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It was at the Coal Board that Revans did much of the early work on developing action learning, working alongside E. F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) and Eric Trist, whose theories about socio-technical systems have also had an important influence on organisation development. Revans then became the first professor of industrial management at the University of Manchester (1955–1965)
but left to develop the inter-university action learning programme in Belgium.

Revans strongly held that the key to improving performance lay not with 'experts' but with practitioners themselves. Hence he devised Action Learning as a process whereby the participant studies his own actions and experience in conjunction with others in small groups called action learning sets.

On his return to the UK at the age of 68, he continued his global mission to spread the word of action learning. During the 1970s and 1980s he travelled round the world several times and wrote his most famous books: Developing Effective Managers (1971); The Origins and Growth of Action Learning (1982) and ABC of Action Learning (1983).

Revans is not remembered as one of the best known gurus of management education or organisational development, not least because of his scorn for experts and his championing of ordinary people. However The Revans Centre for Learning and Research at Salford University and management schools around the world now teach his ideas, and they are applied in many organisations. His techniques have been applied by many management consultants and academics including Mike Pedler and Alan Mumford in the UK and Michael Marquardt, Robert Kramer and Joe Raelin in the USA. - Wikipedia

Action Learning                vs             Traditional Learning