Learning in action : Developments in management education.

In the 1980's colleges of Further and Higher Education were subject to a variety of pressures to develop their provision of management education. These pressures are reviewed in their historical context as a prelude and background to an exploration of the then current challenges for such education. Interviews with representatives of Awarding Bodies and Colleges provide macro and micro-level perspectives on these challenges. The process of APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning, now called by the Management Charter Initiative, the Crediting Competence Process) emerged as the potential means of facilitating flexible, work-based management education programmes. This view was reinforced by the results of telephone questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with Senior Human Resource and Line Managers. The National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) initiatives (1988 - 1993) required such competence-based programmes so an investigation was instituted into the changes required in management education, training and development (METD) so that it might respond appropriately. The development of the roles of staff/learners, as they attempt to support the effective learning of manager/learners, became a specific focus using an iterative, ethnomethodological approach incorporating Kelly's (1955) constructivist techniques in a case study of a college undertaken immediately before and after the introduction of NVQ management programmes. The thesis argues that, to enable transformative learning by manager/learners through a process of emancipatory education (Mezirow, 1990), a complementary parallel process of critical, active reflection must be established for staff/learners within innovative educational programmes. This process should engage both teachers and managers in action learning (Revans, 1980) to uncover the elements of reflection (Boud, Keogli & Walker, 1985) and to develop skills of reflection on reflection-in-action (Schon, 1983, 1987). To promote such development a strategic approach to the management of change (Haffenden, 1990) is explored and elaborated to produce a model in which staff and organisational development interact through the 'learning company' process (Pedler, Burgoyne & Boydell, 1991) so that a college and its individual members may continuously transform in order to survive and prosper into the 21st Century