

There is an extensive body of research about Project Based Learning--what TEA refers to as Action Learning. The research is overwhelmingly positive about the value of Action Learning for students. In fact, it is so much the case that it begs the question: why DON’T institutions do a better job of supporting teachers to adopt this teaching modality? A central feature of TEA’s work is to support faculty to address this issue. 

In this Literature Review, Colleen McHugh uncovers just how powerful Action Learning can be for both student and teacher. McHugh is a UC Berkeley graduate who worked for several years with TEA as part of a Student Voice team. 

The development of critical consciousness in students increases achievement, especially in basic-skills students (Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018). When students have a stake in a co-creative process and design their own learning, their motivation—and engagement—increase (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012; Hethrington, 2015). 

The student learns to make meaning of their own place in a global context and finds new frameworks to understand an increasingly heterogeneous society (Taylor, 2017; Miller & Schwartz, 2016; Rittel & Weber, 1973). Taylor describes three types of barriers to critical practice in the college classroom: developmental, social, and pedagogical (2017). Developmental barriers might include achieving a degree of self-regulated learning when students may not have previously developed these skills (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012). 

When students engage with real-world problems, which are naturally more complex than academic problems, students develop skills around social inquiry and community responsibility (Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018; Miller & Schwartz, 2016). 

Tactile learning, through problem-solving, failure, and iteration, is successful in building deep knowledge and is generally preferred by students who were able to design their own learning environments (Hethrington, 2015). Social barriers include developing the dynamic interpersonal relationships necessary for learning in group learning context (Taylor, 2018).

The instructor becomes a facilitator and co-creator of the student-driven curriculum, necessarily challenging the teacher/student power differential (Taylor, 2017; Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018). This requires that the instructor understands the social and political structure of the institution and further, they must reject their commonly perceived role as information provider (Scales, 2009).

 The curriculum, and the instructor, need to be dynamic and adaptable to the students’ experience  (Hethrington, 2018) and, unlike traditional programmatic curriculum will not produce identical results across different classes and may occasionally include some “blunders” that are difficult to anticipate (Thelin, 2005). 

Teachers that engage in this critical pedagogy find the experience transformative to their teaching experience (Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018). When instructors believe that the students could fail, that perception is passed on to the students in their class (Thelin, 2005).

Institutional policy can support critical consciousness by encouraging educational dialogue around the “wicked problems” implicit in social policy (Taylor, 2017; Rittel & Weber, 1973; Miller & Schwartz, 2016).

One approach to a critical pedagogy is to build empowered “temporal” spaces that give students the mental and emotional space to make connections between the present and history through the study of literature (Scales, 2009; Miller & Schwartz, 2016).

In this process, the educator plays a key role as the designer, facilitator, and supporter of critical consciousness among the students (Taylor, 2017; Hethrington, 2015; Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018). Because the short timeframes of a semester-based university calendar are prohibitively short and interrupt deep engagement, a multi-disciplinary approach that facilitates a project that may extend over several classes and semesters could be a key to engaging students in that deep learning necessary for critical consciousness (Hethrington, 2015).

Further, the rooms that support this collaborative learning style are fundamentally different, with students describing traditional classrooms as “wholly inadequate” in supporting their learning (Serrano, O’Brien, Roberts & White, 2018, p. 16). Our research supports not only building a new environment to facilitate this critical pedagogy but also significant institutional support for instructors in the form of consultants to help guide their pedagogical transition, programming across disciplines and departments, and instructional classroom aides to fully support students with feedback throughout the process.

McHugh is a UC Berkeley graduate who worked for several years with TEA as part of a Student Voice team. (Those are her dogs in the picture.)