Turning to Case Studies as a Mechanism for Learning and Evaluation in Action Learning

Case studies are a useful means of capturing and sharing experiential knowledge by allowing researchers to explore the social, organisational and political contexts of a specific case. Although accounts of action learning are often reported using a case study approach, it is not common to see individual case studies being used as a learning practice within action learning sets. Drawing network action learning project this paper explores how the process of coaching, articulating, authoring, sharing and editing case studies provided a vehicle for learning and research within the network action learning sets. The intended contribution of this paper to the theory of action learning is to extend the range of learning practices to include the case study within the network action learning set. It discusses how case studies act as boundary objects, which are artefacts which can be used to cross boundaries between groups in order to facilitate learning that might not otherwise occur.