The role of the NHS in the development of Revans' action learning: correspondence and contradiction in action learning development and practice

In adapting Bowles’ and Gintis’s correspondence principle of education, this paper suggests that there are ways in which the theory and practice of action learning developed in correspondence with the NHS. In doing so, the paper draws, in part, upon an historical assessment of Revans’ Hospital Internal Communications Project of the 1960s, treated here as a special case, together with evidence drawn from a survey of current NHS action learning practice. It is suggested that the correspondence principle provides an explanation for some of the vertical development of action learning (over time) and its horizontal development (across situations). In setting out my argument I draw on the work of Foucault to inform a discussion on self-discipline and the internalisation of control via action learning and the developing role of critical action learning.