What is Action Learning?

Action learning is a problem-solving approach developed by organisational theorist Reg Revans in the 1940s, built on a deceptively simple observation: people learn most from grappling with real problems and reflection on what they discover in the process.

At its core, it combines two elements – taking action on a genuine challenge, and then pausing to question, reflect, and learn collectively from that experience.

It is distinct from case-study learning or simulations. The problem being worked on is live, the stakes are real, and the learning is inseparable from the work.

Why Action Learning is Used?

Action learning helps to develop capabilities that conventional training struggles to reach. It encourages teamwork, critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving.

Facilitating a difficult meeting, navigating institutional resistance, and deciding under uncertainty – these competencies are not transferred through lectures.

When & Where Action Learning is Applied?

Action learning has been applied across sectors and contexts for decades. In organisational development, the goal is to build leadership capability at every level by creating structured conditions in which they lead real work and reflect on it.

In the development sector, it occurs in capacity-building programmes, community governance initiatives, and staff development processes where practitioners must navigate complex, changing situations.

The method is especially well-suited to settings where the challenges are locally specific, where hierarchies of expertise are unhelpful, and where the people closest to the problem often hold the most useful knowledge, but need structured support to surface and apply it.

How Action Learning Works?

The engine of this process is the Action Learning Set: a high-trust, disciplined, typically group of four to eight people, called an Action Learning Set. The set meets regularly over a period of time.

During each session, one or more members bring a live challenge they are working on. The group does not jump to solutions. Instead, members ask questions: What have you tried? What are you assuming? What would change if that assumption were wrong?

This questioning process is central – it is how the person with the problem thinks more clearly and how the group learns collectively.

Between sessions, participants act on what they have learned by testing new approaches, gathering information, and making decisions. They bring the results back to the set, where the cycle of questioning, reflection, and action begins again.

A facilitator, sometimes called a set advisor, supports the process without directing the content.

What is Active Citizenship?

At PRIA, we see it when a village Gram Sabha moves beyond formality to conduct a real social audit, or when urban collectives demand dignity in housing and sanitation. It is the transition from being a passive “beneficiary” to a rightful claimant.

For 44 years, we have championed this as Participatory Governance. Whether through monitoring public works or engaging elected officials, active citizenship is the “connective tissue” that ensures institutions remain accountable.

Why Active Citizenship is Used?

Governance systems, however well-designed on paper, do not function well without citizens who are willing and able to engage with them.

PRIA’s four decades of work at the interface of citizens and local institutions have consistently returned to the same observation: when communities are active participants in planning, budgeting, and accountability processes, outcomes improve.

When they are passive recipients, even the best-resourced schemes underdeliver.

Active citizenship matters because accountability is not self-enforcing. Elected representatives respond to organised, informed citizens who track what was promised and what was delivered.

When & Where Active Citizenship is Applied?

At PRIA, we’ve learned that active citizenship doesn’t live in a manifesto – it lives in the streets, the fields, and the community halls.

In the village where we’ve worked since the 1980s, active citizenship isn’t an abstract concept – it’s a Gram Sabha where the back row stands up to speak. It’s a group of neighbors conducting a social audit, physically measuring the quality of a new road to ensure the budget was spent honestly.

In the informal settlements and growing wards of our cities, citizenship looks like the “Engaged Citizens, Responsive City” model. It’s the formation of settlement-level committees that allow residents to map their own infrastructure, showing the municipality exactly where sanitation and housing gaps are.

How Active Citizenship Works?

Active Citizenship involves individuals taking proactive responsibility for their communities and democracy through engagement, voluntary action, and advocacy.

Awareness comes first: It’s about a mother in a basti or a farmer in a distant village understanding exactly which office holds the budget for their water, and who is accountable when the taps run dry.

When people have the facts, they stop being “beneficiaries” waiting for a handout and start being rightful claimants of their own future.

Knowledge without a place to use it only leads to frustration. We’ve spent years pushing for Participatory Spaces, ensuring that Gram Sabhas aren’t just paper formalities and that Ward Committees actually have chairs for the marginalized.

Active citizenship can’t breathe if the doors to local governance are locked. We work to unlock those doors so that the “invited spaces” of government become “claimed spaces” for the people.

What is Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)?

Community-based Participatory Research is a form of research in which communities are genuine partners in the research process, rather than passive subjects.

The term was developed to describe an approach that deliberately shifts the relationship between researchers and communities, away from extraction and towards collaboration.

In CBPR, community members help define what is worth studying, participate in designing the study, collect and interpret data alongside trained researchers, and have a say in how findings are communicated and acted upon.

CBPR applies those principles specifically in settings where the research is connected to real community health, social, or development challenges, and where community ownership of the process and findings is treated as both ethically necessary and practically important

Why Community-Based Participatory Research is Used?

The core argument for CBPR is that conventional research, designed and conducted by external experts, systematically misses things. It misses them because the questions it asks are shaped by what researchers already believe matters.

It misses them because communities are more likely to share honest information with people they trust. And it misses them because the knowledge that shapes how a problem is understood often lives in the community, not in the literature.

CBPR also produces research that is more likely to be used. When communities have been part of defining the question and interpreting the findings, they have a stake in the outcomes.

For practitioners in governance, healthcare, education, and social development fields, where research needs to translate into changed practice and policy, this is not a secondary benefit. It is the point.

When & Where Community-Based Participatory Research is Applied?

CBPR is mostly used in settings where a research question cannot be answered well without the active involvement of the local community it concerns.

In public health, it has been used to understand why communities do not use available services, what barriers exist to healthcare access, and how health programmes need to be redesigned to reach people who need them most.

In urban development, it has been used to generate community-produced data about informal settlements – data that municipalities and planners do not have and collect on their own.

PRIA’s own work illustrates this across decades, from supporting adivasi communities in the 1980s to document the impact of displacement, to the engaged citizens, responsive city programme, in which settlement improvement committees in Ajmer, Muzaffarpur, and Jhansi conducted Participatory Settlement Enumeration and produced data that directly informed city-wide sanitation planning.

How Community-Based Participatory Research Works?

CBPR does not follow a single fixed methodology, but it consistently involves a few core practices.

Researchers and community members build a genuine partnership first to establish trust, shared purpose, and agreement on what needs to be understood.

The process closes with action: findings are used to inform policy, advocacy, or practice, with communities involved in deciding how.