Action Learning

The concept of action learning, as it has been present in the most diverse areas of pedagogical practice and science since the mid-1980s, has been welcomed with open arms everywhere, especially by those who have always been of the opinion that too much theory and too little practice is taught. The comfortable “user interface” of the term action learning and the resulting widespread use of this term pretend a pedagogical consensus that does not exist. If one assumes that the subjective availability of meaningful concepts and an elaborated technical language are an essential prerequisite for reflection, critical faculties, self-determination, and the representation of one’s own and collective interests, then it is easy to imagine how all these abilities could also be turned into their opposite via a misunderstood action orientation. In didactics, a number of different approaches can be distinguished that can be assigned to the concept of action-oriented teaching in the broadest sense. The concepts that shape the discussion on action learning in vocational education and training are Piaget’s cognition theory and its reception in the didactics of pre-school and science education, the materialistic theory of appropriation and reflection as founded by Leontjew and Rubinstein and didactically applied by Galperin, the construct of vocational action competence with its didactic implications, the action-theoretical extension of original didactic theories and models of action-oriented teaching by Hilbert Meyer, and the conceptual approach of vocational action competence according to Laur-Ernst.