Action learning as legitimate peripheral participation

This paper explores how students made sense of the learning that occurred within a Masters educational programme (an MA in Human Resource Development), a programme informed by the ideals of critical action learning and critically reflective practice. Theoretically the paper develops links between communities of practice theory and critical action learning. I highlight how ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ can provide an analytical tool for understanding learning. This perspective shifts the analytical focus from the learner as an individual to learning as participation in the social world. Methodologically, a discourse perspective on learning and identity informs the research. A discourse perspective highlights the possibilities of researching practice through studying the talk in use. This focuses attention on how discourse is put together and what is gained by this construction. Material was generated from two cohorts of the programme and analysis reveals an emerging hegemonic struggle within this MA ‘community’. I illustrate how an emerging ‘critical’ repertoire was constrained by two unproblematic repertoires. I have called these the ‘organisation’ and the ‘individual’ repertoires. I also illustrate how two additional repertoires emerged during the action learning sets. I have called these the ‘challenging’ repertoire and the ‘politics’ repertoire. This paper contributes to an emerging discussion by exploring the relationship between individual and organisational and draws attention to ‘learning inaction’. In doing so I highlight how action learning sets are situated in broader social and discursive orders and reveal how consensus-bound discourses dominate and potentially limit action learning.